Podcast: The Ride - Chuck E. Cheese 2 with Jamie Loftus

Episode Date: March 26, 2021

Jamie Loftus (The Bechdel Cast, My Year in Mensa) returns as we continue to explore the weird and wild world of Chuck E. Cheese. Featuring Covid-Safe toy purchases, questionable TV show parodies, and Chuck E.'s favorite actor.  Mickey Unrapped episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

forever dog warning the following podcast contains annoying seafood bankruptcy and animatronics that are very divorced in order to listen you must redeem 150 000 tickets jamie loftus returns for chucky cheese 2 on today's podcast the ride Welcome to Podcast The Ride, the podcast about theme parks that won't let in any listeners who don't pass our patented weird adult check. I'm Scott Entertainment Gardner, joined by Mike Entertainment Carlson. I am here. I'd like to say hello and thank you to all of the little Cliffords listening out there. The new name for our listeners, Cliffords. I'd just like to say thank you for listening of the little Clifford's listening out there. Uh, the new name for our listeners, Clifford's. Uh, I just like to say thank you for listening and your support.

It seems like everybody was fine with it. It's, uh, as fine as I was hearing it. The idea that our fans are now named after the Martin short movie, but the creepy man, child Clifford, it's,

it's fine. It's all fine. Um, Hey, and of course we're also joined by jason p pie plate that's right now everyone will please make sure you have the identical hand stamp the matching hand stamps uh we can continue with the recording we uh discovered jason playing drums on pie plates in a kitchen that's how we started this whole podcast

is we heard him rhythmically drumming and that's why so that's why we didn't know he was a perfect fit for this i can distinctly remember mike like holding his hand up to his ear ear going like hey do that again like what was that i said i think he really got something there. Yeah. So that's the origin story. Marvin Berry kind of moment. Right. Look, this is very exciting. We're returning to the world of Chuck E. Cheese, one of our favorite topics. It's been two years since we talked about it, and now it's Chuck E. Cheese 2.

It's been an interesting two years, you say for chucky cheese uh you might say uh uh horrible you might say disastrous uh there's probably a lot of things you could say um and we're so excited to be joined once again uh by our guest from the previous episode i guess resident uh chucky cheese expert uh and also great comedian writer podcaster from lolita podcast jamie loftus jame wait jamie loftus i think that legally i need to end henny because there can only be one there can only ever be one jamie henny jamie henny there is what an ugly name there it's so i mean not that i i guess i guess helen henny is no better thought out than any of the other character names except pasquale which i pasquale p pie plate is pretty brilliant uh It's one of the funniest names. Helen Haney, it just feels so half-assed.

Yeah. Well, like, we were talking the last time you were here, we talked about the other female characters that they just threw away, like, but they had more fun names, like Sally Sashay. Oh, yeah, they had good ones. That's better. Actually thought out ones, yeah.

Right. Yeah, I learned a little more than I had previously about Dolly Dimples. Dolly Dimples is a lot of fun. thought out ones yeah right yeah i learned a little more than i had previously about dolly dimples dimples is a lot of fun she's like uh kind of a i guess sort of a may west type uh hippo in kind of um sort of a clown wig is what the hair is like that sounds safe. Yeah, yeah. I feel like they've introduced a new female character in the last year named Bella. What is Bella? I don't know about Bella. Bella is new.

I can't tell. So there's a lot to unpack, but I can't tell where you go to find out what is currently canon because no matter where you go it seems like you're operating on a kind of a different level of canon bella is a bunny she speaks spanish she's friends with helen henney but she exists solely on the youtube channel she's just only there she's nowhere else right we've talked we talked a little bit about this they produce still to this day so much content and they put it on YouTube. And there are just like long running parodies they've done on YouTube. They put full albums on YouTube.

They put new dances on YouTube. And I also came, I don't, there were new characters I was finding when I went through and I was like, is this a one-off? Is this something that's, are they part of the magical whatever five that we know now they interviewed michael pena like last week yeah i would love to talk about the michael pena interview because it came out i checked it came out the same week as the megan harry oprah interview and i feel like it really got you know kind of swept under the rug because there was just another big ticket interview and no one

was talking about chucky and michael pena promoting tom and jerry from his house yes because we're we're like in the um this year's uh promotion is named the four c the celebration of the four seasons of fun which and for spring the spring celebration is a tie-in with the tom and jerry movie and he does interview michael pena and now it is canon seemingly that michael pena is chucky cheese's favorite actor yes he says he says at the top of the interview you're my favorite actor and that at the end i love your work like i love world trade center i i don't know how well uh uh command what is the what is the seth rogan mall movie uh observant report i don't know that it's aged well but i bet your performance is evergreen in it you really commit it well to the character i loved how in because you could tell i i mean i guess i would assume and maybe i can't tell if i'm being like truly like out of my mind here

but i'm like i'm guessing that it wasn't actually chucky on the other end it was just some guy being like and then chucky will say this and then chucky will say this because i feel like if were i michael pena unless he's just a really like smooth operator i would have had bigger reactions to what was going on on the other end like if chucky cheese. Cheese told me, you are my favorite actor. I love your work. I would be crying. Like he was just like, oh, okay, thanks. Like he didn't seem very into it.

It was really stiff. It felt extremely space ghosty in its level of disconnect. So like, did they properly explain what was going on did they repurpose like a just a affiliate feed from a kansas city news station and make it chucky later it's um i'm glad we all caught this this was a very strange event okay michael uh michael standby the bowling for soup guy is coming on the line and um nowael stand by the bowling for soup guy is coming on the line and um now he's not the bowling for soup guy when he talks to you he's chucky cheese but you probably know him it's the bowling for soup guy is michael pena more likely to know

chucky i don't know how old he is so i don't know if chucky cheese would have been a big thing for him but i don't i wonder if he's more familiar with chucky cheese or bowling for soup just personally i think that says a lot about who you are yes how would you if he right if he were to rank them in terms of how much he liked it yeah yeah if now if you if you before the voice change were already a massive chucky cheese fan and a massive Chuck E. Cheese fan and a massive Bowling for Soup fan then there was a certain day 10 years or so ago that was like better than a thousand birthdays. This would have been it.

This would have been it. I guess we should say, I mean, I would suggest the listener go back and listen to our first episode probably before doing this because this is really throwing you in the deep end here. Chuck E. Cheese, of course, in the last 10 ish years has been voiced by the lead singer of the rock and roll band bowling for soup i just want to do some filling in in case you're starting here you're starting on the empire strikes back of chucky cheese podcast the right episodes

we are throwing you right in we'll try to cliff notes things here and there that's important info the the the thriving youtube channel is important info which uh it was news to me the last time we did an episode there's also something from that youtube channel this came up on our patreon but not on the main feed and i well jamie it seems like you like uh catch the youtube channel pretty frequently i'm so it might be worse okay okay then you probably know this was this was back in september so you you you've uh very catch the YouTube channel pretty frequently. I'm subscribed. But it might be worse. Okay, okay. Then you probably know. This was back in September,

so you very well probably saw this. But we discovered around the holidays that Munch is now a DJ with sort of a Deadmau5, Marshmello vibe. And we were pretty into this. We were like, this is our favorite move in a while. Oh, I forgot about this yes and i also liked that the the comments are turned off for that video for some reason yeah just very deflective of any criticism that who would be mad i dj munch rules i love it super

cool um the uh the comments were also turned off on a video I watched right before we started, which I ended up on the forums. The forums that are really devoted to all this, which is called the forums are now called Retro Pizza Zone. And I saw a thread that was about what is the worst Chuck E. Cheese show video. I guess like, okay, the videos that played behind them and the songs of the combos or whatever um people were trying to say was the one they liked they disliked the most and there was somebody really adamant about january 96 is the worst of all time or january 96 number two i'm still mad about it and i watched it and it was just kind of a confusing piece about um helen trying to be a cheerleader and auditioning to be a cheerleader against like

11 year old girls like much younger it was just baffling more than anything but somebody really hated it and the comments were turned off and it made me wonder did the retro pizza zone crew all come and attack the comments and the user had to nip all that in the bud. There's a lot of rage apparently. I'm questioning if we should even be doing this again. I don't want to incite

anyone's anger but that sounds like more of a them problem. That sounds like a perfectly fun tape. Watching a gigantic costumed hen in direct competition with a real human child. I have no problem with it. Sounds great. Does she go to the school? Does she even qualify for this?

Oh, yeah. How do they know each other? How many in middle school? I don't know. I thought she works and is in a band, so if she's 12, then that's weird. It is unclear how old they are. Yeah. How old is any of them?

They all dress like they're 12. Like, original Rat Chucky is probably older than little boy skateboard rock and roll mouse. Yeah, like it seems like it. He seems like he's 56. Yeah, he's an older man he's like uh he's in the friars club and he's an older man and then yeah his the mouse version seems like he could be 15

yeah it's unclear and they're all kind of like children now like the puppet versions actually all feel like they could be you know like nine yeah i think i like the puppet versions by the way in general i can see why yeah yeah yeah i i think so they satisfy like that they aren't creepy i can see why a brand would want to be not creepy these days i think like i don't know i could see kids liking these little puppet and maybe like never even going to the restaurant maybe chucky cheese is all digital now. Well, especially, yeah, if they're doing school at home. They have a

run of videos called Daily Afternoon Break. They only update them every three weeks, so they're not quite daily. It was a good reminder though of a very strange YouTube feature. A big thing I use for the show a lot is the save

button on youtube that adds it to a watch later playlist and for some reason that is disabled for videos for quote unquote for kids but sometimes people will just tag stuff that's been ripped to youtube for kids i guess so it doesn't get copyright strikes. So there's just some you can't, but I don't understand why that would protect children is turning off the watch later option. Yeah, there are a lot of feature. I don't know how interesting this is, but there's a lot of restrictions on the Chuck E. Cheese videos. I was watching on my phone yesterday, and you can't minimize the video and search for another video while you're watching it'll turn the video off for some reason there's some feature

yeah i don't know like i wanted to minimize the video on the youtube app and then search for another chucky video while i'm watching the one in the little tiny window no they will not let you do that that's off limits too on the Chuck E. Cheese YouTube. They're very specific, particular about what they're allowing for some reason. I don't know. Yeah, I was like, what are they hiding? What's their endgame there? So you can't stop watching their

stuff? Also not, I mean, no offense to our boy, but not many people are watching it. It's like they average less than 10k a video i mean is it are they trying to crush dissent are they trying to stop negative discourse surrounding as a is it a freedom of speech thing i mean possibly i don't know i'm just are they trying to hide are they trying to hide five children missing from Chuck E. Cheese? Did everyone come across that hoax from last year?

I don't remember this hoax from last year. There's a lot of stuff. We teased it at the top. We'll talk about this as far as the recent years. We should probably start with that. What's been going on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's been up?

I guess a lot has been up. We can start with some of the more famous things. And we've talked about this a little, and this really got out there. But very early in pandemic 1.0, in the first generation of this never-ending thing, there was this strange story about people getting on Uber Eats or postmates or whatever and seeing a pizza place in their neighborhood they've never heard of before that is called pasquale's pizza and wings and uh then once it gets there maybe doing the math and putting together that this came from chucky cheese uh for people who didn't know all this bullshit uh they didn't realize maybe they know people did not recognize the name pasquale offhand but we of course saw what known as soon as we saw yes regular people

it seems like don't know that he's pasquale um so so that was a big that was a big early spike in the recent past with uh of of chuckie cheese oddity yes well and it had the big story that kind of broke it uh was in west of philadelphia where there is an unrelated pasquale's pizza but now in later pandemic uh they are full-on advertising on the chucky website pasquale's pizza and wings available on delivery apps i love this pivot i think it's genius i love i agree they've leaned in so far it is based on i i almost last night i almost like took the challenge and was like oh i'll order one pizza from chucky cheese and one from pesqually's and see what happens but then it was like i will almost definitely have two inedible pizzas and i bet someone's done this before and people have

done it before i looked it up on uh youtube and my boyfriend and i found a channel called big john tv uh it's a family channel they've done it it's definitely the same pizza it's made at the same location they said that pasquale's pizza might have more sauce but that could also just be at where they are but it's the same pizza i think it's so fun and and they say like on the website as featured in the new yorker and news day and so i was like what did the new yorker say about pasquale's pizza and what they just said is that it exists they said this new brand is the latest example of chucky cheese entertainment creatively adjusting to meet the needs of consumers in a unique way allowing for more variety and convenient options available for delivery

and that's just quoting a spokesperson from chucky cheese um they also said that pasquale's uses different ingredients from the standard chucky cheese pie to produce a more premium pizza experience that's all the new yorker said they didn't say it was good they didn't say that they'd tried it but it was technically featured in the new yorker so yeah they weren't lying it feels the whole thing feels to me like like an afterthought like jason you're saying suddenly they're embracing it suddenly it's on the site but when this all happened it was just a weird reddit discovery and then all of a sudden once reached for comment they had all this stuff to say about it but then why didn't they say at first?

Why was there no press release about this? It seems like they got caught and then had to pull together a corporate claptrap and pretend like this was always the plan. Right. It was a trick. It was started out as a trick. This is like some old Chuck stuff. And tricked you. And there were other like

there were other restaurants doing it i don't i didn't check if any other restaurant has just really uh made a spin-off company to instead of admitting they made a mistake uh but i don't know because it was like i think chili's had done it. I went down the Big John TV rabbit hole, because this was a series this family was doing of ordering one from the actual restaurant and one from the fake name the restaurant made up. But it was like Chili's had done it, Applebee's had done it, Smokey Bones had done it. But Chuck E. Cheese were the only ones that got really brutally called out for it. There is a big price difference. Yeah, I think Shakey's Pizza. Oh, really?

Yeah. Shakey's didn't? Huh. But these things don't have IP. They can't, like, what's the fake Applebee's called? Or what's the fake Shakey's called? Do we know? Well, Shakey's was selling, like well shakey's was selling like shakey's

chicken sandwiches and mojo potatoes like and they just i keep getting instagram ads of these disgusting looking chicken sandwiches with just like a a inch of mayo on top and bottom of the chicken and i'm like shakey's what the? This sucks. Applebee's was called Neighborhood Wings. No. I think it's like the knockoff Halloween costumes we talked about a little while back. Like, what word soup can we do that reminds you of our name? But why are they avoiding their own copyright and yet trying to evoke their own themes and characters what is this entire operation i think they're trying to hit like multiple markets because

obviously there's people that love chain bad chain restaurants and then there's people that are like i'd rather order like locally with stuff that i feel like is better it's not just mass produced chain restaurant crap so they're trying to trick it's all an elaborate trick of having multi i think there was one i forget which restaurant crap. So they're trying to trick... It's all an elaborate trick of having... I think there was one... I forget which restaurant that was doing... They had four different names on an app. So they were trying to appeal to four different types of people. Like your person that might like a chain restaurant,

then the person that wants just a mom-and-pop pizza place. So I think they're just trying to... It's an elaborate trick to just market to different types of consumers that's what i understand yeah well i think yeah early in the pandemic too i didn't really know what a ghost kitchen was and now i feel like i know everything about them like i think i've ordered for like three different ones that most notorious the flavor town kitchen being run out of the city walk buka um wait really oh yes uh yeah because uh robert earl and guy fury have an existing relationship uh with their chicken guy uh endeavor and so uh yeah if you if you look up Flavortown, you can order from the CityWalk location

or the Encino location. Holy shit. Shared kitchens out of the Bucas. I still find it baffling that you say just Bucas. Does anyone else on Earth only say Bucas? I cannot. Good friends. Well, I feel like I'm family when I'm there.

You know, and I also cannot remember which one I'm supposed to say. Oh, it's so that you don't have to say the rest. So I don't have to say Beppo or Peppo. I cannot remember in this moment as usual, which is the actual one. If you had to guess which one it was, though, which one is it? I think it's Beppo. It's the one with the alliterative one. Yes, it is Beppo.

You're correct. Where did Peppo come from? That's just... I don't... Just said Peppo, and we roasted him pretty hard the first time. Yeah. Now it's in his head,

and we've ruined his... There's a lot of things we've ruined in his brain. It's just ruined. And someone ran the literal translation. The incorrect one, I believe, translates to bee pole. Oh, yeah. Now all I just think about is bee pole. We're trying to reach for this word, this name.

Well... This was the first Christmas Eve in like five years that I didn't go to Bucca di Beppo for my little Christmas Eve dinner. Oh, that's right. Oh, wow. That's a tradition. Geez. Well, then you're on a first name. You should just do Bucca.

Yeah, we're pretty close. I like to pass the picture of Buzz Aldrin eating the gigantic meatball. Give it a high five as I pass. Is that a back at home thing or are you going to the city walk or the Encino or something? I would go to the one at the

is it the Grove that has one? I think it was the Grove. Oh it does? Okay. I never went home for like my first five years living here, I didn't go home. And so, my other friends who didn't go home would meet at Buca di Beppo. We would get, we would buy the pictures and everything.

It would be, it was a blast. Is there a, there's like a, is it a, it's a Pope room at CityWalk. Is there a Pope room in each Buca di Beppo? I've only ever gotten sat on the balcony, which I don't know if that is like a pope room in each buca di beppo i've only ever gotten sat on the balcony which i don't know if that is like a compliment or an insult but they they i've only been yeah i've been sat at at the same place over and over and over which maybe is just where they sit when no one's there because it's christmas eve and that's the only time i've ever been but they sit you next to this gorgeous statue of a naked lady and she's in the picture

and it's a blast you have five years worth of these photos that's pretty great well you have to get to all the locations at a certain point when we do a big Bucca di Beppo saga I think we have to figure out

which one's the best nationwide all of them. Did you guys do the Pope Room at the time? We toured the, I toured the Pope Room, but I didn't sit and eat there. It seemed like this was a range, like we had to know a guy. Yeah. When I say toured, we walked around the table and took pictures and giggled. That's basically what we did.

But we have photos from the pope room i that was the only i've only actually eaten there once um it was that time we did a couple years ago yeah when when we're all vaccinated we'll have to reserve the capri room at the encino one which is the one that a real housewife of beverly hill designed and it looks like she just bought every uh piece of uh all the branches and fake lemons from a michael's crafts and just filled a room with it oh it's so good god that's high on the list oh yeah yeah genuinely is really uh um yeah okay so the other if we're talking about big things that have happened that have been internet prominent i bet uh jamie you're probably like us and got tagged in this a hundred times with this story um this this bizarre thing where

uh i think this was also a reddit find this frightening post-apocalyptic photo of the dumpster animatronic yeah yeah yeah like rotting away in a landfill looking like it had been shot in the face in several other places and this is just the drama of it being in the desert it felt like very Mad Max or very Breaking Bad end of casino

oh yeah yeah absolutely is there any like clarity on where that was because I feel like that this picture has had a few different rounds of life. I've been tagged in this picture a million times, like two or three different times. I can't tell how old the picture is. I can never tell where the dumpster is, like where the landfill is. I can't trace a history.

Well, I don't know the place, but I know that it's safe now. That I know. If you look a little further, like somebody bought it so that it didn't just die or get burned up. It didn't get Toy Story 3'd. So Chucky lives. I don't know if it's restored or anything yet, but it's basically okay. That's what I found. That's amazing news.

I didn't know that. Yeah, apparently. Yeah. I only get tagged in the dumpster picture five million times. There you go. Oh! Whoa! This is from a Newsweek story said that, yeah, someone bought it, someone restored it.

And this is supposedly the Instagram account of the person who got it and restored it. And as you can see the description is account is closed please stop requesting follower requests will be blocked more weird he only allowed one well as one person and that is in error instagram shows one in error what are you talking about we maybe should have said i think we all guessed because there's a side by side there's the one rotting away and it's such a sorry state and then there's just a fully restored like the kind of like latter-day version with a big c on his shirt i mean it looks brand new it looks right out of the factory i demand a process video.

I want to know how it was done. Right, right, right. Because otherwise, like, are we sure? What if that's a fake? That could be any Chuck. I saw a Chuck like that last night. So you did go. You picked up. You didn't deliver.

I picked up. You didn't deliver. I picked up. First of all, because the prices triple when you get delivery. It's like ridiculous. And the pickup, they desperately want you to pick up for some reason. It's weird because it's like the restaurant is not open. You can't sit there. There's obviously no outdoor dining. You can't touch.

The games are covered in germs. I don't know there there's obviously no outdoor dining you can't touch the games are covered in germs like i don't know why there's but the carryout deals are pretty like they're like so good that it's kind of like suspicious uh they had like a four you could get like four large pizzas for twenty dollars if you wanted to um like it was which i don't want so i i i just wanted to to go to the pickup counter for a few reasons first because i was excited to record this today second because i found out about a new menu item called unicorn churros that are a part of the springtastic celebration that i wanted to try and third because i was hoping that they i would be able to buy a chucky cheese uh toy truck that i i've had my eyes on without paying for shipping

uh and i was able to accomplish all three it was wow a great productive trip geez it was great wow so um do you have the truck can i do you use a truck nearby let me i my i was trying to figure out where to display it and i don't know where my boyfriend ended up deciding i was like looking around for it i have a picture of it that i'll okay i'll send in the chat it's a good it's it's a great truck uh the unicorn i wish I could say the same of the unicorn churros. They're not very good. They taste like Froot Loops in a bad way. Oh, okay.

They're very, very, very sweet. The truck was there. It was only $3, and I had to, I felt bad because there's like two people working at chucky cheese right now there's a cook and a manager and there's really no need for anyone else and so we were standing there for the longest time i'm thrilled to announce they have not gotten rid of their single animatronic yet because some places have uh during the pandemic so i was i was just taking it all in and then like uh the manager came out from like desanitizing the the games for nobody and she was like oh you you must have ordered

the unicorn churros meaning that no one else has ordered anything recently uh she's like oh unicorn churros okay i'll go get them and i uh i was not i was being a coward i made my boyfriend ask if we could buy the truck i was just like standing there humiliated uh and she we it just took a while for us to communicate to her that like she just kind of couldn't believe that we wanted it um he was like hey um could we actually could we buy something for behind the counter i'd really love that truck and she's like there's no truck and uh you know we had to be like oh no it's like on the far left that the truck and she's like the truck with chucky cheese on it um and we were eventually able to get the truck i don't it was at the eagle rock

mall they seem like they really have one person ordering a day. I don't understand why it's open, really. Yeah, that's a good question. I wonder if there's any sort of income being made. Is there any, like maybe there's some sort of organization they send pizzas to in the morning or like there's some, like is there anything maybe? Because obviously what you're saying has got to be true where there's probably not a lot of people ordering takeout at Chuck E. Cheese at the moment. I don't know.

Good question. And no one's buying. Because what you're saying is you bought the truck from the normal ticket redemption area? Yeah, yeah. Which you can't access because there's tape. You cannot get there. You just have to ask if those things things are on sale currently and they're like yeah no one's bought any of this in 18 months uh and they're happy to sell it to you but you

really have to ask because they will not believe you when you say that you want it i i have a feeling that procedure too is probably like location by location like maybe some won't sell it to you an experience i have had recently where i like if i'm going by a drugstore i i go in and go to the pharmacy and go like so what are you folks doing with extra vaccines at the end of the day uh because a medical professional told me to do this uh like hey you know there's a the best way to get a vaccine right now to start going around and asking what they're doing with their cancellations you're you're saying that the vex the extra vaccines are very similar to getting to just buy with cash a toy from the chucky cheese

prize redemption counter well getting to buy like uh yeah getting to buy yeah like some places might sell you that outright for cash the truck or some might go like oh i we give them if there's people 65 and older in the store they get it uh if our employees do not want it yeah they get to buy the truck so it's possible if you ask for the truck they would say well la county isn't allowing you to buy the truck right now but you look at this list of 50 different things you could possibly have in addition to also maybe just having a doctor's note that says you should get the truck then yes we will sell you the truck so it all could be exactly like that i get that sort of case by case yeah so if i had taken that same energy into a vaccination site i could have done something far more useful with my night last night

it's yeah yeah like hey could i get sorry to bother could i get that that vial right over there that vial no one wants this this is the this is the uh astrazeneca. No one wants this. Oh, well, you know. I like this. The attitude, Jason, you're coming in with feels like Chucky to me a little bit. I'm just pairing this

because that's the topic. So what are you doing with those extra vaccines at the end of the day? Well, I feel like a maniac asking, but literally like someone's like, oh,

just start asking about the extras. And of course it's been working. It seems like it's where, yeah, I know someone who got it from doing that trick at a rouse. So then I called a rouse with a pharmacy and they were like, oh, uh,

employees get a first and then 65 and older at the end of the day. And I'm like, okay, so that's a totally different policy from this other Ralph's pharmacy. Got it. Thank you. Very cool. I saw that Dodger Stadium shut down early yesterday because not enough people were getting the vaccines. I'm so confused by it.

There are a lot of narratives, too going around yeah as well where it's like somebody says something and then like an hour later you go oh that's actually not a story that's a game of telephone it's so it's just so much going on with that and that same thing at chucky cheese i'm sure you know you're getting well that's the true relevant question is um should chucky cheese get the vaccine on camera and would it help i think i think it would help i think yeah he should he's a hero at least to the rest of the band i think it might help convince uh like jasper's probably a denier right jasper's not sold on the vaccine there i also have uh the other because Chuck, I mean, everywhere has their cursed pandemic merch, but Chucky has sold some masks, I know, because I got one for my birthday this year from my

boyfriend's mother, because she lives in wisconsin and i you know she believes in the vaccine but she's not afraid of walking into a chucky cheese in the middle of a pandemic so she contains multitudes but she wanted to get a mask she marched in there to get me a chucky cheese mask and a birthday balloon and you know i'm eternally grateful i were i was worried for her but apparently no one i mean no one was there um the updates i got it was like it the updates i got about the chucky cheese in racing wisconsin because she's she like gave this stuff to me and then i just had a million questions for her about what the interior of the chucky cheese is like since i was last there and she was like i don't know it's still a chucky

cheese it sounds like it's changed quite a lot though uh so she would have been there in august of last year the last time i went they still had the full tv parody stuff the movie parody stuff they had chuck feld they had like a saturday night pizza slice i forget um but now it's all gone all of the old decorations are gone they seem like they've followed through with this like big refurbishment they were talking about a couple years ago of getting rid of all of the animatronics not even a chucky and it's just a wide dance floor for nobody because it's because no one can go um and and there is still a costumed character who she said uh came out to dance for just her when she was purchasing this mask pandemic they still sent out a they still had a costume essentially wow it's i guess

it's the safest role in the restaurant you gotta pull mask on at all times right i what i wonder how state to state it is because i would imagine that like chucky cheese's in wisconsin might be a might have been a little more open than Chuck E. Cheese's in Southern California. I don't know. I don't think in Southern California, I'm pretty sure they were just totally like you could do pickup and that's it. There was no costumed character. Right. I think so.

Yeah, it's yet another one of those, like, COVID confusing case by case. Is the whole chain shut down? Seemingly not. There are enough open that there's, like, because we've read about, yeah, here's the spring event, and here's the Halloween event, and here's how we can do it COVID safe. But then some places you can't go whatsoever. Boy, it must be confusing to work there or to manage it or to be the CEO, to be new CEO. David McKillips must be a pretty tough job. We have not mentioned what a newspaper would consider newsworthy about Chuck E. Cheese,

which is that during the pandemic, they did declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and I believe it closed a number of locations or are going to close a number of the locations i have a story about that i've had a big chucky year in spite of never leaving my home yeah so they did they closed they closed the location and it was like i forget they closed the location an hour or so from here. I'm trying to remember the name of it. But a tipster DM'd me an auction website because they were auctioning off a bunch of Chuck E. Cheese stuff.

And I was kind of nervous about it because I was like, well, who knows how safe they're being. But they were like, no, you just meet them outside and they give you your wares. So they were selling off stuff for fucking dirt cheap it was like it was seaside i forget if we were i had to like ask a friend with a pickup truck to to to take me it was a whole project but but the result is that i now have a ticket muncher in my home and i also in my uh in my shed because it turns out there's no room for this in my apartment but i have one of those kid check uh like podiums wow oh i can so visualize the podium wow that's a great item to get for 18 dollars there was no one wanted it no one i got i got the the ticket

muncher cost me 33 and the podium cost me 18 no one wanted this shit they're like if you've got a pickup truck and 50 will give you whatever you want it was incredible you could have bought like the whole showroom for 300300. Yes. Wow. Yeah. That's wild. It's good we didn't hear about this, or that pickup would have been a lot more like a rat race, mad, mad, mad world.

We would have been driving you off the road, Jamie. We were trying to get there before you. Cannonball run. I should have sent it to you. I was kind of ashamed of it at the time. It was like, I was pretty ashamed, because I was like, I time it was like i was i was pretty ashamed because i was like it's i think this was like july like late july early august and i was like this is just not

this is not how i should be using my time money energy so i kind of like was secretly bidding on it and then went to collect it in in shame um but i don't regret it because every morning i wake up and i look directly into my the ticket muncher didn't work was one of the issues but fortunately uh there's no need for it to and it's now a bookshelf wow cool yeah i mean yeah we we've spent there was an episode recently where we spent like 20 minutes just fantasizing about owning McDonaldland Play Place stuff. Oh my God. Which is all expensive on eBay. It's not, I mean, it's not expensive if you're rich, but still.

It's like 10, maybe 10 grand. Sorry. I'll send you the auction site because I'd never, it was like a very HTML-y, I don't know how the person who sent it to me like knew it existed but everything there was just like i think it was places that were closing abruptly that were selling off large items like it was just a very um they would have made a killing on ebay but fortunately i don't think that they had the time or uh ability to to care because i've paid so much like i i've paid more for Chuck E. Cheese items than that

it's ridiculous that's crazy yeah I wonder what's left I mean obviously like the big ticket stuff for us would be like bowler hat Chuck I mean is munch on the ticket muncher that you have yeah okay and it's like newer munch I assume

yeah it's the newer i guess these would be the machines from the past 10 years or so with like the cartoon t-shirt wearing munch i was hoping it would be an old one but it was all i wonder the one thing that they weren't selling off and i asked the lady when i when i got there i was like so what happens to the animatronics and they're like we were told that that's like not none of our but they were like we were told that that's a whole other thing like they they weren't even brought into the discussion they were just selling off the ski ball machines and the and the random shit i i was in a bidding war with someone over the bathroom signs but it was it didn't work out

in my favor the black helicopters and the black vans are coming from the animatronics they're gonna whisk them away to the warehouse from the end of uh raiders of the lost ark i'm so curious where they're all going because it that was that was i was waiting for confirmation from somewhere that they were like not being sold off to other places they're being brought somewhere or they're being like brought to they're being repurposed in some way but it's not it's not a people-facing issue they said don't fucking worry about it well they're going to be examined by top men that's what happens top men are on the case uh i did see one of the locations i was

closing pictures were going around of like all of the rides and arcade games like were in the like trash yard next to they had like cleared out the building and were just kind of like a dilapidated carousel like next to you know which again like it makes

like of course you'd want to get it you think that you'd want to get it but it is that it is the physical moving it's the shit and like realize remembering oh right i don't have an eight-bedroom house uh it does not make any sense to have this gigantic ski ball machine or whatever it is yeah it's convincing the person you live with that this will be a positive addition to our lives to look at every day. Not just like hit you in the knees when you're trying to get out of bed. Yeah, I was like, oh, we're going to put the internet router in it. So it's kind of more, think of it as a shelf.

Functional. You know, speaking of that, I was about looking this up uh in preparation for the episode and i didn't but now i just went to ebay and i found a pretty good item do you guys would you guys be interested in doing a a quick sudden souvenir smackdown of course with something that you know you talk about stuff that you want stuff that you're you're driving to a that is closed like the big ticket stuff i'm going to show you a big one. You, Jamie, already name-checked essentially this thing.

This is one of the old CD covers from the wall. Saturday Night Retriever. In its frame with a Chuck E. CD at the bottom and kind of a glass bricky pattern. It's by the artist The Bee Cheese.

It includes more than a wolfhound and straying alive. Do we want to go let's get some guesses on what this is going for on eBay. Can I ask is it a buy it now or is it an auction in the starting price or

are there bids on it already? This is a place bid currently. And it's starting somewhere. Okay. Yeah, it's been up for six days left on this. Okay. Size I don't know offhand. I'll see if I can get it. But I mean, we know.

It's six feet by three feet, so it's big. I'll guess $249.99. Jason? I'm going to go $500. Jamie? I'll go $350. I'll split the difference.

The winner of that is going to be Jason at $449. Wait, is that right? Wait. Wow. Is it $500?

Yeah, yeah. It depends if we're doing Price is Right rules. Yeah, Price is Right rules. Is it over? Jamie wins. I went over. I went over. If it's Price is Right rules.

It's not closest. It's over. You don't want to do. Okay, got it. Well, now when we do this again, I will know the rules. I'm glad this is a good reiteration for me all right so Jamie that's so much money yeah yeah

do I care that much I don't know if it's so the thing the size really is a problem there too that's such that's gonna take up a whole wall in your home which again like how much wall space do people really have do you like this enough for it to be like such a a facet of your personality and not just chuck E. Cheese

but specifically do you want this Bee Gees parody do you like Saturday Night Retriever enough to have it be the main art in your house can I I bring up real quick? I just searched on eBay just out of curiosity. Let me just show you something that you can purchase. Here you go. This is a inside the head, like the

mechanism inside of, I guess, a Chucky head you can buy for $60. Oh, the eyes. It is horrifying. It's like a big, like, just kind of black bracket mechanism and then a weird, like, red, it's weird knowing what's

in the head now. A big red plastic piece. It's probably some mouth piece of some kind and then just unpainted eyes with, like, listless eyebrows halfway down. Or eyelids, rather. They have, yeah, they have six of these apparently and it says animatronic head kit showbiz

pizza chucky cheeses Colorado animatronics so I guess you could just buy your own like material felt or something and construct your own chucky head around this exoskeleton or not exoskeleton this skeleton I exoskeleton, this skeleton, I should say. Yeah.

Is this aftermarket, though? Is this like when your mechanic is like, well, do you want the part made by the manufacturer, or do you want the aftermarket made by third party? It's like a third of the price, but it is less of a warranty. It looks like it might be a knockoff. Yeah. A knockoff.

Yeah, I agree. It doesn't seem like it might be authentic, but that's maybe just an option for us if we're looking for something cheaper. We make our own Chucky head. Well, that's a way more efficient way for us to start manufacturing our own animatronic at home.

That's always been the end game, right? Yes. I mean, that's probably where this has been going. Yeah, for sure. Talk to him, get advice from him um give him a hug at the end of the day say thanks for being there for me chuck yeah aaron fechter the the like creator of all this stuff who there's also a bunch of like stuff that's happened with him in the past year that i don't even want to get into because it's really fucked up. You don't say. That guy?

Oh. Everything about him is so fucked. I was going through my old emails with him, and I was like, this guy's just really fucked up. But he used to be selling a make-your-own-animatronic kit on his website for like $10,000 or something absolutely scam artist ridiculous. I don't know, but also, what is a reasonable price for an animatronic? I have no idea. Right. Who knows?

That could be anything. It could be like $100 with the way the world currently values animatronics, which is not very much. Aaron Fector, there's a little Cliff Notes-y thing. Yeah, so he kind of kicked off the entire

trend, and he specifically is the creator of not the Chuck E. Cheese characters, but of the Rock-A-Fire Explosion, the other set of characters that got sort of bought out and replaced. But this guy is still going. There's this documentary that's

largely about him he once employed 200 people at his factory in orlando and now it's just him and there seems like there was some kind of uh chemical blast at this facility so now which was decrepit when they filmed the documentary and now it's just full of chemicals everywhere and he's been maybe this is one of the things you're referring to is that he's been there's there's a very populated youtube channel that just is him yeah he's putting out a lot of content there's been a lot of quarantine content from erin fechter so much yeah i have not been keeping up with it because i i i mean he was my perception with you he was always like kind of bizarre on youtube and i didn't really i i mean he was my perception was he was always like kind of bizarre on youtube and i didn't really i couldn't really watch too much of his content without being like i don't like it here

i'm leaving um but it seems to have really taken a turn which made me go back to i was trying to interview him at one point and i didn't mention this on the first episode we did, maybe because I still thought there was a chance I would interview him at this point. I washed my hands of it. But almost three years ago, I reached out to him to interview him, and he kept bailing on the interview at the last minute

because of an emergency. And it would always, and the last, I read the last like true cancellation he made because i tried again a year later and never heard from him but this was in from december 2018 and it's a long email that i barely read at the time because i just read the first sentence and was like well he's clearly not going to do this interview he keeps canceling for these like confusing reasons but i read through the whole email and it's like it sounds like he his he said that two of his dogs died very close together and it sounds like he was like doing holistic medicine on his dogs against the advice of his vet and it was a long email about that and so i just don't like him i don't trust

him and i don't i don't fuck with him anymore it's really like raising my blood pressure to even look at it because it's been like a it's in like a a weird font and it's just a lot i can i can imagine what the font looks like and it's like what four points too big for a normal yeah male yeah it's like ariel size 22 unmotivated you could have said just the font and i would have gone oh yeah okay i hear what you're saying i get it i get what you're saying if you're uh let's be careful all of us with our blood pressure because i have i do have more aaron fechter material that i've this is not all recent this is like from the last 20 years uh some of which i came off of uh showbizpizza.com which thanks to

them for archiving so much stuff um one step of the aaron fechter saga i didn't know um so his his characters the rock ofafire Explosion, who were mainly associated with showbiz pizza, they all kind of went away. And the whole story is he held on to the IP, which became essentially worthless. Or not worthless, but just not enough to mine a whole empire out of. What I didn't know is that he tried to start new restaurants

with the Rockifier explosion like he yeah he attempted to like put them into other places um which some of which only had a couple of locations um one of the rockifier characters is named loony bird so he started a restaurant in deep orlando called loony birds he just named it after one of them in a pasquale's fashion um i found some literature about loony birds that's all very much like your email it's very like come to loony birds we got pizza we got fun and games and we have the rock-a-fire explosion who are famous all over the world and they are world renowned and they are they are characters who are valued by many many many people.

It's like this giant- You did not vaccinate them. This brochure for children arguing to no one. I also found a Looney Birds newsletter where he talks about the success of the first taping of Live at Looney's, a local Time Warner show that he was making from the restaurant.

The hook of Looney Birds is that the famous Rock of Fire loony birds is that the famous rock fire explosion which is the word famous is thrown at you so many times um you yourself can be the lead singer of the band you can sing karaoke and they are your backing band so he made it it's a karaoke situation and he made a tv show out of the karaoke um and the newsletter says the taping was a big success and based on the feedback of the people in attendance we will be installing air conditioning before the next taping in orlando in orlando yeah you know now look it's you know it's fine during the day for the regular restaurant but when you bring in the tv lights that's what we didn't know was the tv lights really just heat up everything and so now we

know so the next time but otherwise it was great everybody had a great time so don't you know don't say they didn't um the other factor thing that i discovered and i'm really i'm sorry to do this to everyone i'm so i know what a bummer i'm about to click on. Do we know the fact about him that he was, according to his story at least, the inventor of the whack-a-mole? And then it got sort of taken from him or he's just not credited as such. Well, there's no question. If it's in question whether he invented the whack-a-mole, we absolutely know that he invented a cousin of the whack-a-mole called the bin laden basher oh no i yeah okay god seen this for any reason no i've never seen this i came with like five new reasons to hate aaron fechter and this was not even one of them

wow yeah this is something strike a blow for freedom it says bizarre a bizarre photo of you know it's like it yeah it's a it's a whack-a-mole but it's bin laden and there's a guy with an american flag patterned mallet and he is in jean shorts and shirtless. Why? That might be Aaron Fector. Like that. Yeah. I was going to say. Yeah. Yeah. I had that question. I was wondering. It's all so Florida.

Yeah. Extremely. Can I read? You know, I said to my wife, like, where are you going to end up where you are shirtless with a whack-a-mole? And she said Florida. Wildwood, New Jersey. Yeah.

Seaside Heights. You have to rip to get to start it. You have to rip the shirt off, though. You can't just take it off. You have to pull your shirt off and destroy it before you play this game. Yeah, and let out a yell. The machine's activated by the yell. So you use the Mallet of of freedom and you find Bin Laden.

Smash his ugly face, it says. And then special bonus, Hitler's also down there. Hitler's in it too. Oh my God. Why? What? Hitler's hiding with Bin Laden? Hiding with dirtbag Osama Bin Laden is none other than history's most evil scumbag.

Let them both have it. Wow. This is wild. These are all correct villains. Look, they're all bad, but it is funny to me. Osama bin Laden, that guy's a dirtbag. And Hitler, I'll tell you what, he's a scumbag. It's kind of like what you say about some guy on the street you don't like not like

the these awful uh this feels dumb saddam is also there by special request of the president the president of what the president of dick's last resort yeah did president bush get in touch with Aaron Factor? Aaron, you gotta help. How do we get the message across to the fine? Aaron Factor was in the cabinet. Doesn't everyone remember? I don't even know. Like, my brain has stopped.

What? Yeah, yeah. I know. There sort of needs to be a comedown from this. yeah his air infector was hired for the actual military the plan was him going around afghanistan shirtless with a mallet of freedom in jorts yeah in shorts as this marketing uh material says perfect for military rec rooms that's big business baby those military rec rooms you know yeah those you know um in yeah in size 22 aerial font kind of his thing he he got uh there there was i didn't even dig too deep into it because i'm like jesus christ but there there was like another uh like uh it seems

like a peak in erin fechter like youtube commentary content in uh early 2020 like pre-pandemic 2020 uh of like a lot of racist stuff that he was putting on his YouTube channel. And that I guess it just, I can't even speak to it because I barely engaged with it, but it just, since we last spoke about Aaron Fector, he, there's just been a spike in how many fucked up things that he's done. He does seem sort of primed for the,

the current mode, like the kinds of people who've been prominent in the last year. Yeah, yeah, he's well qualified. I would be, it's probably a good thing that he doesn't have like nationwide restaurants and a robot show, because God knows what he would be programming those robots to say and play at this point. I would, maybe I'm wrong, like it feels like they would have some speeches to give to the kids chuck changes his initial from e to q chuck you cheese yeah you can look at the basement of our restaurants. You can inspect the basement and see there's no sicko stuff.

Pizza places. I guess there's a whole like toxic Facebook group surrounding the Rockafire explosion that Aaron Factor is in charge of that. Like some people have done the, the deep dive on it. I don't care to even know. I'm, I'm glad that chucky cheese has

washed his little mouse now canonically mouse hands you did you don't have to do this too that's too many things to infiltrate i'm i can't do it i mean do maybe do we go well we obviously still have to deliver a showbiz pizza episode to the listeners one day yeah so yeah maybe we have to get in the mud at a certain point but now we don't now we don't have to go on now we don't I can I have

something lighter I please good please okay dear God please I know it's so dark this is an a little shavers update. If everyone will recall, the Little Shavers are a barbershop quartet that was featured in the short-lived restaurant,

the Ice Cream Emporium, that existed two locations in Florida, one in Texas. A set, a full Little Shavers show has been restored, and it's on display at the Volo Auto Museum in Volo, Illinois. Mike, can you pull up that video I sent you? Yes, I can. Here it is.

And if you want to play that. Whoa. No, the barber. Okay. And if you want to play that... Whoa! No, the barber chair. Oh, these guys are adorable. Very muppety. And very noisy. Okay, that's good. Man man the clacking of the robots oh pretty loud very pretty loud that's good i'm glad they're back yeah so they're back that supposedly the

only little shavers preserved in the world but this place the Volo Auto Museum Has it's own pirate show They have exhibits Dedicated to pizza theater restaurants They have one of two operating The Beagles The Chuck E. Cheese Beatles Who are dogs And the King

They've got the King And King Cat The Michael Jackson King How did they do that? And you eat in a little pizza cafe in the museum. Man, that's great. Where's Volo? Volo is about 40 minutes north of the Woodfield Mall.

So Mike. What? Yes. What? It's just north of Chicago. Where I grew up. Yeah. That's wild. Well, well Mike I know you haven't

gotten back there in a while so when you get back in town I want you to go straight to the Volo Auto Museum and then anything else or anyone you want to see in the Schomburg area it's up to you but I'll drive straight there yeah first before seeing you don't invite anybody

with you go alone well I'll drive straight there. Yeah. First. Yeah. Before seeing, don't invite anybody with you. Yeah, no, no. Yeah. Um, well,

what, do we have any more current stuff or awful air infector news? Do we want to go with some retro, some retro? Let me, let me just say, I'm not going to say it, but we do. There was,

it got too dark already that I don't want to even say really bad the other things that i learned so so yeah i i honestly i'm we're cutting on the fly okay all right so mike feel free to i just want to bring i mean there's there all these clips are fun except for one one dark spot uh i really quickly i want to highlight highlight one of Chucky's signature songs that we didn't talk about. He's been singing this song forever, and I assume we've all heard it, but I saw an old video of it, and I just want to shout it out. It's something I like.

I don't want to make fun of it. I just want to say I like this song, and you probably know what I'm talking about. This is the old version. They do do a new updated version with Bowling for Soup Man, and it's an old this is this is the old version they do do a new updated version with bowling for suit man but that's not what an exciting new musical review with your merrymaking master of ceremonies chucky cheese that's me chucky cheese your host with the most but even with this star behind me I'm not the star of the show.

You are. You are. Because the magic only happens when we all get together. We can feel the magic now that you're here. Together we'll make the good times right here. And when it comes to keeping the groove, we might just make the lead band and we're gonna make a move. We've got it together, we've got it.

We've got it together with you. We've got it together forever. The fun has just begun. This band is number one. Together we've got it, but just make the lead band and you. And then he sort of shouts out all the members of the band. I can keep playing, but that's the gist of it. Together we got it. And they still do this number, apparently.

And I remember it now when I found the video. And I was like, this is just good. I like this song. Helen Henney was a belter back in the day. Yes. Yeah. They all get their little moment to shine. I like that about this song.

It's a nice introduction to the band. And yeah, this is the old version, but there are new Bowling for Soup-ified versions of it as well. Jeez. I'm so glad it's around. Yeah. That's so nice. Because especially recently, I was trying to figure out if this was like something that happened post pasquale's pizza

fiasco or if it had been happening for a while anyways but it seems like they're getting like they're slowly edging pasquale out of the main crew on merch like that truck i got yesterday not a pasquale in sight but the other four are there. Really? It's strange, yeah. It's Chucky, Munch, Jasper, and Helen. No Pasquale. And I don't know if they were... I just wonder what's... I feel like Pasquale is the most beloved in a way. Yeah.

In some circles. Is he not cute, maybe? It's harder to cute. I think the puppet Pasquale is cute. Is it that he's a man? It's hard it's harder to cute I think the puppet is it that he's a man it's unclear he's a human maybe it's human a human thing I think he's in

the there is a puppet one you were saying because like he's in there's a game show sketch they shot recently where they sing a song trying to figure out what Chucky's middle name is. They're just naming off different E names.

At one point, they say, is it evolution? They show what he used to look like. Here's new Chucky, but in the bowler hat. I think Pasquale's in there. I know what you mean that it feels like they're edging out Pasquale.

He's still a YouTube canon, but I don't... He's not on a lot of the... He's not on the website, really. It's confusing. I don't know. Do they want him to maybe... Is the voice too cartoonish in the 2021, maybe? Maybe are they trying to transition

maybe a young Pasquale in that's more authentic? Maybe he's impossible to... They do seem to have kind of like childified the other characters. Maybe just because Pasquale has a full goatee they can't

get him there. I don't know. Maybe it's odd to have an adult pizza chef hanging out with these children. Right. Yeah. It seems a little unsafe. If you can get a kid check, then it's fine. Well, let me bring up another character.

I didn't catch that we talked about him last time. Maybe we did, and you forgive me if we did. We did not talk about Munch Jr. last time, right? I don't think so. Oh, boy. No. Oh, boy. No. And Munch Jr. was, and this is a clip I found on YouTube, Munch Jr. was sort of hidden on certain stages.

And the reason he was only in certain stages is because he was a reskin version of a Rockafire character named Choo Choo. So they had to already have like a little robot on the stage kind of hiding in a garbage can before for the necessity to retheme that character a little critter who pops up yeah there was a lot more of that kind of thing with with rock right so like you see this clip the clips on the top left here munch jr would pop his head up. And I found a clip made by a child called Rest in Peace Munch Jr. And I just want to play a quick clip of it here.

In this video, we will be finding out what happened to Munch Jr. So Munch Jr. is a very old prop from Chuck E. Cheese in front of Helen. We're in between Helen and Munch Jr. So Munch Jr. is a very old prop from Chuck E. Cheese in front of Helen. Or in between Helen and Munch. So this is Munch's little brother or little cousin. People say, mostly people say that it's Munch's little cousin when it's really his brother. So it's his brother.

So, yeah. He would pop out in an air vent. Here's like a video right here. He would go up and down out of an air vent here's like a video right here he would go up and down out of an air vent he would go up and then down an air vent so yeah and um he would usually pop out during like the songs to beat with the music like choo-choo but here we um finding out what would happen what happened to him because he was being vandalized by kids i don't know if that means like he was not working properly or he was not working at all because kids kept messing with him and breaking him that's the reason why

and um so yeah it's what basically happened that's what basically happened so and he there's a little more to that video uh i want to shout out ian the youtube channel is ian cool guy uh and the video itself is rest in peace munch jr so everyone go over here and support this video there's a little more more information about what happened to Munch Jr., but apparently children were vandalizing Munch Jr. and they had to remove him. I'm going to take this kid as information. I'm not

looking into it. I'm taking Ian at his word. Exactly. Yeah, we're all going to be working for Ian Cool Guy in a few years. The passion about Munch Jr., the knowledge and the quiver in the voice when thinking about vandal kids

this folks is a good boy this is a very good boy I appreciate his passion but I love Munch Jr immediately I wish Munch Jr would come back I didn't I haven't seen Munch Jr appear immediately. I wish Munch Jr. would come back. I haven't seen Munch Jr.

appear on the new Chucky things, but why not? He seems like he'd be ripe for the YouTube channel. Such a simple puppet. Very simple puppet. You probably also could just

like Martin Short and Clifford shoot him smaller down below. The same puppet, but smaller. And do tricks to make it look like it's a different puppet, but down below the same puppet but like smaller and do tricks to make it look like it's a different puppet but it's the same and there's just making it look like he's a different size there's some great pictures

of like this picture here of Munch Jr. Squat one tooth and a little beanie oh oh oh this is it this is new Munch Jr. I think oh he is around. Whoa, wait.

Wait, click on that wiki. Maybe it'll say. Okay, all right, hold on. Oh, I'm getting ads for wrestling figures on fan.com. Okay, Munch Jr. in the mid-90s. I don't know. It doesn't say that he's been in it recently. Munch Jr. Puppet

remember they were doing puppets though still in the 90s puppets aren't new on the YouTube wait he was still in Wilmington North Carolina until they closed in November 2020 oh Munch Jr. still a Munch Jr. I apologize to the audience for getting their hopes up that Munch Jr. is still

around so far Munch Jr. has not returned there is a private collector who shows his Munch Jr. at Chuck E. Conn, according to this family. That doesn't sound good. Come on, eh? I think Jamie should get in contact with him. Maybe. I have emailed Chuck E. Cheese people for the last time.

It's probably nothing but pain. Never meet your, well, I don't want to say heroes. Never meet anyone, I guess, is the long and short of it. Yeah, don't meet new people. You'll be just fine. Yeah. We're done with that this year. No one's met anyone new in a year, so it's worked out great.

Right. Does anyone else have i mean i have more things to share i can keep going if anybody else has something i have something you know this might your clip might might dovetail nicely into mine because it also features a a young boy with a um charmingly um like unprofessional uh voice a very little kid voice um i'm really excited about this i i feel like this might i when i saw this this rang a bell to me and it might for you guys too i'm curious if it does um because this was a television commercial that might have been late eight or not 80s late 90s might have been early 2000s i feel like I remember it being on TV and you,

you think that once you're in like skate Chuck era that the fun is done. But then I saw this, which is like honestly one of my favorite pieces of Chuck content I've ever seen. Um, and this is a commercial that's, um, at least on by this YouTube user is, is uh dubbed they've got crabs and here now

they've got crabs seafood restaurants versus chuck cheese's They've got... Chucky's got music. They've got... Oh my god. So let's... Alright, midway through check-in. Yeah, this kid has ended up at a crab restaurant instead of at Chuck E. Cheese where he wants to be. There's fun being had at Chuck E. Cheese.

They built a giant mouth that a slice goes into uh then he's at a lame plate with a big crab then chucky cheese gets even more fun and then a lemon gets squeezed and it shoots into the kid's eye and he says crabs and then the crab is like alive on the plate and mocks him. Like he did it on purpose. And then worst of all, then Chuck, Chuck E. Cheese gets as fun as like a,

a Vegas montage from a sixties movie. And then, uh, the kid's worst nightmare. Cause he yells quabs. And then he's in the darkened kitchen and a gigantic crab bursts into the kitchen after him. This is a surrealist. This is like a red lobster call out commercial.

Like who are they calling out? Seafood in general? Like, yeah, I don't know. These are probably I would never thought of of seafood places or crab places as being like stuffy or specifically not for kids but apparently they're a child's worst nightmare or directly competitive to chuck e cheese in any way yeah yeah yes who would ever be considering one or the other do they they have crabs at Chuck E. Cheese? Well, you know, back east, like fish houses, like, you know, soup salad, fish entree, dessert, like all included.

Still very popular. But usually there's an ample kids menu for like, here's fried shrimp or chicken tenders. And here's like, you know's worms in dirt for dessert. But yeah, I mean, I guess it could be a little stuffy. Maybe back in the day when everyone is still smoking their way through a meal, it was a little more dour. Yeah. And maybe back in the day, a giant crab would come to life and hunt you into the kitchen like the Jurassic Park raptors.

That's true. Now, let me keep going with this, because if you were worried about the quabs kid, it does work out for him. Oh, good. He's got prizes. I should have said Chuck E. Cheese, please. Yeah, remember Chuck E. Cheese, please. It's the restaurant where a kid can be a kid. so the for the listener he's backed into a corner what's he's gonna what's he gonna do while a hero swoops in last minute and chucking cheese with a net suddenly he's at the crab restaurant unannounced ha look at that open mouth that's a great frame um be gone with ye throws a net over some of the crab which fells him immediately

high fives the kid very little scott kid um and then a logo and then a graphic where Chucky is flying in a spaceship. A little one-mouse-sized spaceship. This is a work of art. This is a great short film. Wow, Chucky came to the restaurant to save the kid. He caught wind of the child. The beginning, middle, and end. It's incredible.

Right. And Chucky, I guess he beats up a crab. I mean, he doesn't beat the crab up, but I assume that's what happens off screen. He at least gets a couple blows. The crab gets a net on it. It's like a turtle ending up on its back. Like, eventually, he will suffocate. He will, he's, you know, he'll go to the ground, and he'll die in a few days.

So, the crab is dead. See you in hell, crab. Tell the devil Chucky says hi. That's incredible. Chucky, it was a nightmare. There were crabs. Please tell me that your restaurant has no crabs. Good news, kid.

Good news, kid. I'm going to talk to your mom and dad outside, too. Let them know what for you take this kid to another restaurant you'll never go to another restaurant again in your life jasper and munch hold up the parents while chuck punches him in the gut get the other net mom and dad are getting netted yeah you don't think i got another net you got another thing coming you know old chucky was like a like a mobster connected guy like a yeah like casino yeah he was that's his whole persona yeah yeah and it's a deliberate media narrative to frame the crab a very particular way and make you you know to

start you against the crab you're not you're never given the crab's perspective where's the crab coming from the crab's about to die you know it's like no wonder the crab is upset the crab's about to be consumed but chucky is just unequivocally our hero he wants the crab to disappear guess what he has the ability to make that happen chuck is never in a position where it's he himself chucky cheese that's going to be eaten a rat is not desired to eat but a crab is they're coming from different places i like this i like this because it's like you know it's that scene in breaking bad when gus kills victor himself he's been letting other minions do things for years and he actually finally like does the really awful thing himself

you know we actually get to see how scary chucky could be because up until now he's just friendly it establishes him as a definitive predator exactly yes he's not the prey right and this is probably part of why they had to rebrand, maybe, because of the aggressiveness of this old Chuck. Yeah. An assassin. Feed the crab to the ticket muncher. No one will find your bones.

Yeah. It is funny, because I was thinking about the old Chucky. Definitely, if this person ran a business, you would go, oh, he's stealing money, he's giving money off the top, he's not paying the workers very well, I'm getting ripped off somehow. You wouldn't trust that type of personality to own a business and let your kids loose in his house or his restaurant. He's really pivoted.

He's quite the empath these days, our Chuck. Yeah. The current one is very lovable it's it is weird that it came from yeah yeah i genuinely yeah you know what i i do think current chuck is cute and you can make fun of that bowling for soup voice and that they did that it is very silly but i think that guy does a good job sure Sure. Yeah, I agree. As opposed maybe to, just while we're on the topic, I saw footage I'd never seen of original Chuck. This is from 1977. And just to get a little hint of the earliest Chuck. And in general, the puppets are amazing to watch.

Birthday one, honey bun, won't you be our birthday one? Please say yes Birthday one, honey bun. Won't you be our birthday one? Please say yes. No, say no. And we'll tell the world. By now, it's probably no surprise to anybody, but we got a birthday number coming up here. Well, it's a surprise to me.

We got a birthday. He's coming up here. He's fucked up. He's fucked. Yeah, he's drunk. He's really drunk. Jeez Louise. He's got a cigar. Really? He's got up. He's fucked. Yeah, he's drunk. He's really drunk. He's got a cigar. He's got a stoner.

He's got his right hand is a human hand for some reason. The eyes blink at different levels. He's got one human hand. He's got a giant cigar. A skew bow tie. A skew hat. The hat's tipping off his head slowly

oh my god that is a truly beautiful evolution from like a middle aged alcoholic uncle to a teenage boy who couldn't be nicer to a teenage boy that like there was a recent video called spring break break dance

and it's just Chucky like, and there's kids dancing, and of course they all have masks on, but they're not really like, they're just having a good time. They're making the best of a tough situation. And that's very different from this Chuck who's like, yeah, I grew up downstream from the Silent Spring, from the DDT water, and my eyes aren't so good, but what are you gonna do?

I've been blind for years! Scott, I'm assuming you pulled up this freeze frame of this video because you've noticed, like I just have, that the employees would wear bowler hats. Yeah, they all wore the hat, like Chuck, apparently. Wow, I didn't

realize that, actually. Yeah. No, I didn't realize that, actually. No, I didn't either. That's pretty cool. I was just trying to find one more Chuck line. I think there might be another. Let me see. We finally are. We finally are.

So come on, ladies, hit it. Birthday one, honey bun. Won't you be our birthday one? Birthday one, honey bun. So far, there are six, with three more under construction and another three on the drawing boards. The idea has already spread to Japan, and it's only a matter of time before Chuck E. Cheese makes his debut in Australia. His debut. I've never heard that in an accent.

I don't know. I think it's Australian, not British, but is that... I don't know. I feel like this guy's putting on a show. I don't think that's right. I don't think anybody says Dave Boo. But there's one more odd thing. Then you meet the, like you meet the real Chucky. This guy's the president or the CEO or something.

And he's like a 70s vested, you know, like Keenan Wynn character with big sideburns. He's pretty scary um but he talks about the you know the audience they're trying to hit he imagined this that this company now is like a for so they have like a skateboarder as their mascot and it used to be like this old this like there will be blood man running it but uh there's this crazy bit of narration let me see if i can find they justify like who the audience might be for chucky cheese and this is this is very grim i guess this was the this is the world of the 70s apparently chucky cheese researchers say the idea is very popular with workaholic dads who are suffering from what they call Y.E.G., Young Executive Guilt.

This does drive dad into taking the kids out. Guess who decides where they'll go? In this country, it's prime. Y.E.G. Wow. This is an Australian news show with an anthropologist going like, this is how Americans live. Y-E-G.

Wow, young executive guilt. Young executive guilt. So if you're on the road all the time, you're always going to hotels and doing deals, and then you come home and you feel like, i guess i have to see my kid well where can i take my kid where i don't really have to talk to him and answer questions and show that i don't know anything about them i know i'll plop them in front of a robot show and some video games then i won't prove that i don't know if they're in second grade or eighth. It's worked for generations.

It's worked for generations. I'm so damn tired. It's 1974. It's viewed as feminine to drink water. I just have to drink coffee all day long. I haven't slept in a decade. And this was

back when they really wouldn't like cut you off uh if you were if you were a if you were a drinking dad suffering of yeg at the chuck e cheese you could be like tossing them back all night no it's a paradox they would just keep serving you but there weren't fights until like the 90s and 2000s where like they'll cut you off but then there's fights because everyone's angry they cut you off. It's true. Is Y.E.G. a suitable reason for getting the vaccine?

Is that a pre-existing condition? How is that considered? You need a note from your CEO and if you have that then you can get the vaccine. Adam Curtis of the BBC wrote me a note saying I have Y-E-G

and that something has happened. I'm working too hard at Halliburton all day. There's more. Oh. Is young podcaster guilt a thing we could get from our various networks, our presidents

of our podcast networks they could write that's right yeah hey brett brett write us a note and says we have yg brett write us a note brett we need it uh wow and then we in the last episode we talked about there was like on some there were mom and dad rooms specifically right yeah yeah soap opera rooms and sports rooms yes to separate everybody yeah and i think i'll repeat the joke i said last time and there'll be like stag films playing in the dad room well you know you're not that far off because later in this australian news report um we get a little glimpse at dolly dimples who i talked about earlier yeah oh wow this is as close as we get to stag film i think first of all

yeah she's she's something big uh big doily as a collar um big clown wig clashing aesthetics yeah she also you like sit at a bar to see her. That's something I didn't realize. You like pull up a seat. This is like the close-up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the close-up room at the Magic Castle. It's very intimate, and it's a room that

says cabaret on the outside. Isn't that weird? Like most of the Pizza Time Theater is at a separate cabaret room. And then the narrator says this. Dolly Dimples, the singing hippopotamus,

is powered by a computer system capable of handling 450 instructions per second. Dolly has a repertoire of more than 20 medleys, and a bosom that rises and falls with compressed air oh that one goes out to her second husband eugene about her second husband yeah wait a minute we

need to hear about the second husband yeah my second husband eugene who used to ride with the texas rangers he's a long tall texan he wears a tan it's like eugene has young executive guilt too divorce a hippopotamus that they put in this separate room with a heaving bosom and you're like a foot away from her face you're so close to this animatronic while you're eating and there's like it's only room for like four people at that bar this is a great idea drink over yeah come see dolly dimples sing i'm still here from folly come see the song that made elaine stritch made famous i just like

that i mean this was i would have imagine, unless the world was extremely, like even more different than I understood it to be. This was just like before they were like testing anything of like, does anybody want this? They're just like, people probably want this. It's good. It's right. I can't imagine Dolly Dimple's testing well,

but I'm glad she existed. Go to a separate dark room. Look at a compressed air bosom. Hear about failed marriages. Yeah, it's before money people would come in and be like, we only were getting four people in here to view this show up close. Maybe this is a waste of money. And maybe this woman's story is a little depressing for a child i would imagine that that like that suit guy would think dolly

dimples i bet she would crack him up because she would remind him of his wife that's true and that would just be enough and then you just put 500 of them in production. We sent a mystery shopper to the Dolly Dimples Cabaret and it seemed like the only other person in there was a young executive doing key bumps while his kids played Space Invaders. Dolly, you're the only one who understands me. Dolly. I think that Chuck E. Cheese executive did,

I think put it in to like be mean to an ex-wife like she's probably like a fine like like completely nice attractive woman who he's like let's let's put her in like a big doily dress and give her a clown wig because she she looked crazy like it's all like like probably the name was one off of Dolly. And like, how can we character assassinate my ex-wife with a robot? He was working something out somewhere.

It could have been his mom. Who knows? Something was going on. I will say, I do appreciate that they were like thinking of this place for all ages. We talked to a guy in the last episode a lot about how we wished they were like thinking of this place for all ages we talked to god in the last episode a lot

about how we wished they were catering more to us adults who want to find it acceptable to enjoy a robot show while working so i do appreciate it i feel like we could have easily strolled into a place like this and worked in the dad's room or something and gotten a little robot show drank uh 10 beers each and then we would have had a great time like it seems like that would have maybe been appropriate back then but not now yeah i feel like you would maybe you would maybe saunter into to dolly's uh dolly's cabaret after a couple of blue moons and sure and just strike up a conversation and kind of hear her story i can see that being very rewarding yeah yeah we we re-watched some of the training videos the other day and um i caught on the like menu board like the ordering set that was just like

under like you know soda salad bar and then it just there was one line that just said bartles and james so you go in you get bartles and james the cheapest wine coolers i believe imaginable and uh yeah you just dolly you just tell dolly your your troubles yeah she seems she seems like a really nice lady yeah for sure you could like bond like the you know you could leave that room feeling like you have no problems compared to what what's like at least compared to what she's been through it sounds like she's been through quite a bit and she's got such a great attitude right yes she can smile through it. Why can't I? I think there is a robot bar in Nashville

that opened right at the start of 2020. There is some sort of thing, but I don't know how they're currently doing. Yeah. Well, I went to an arcade that had some old school animatronics in it in Chicago two years ago and I met a listener

of the podcast there I was standing watching an animatronic show in an arcade and somebody was like excuse me are you and I was like well that's of course you're here of course you are here and I am here wow I didn't think I'd see a Clifford here

a fellow Clifford was next to me you know on the top i'm sorry i'm kind of hogging it but there's like there's these they're all flowing into each other nicely i think the um there is something there was something at the time that is sort of it feels like an entire place that was like dolly dimples have you guys has anyone ever come across a place called gadgets no uh gadget seems to be an early 80s thing and for the second time in the episode i'll reference brett uh from forever dog and the producer of double threat with tom sharpling and julie klausner

that talked about gadgets recently this was new to me so thank thank you, Double Threat. This is an amazing news report about what, yeah, it completely seems like an adult sort of TGI Friday type experience, a fern bar, this odd term I learned, but with robots. Just this is a whole thing. There's nothing like it. Wow. Nothing else around. Gadgets, gadgets.

The only girl in town. He's Sammy Sands and he's a robot. He's the star tracker. Really grotesque animatronic piano player here. A place called Gadgets. A unique restaurant with lots of gadgets and computerized entertainment. There's just about everything from airplane propellers to washboards,

and everywhere you look, the moving objects get your attention. It's a combination of antique, amusement park, and high technology all rolled into one. And Candice Adams with Warner Leisure Company, which is responsible for gadgets, says she expects... I'll skip Candice Adams, but you just got to see more of the... This is so cool. It's not just

original IP, like this, the piano player guy, but the, well, you'll see. There's also a very special attraction for the kids and the kid in all of us. It's a robot cast of Looney Tunes characters. The Looney Tunes? Yes, sir. We'll take you back to the cost of the Looney Tunes. I mean, an animal restaurant? A Long Island restaurant with the Looney Tunes. Yes, sir. We're going to take you back to the coffee. I mean, an animal restaurant? Wow.

A Long Island restaurant with the Looney Tunes? The folks up north will see me no more when I get to that Swanee store. And then there's the food. And the executive chef, Mike Huffler, likes to think that his dishes make a gadget of a difference. This is what we call our giant nacho platter. And it's in a giant basket made of a flour tortilla with taco chips and chili con queso sauce. This is, I don't know how to describe this for the listener. Really congealed.

Yeah, this looks like the innards of something. This looks like maggots or something like this is what go ends up in a body after a death my honey salad looks like we've got notes everyone was smoking 24 hours a day because this is what food was at the time macaroni salad mixed with the broja salad. Enjoy. That is some seafood I think a kid would be afraid of.

If that shrimp salad came to life. Oh, that cheesecake looks that tableau looks depressing. The color quality of the film isn't helping. That's true. It all looks a little gray. When are these wet leaves on an orange going to be what you want? The color quality of the film isn't helping. Yeah. That's true. It all looks a little gray, but.

Yeah, but still, when are these wet leaves on an orange going to be what you want next to your like spotty cheesecake? Wow. Oh, that's cheesecake. Okay. I know. I couldn't really tell you. I think I was wondering. And a chocolate dipped strawberry?

Yeah. I thought it was just a piece of cheese. That wouldn't make sense. Right. That could be a piece of cheese that wouldn't make sense right that could be a cheese a piece of cheese from a cheese block or something um could you go back and donald duck is dressed like angus young from acdc right daffy daffy wait you're right oh my god the oh the whoa yes he's he's a daffy duck is dressed like angus young who wears like a school boy outfit in ACDC,

little shorts. He doesn't have a hat on, but that is the reference here. Playing a guitar, even though, wait, yeah, even though they're doing a medley of like old-timey Hollywood, he's dressed like ACDC. I guess that's something for the dads in the audience to enjoy. Something for everyone. I mean, Gadgets is what, I mean, the food looks horrible, but Gadgets seems like if Gadgets was just suddenly up and open, I'd go. Absolutely.

Especially because you get to the, maybe I'd eat before, but then you get to the bar. And look, this is like Oga's Cantina in Star Wars land. It's a bunch of beakers and weird tubes. This is awesome. Yeah, I would love to go here. The way this reporter wraps up the story is pretty great, too. One of the specialties of the bar is something called a Sammy's Whammy, named after that guy over there behind the piano. And believe me, after you've had one or two of these, Oh, the consummate professional.

Wow. Is she saying she would go home with the robot? That's what it feels like. Is that what she's saying? It doesn't matter if he's a human or not? Close enough. Okay. I've had enough Sammy's whammies.

Wow. It doesn't matter. Now let me just carry you the one-ton man I just met up the stairs to my apartment. Removal your tubing. Look, pal, it's a long, dark winter. I just want someone to light my cigarette with i don't care if there's metal or bones inside of you i i brought eight eight pieces of orange with wet leaves to go the ultimate aphrodisiac wow i oof then that was only there was only one location

of that place there might might be one more. It didn't go far. It didn't go far past Long Island. Yeah, so I was only open for two years, too. That's it? After all that? Yeah, 82 to 84. Oh, my God.

Which I guess explains the ACDC record. Oh, yeah, yeah. That would have been right. Yeah. What year was it again? 82 to 84. 82 to 84, okay wow that's wonderful time you know it's aesthetically fantastic lots of brass and you know this is not for children if you're like i don't think i don't think you see one kid this for dates like i think so well let's see our food food costs are 30%. Our operating costs are 10%. And then the other 60% is just Looney Tunes licensing fees.

We don't know how to balance this. Yeah, right. Boy, that's wild. That's gadgets. I mean, like, I don't know how I missed that one before. And all the extra Fector restaurant. I don't think we're even partway through all just animatronic restaurants that exist.

But I guess let's stay on Chuck E. Cheese and somebody feel free to take the baton. Well, go ahead, Jamie. Oh, I just had one more current last year thing, which was that Chuck E. cheese had a brief tenure on twitch um he got into esports for it looks like uh he did a couple broadcasts i always i always meant to because he would tweet about it um assuming that chucky cheese sends his own tweets i don't know if he has a representative do it, but the puppet was going live as a Twitch streamer several times.

My guess, I don't have proof, but just because I've seen screenshots, is that they decided maybe it wasn't worth it for the amount of really fucked up comments that the streams were getting. But he streamed Animal Crossing in, I think, April or May, and then but he streamed animal crossing in i think april or may and then he later streamed fall guys um and he was blocking people in the chat he was he was replying he was talking to people uh and and and as of last night because i was like oh i wonder you know if he's if he's still in the

game is he's still streaming he hasn't streamed in four months i think that they figured it was uh it was maybe not worth it but there were a few stories about i don't know i mean this past year has just been like attempt after attempt to keep chucky relevant keep him on the cutting edge um and keep him generating a profit i think the twitch thing was maybe a bust in in the end but i i admire that he tried i can't name another uh mascot that was streaming on twitch in the last calendar year yeah that's a lot of work you gotta we did a few twitch streams and uh i did too and i was like this is a lot of work you gotta you know you gotta stick yeah uh yeah i am interested there's um lisa frank the property lisa frank with the no the

folders and notebooks with all the colorful you know what i'm talking about bears and whatever they have recently i i we were reading an article lindsey and i, and they're popular on TikTok now because Lisa Frank's son has put the brand a little bit more on TikTok. So you'll see Lisa Frank character Hollywood Bear dancing on TikTok now. That's great news. The Lisa Frank story is so wild, too, that I'm just glad she's doing okay. I don't know any of this. Oh, we got to do a whole Lisa Frank episode. There's a whole factory, dream factory she had that was only around for a few years and then closed and is now abandoned, basically.

And in Arizona, it's gigantic. There's a whole story about her coked- up husband slowly taking over the company and destroying it. And then she broke up with him. And then he started a Christian t-shirt company. It's just like there's just so that. Yeah. The Lisa Frank hole is deep and rewarding. Yes.

But go on TikTok and follow Lisa Frank to see like see Hollywood Hollywood Bear dance with Instagram and TikTok dogs, like real dogs. They do a branding thing. Yeah, anyway. I have to get on TikTok now? That sounds awesome. Yeah, you do. You have to. That's not right.

Let me... Here, let me just... I have a couple more things. I mean, God, there's so much and there is still so much left this is not the end of our chucky cheese episodes well we'll let more disasters happen in the world and then talk about how chucky cheese dealt with them we'll be back we'll be back uh let me find this is a best of show. I think it's from around 2012. So it was not in my prime going to Chuck E. Cheese time, but I really like it.

This is another thing where I'm just showing you something I like to show you what they were up to at the time. This is a parody starring my, I think my favorite character, Munch. And you'll see what it is pretty quickly. So Munch is singing into a spatula with green lasers behind him. Yeah. And he's got like a silver shirt on.

And he's got like, he looks extra sleepy. Yeah, his lids are all like, he looks kind of tired. He got drugs from Conrad Murray before this to get him up for the performance. Oh wait, I just figured out what was happening.

It's not a restaurant I associate with grilling. Yeah, and he's like barbecuing. It's got like a sparkly grill. And it goes on like that. how can you not like that though really you know i mean that was his little homage to michael jackson that's a rock with you parody in the year 2012 wow yeah this yeah this is like a whole i found like a whole hour loop of whatever show they were playing in there at the time. The disco ball grill was fantastic.

Yeah, the grill was good. The shirt was good. Again, I'll say this is not a restaurant I associate with grilling. I literally went through my notes from the last episode and I have the sentence or the phrase hot dogs cooked in the pizza oven. So, yeah, wonderful little gifts i left myself in that lit like make the garlic sauce using liquid margarine pasquale filmed at white settlement texas i think it's just the name of a town in texas i don't know if it's still called that it might be oh that's a perfect segue for something I have. Oh, wonderful.

I can only imagine. You'll never know. I mean, it's going to come out of a strain. You won't know where it's coming from. Here, let me quickly do this. Okay, so this is a loop from 1991, and it says Canada only, but I recall this type of thing playing. This is prime when we were going, or when I was going, at least. Yeah, yeah. So this is a loop that they going or when i was going at least yeah yeah um so this is a

loop that they would play inside in between like robot shows and this is just a great logo you'll see we'll post some clips of this cyber star i like how he catches the i love that yeah yeah so you very quickly this is we talked about like how on these videos it goes and this is still a thing they do to this day

it goes back and forth between the robots and suited characters in the same piece of media which was jarring as a kid and I think

is still a little jarring so this will set up with the premise of this whole 15 minutes and I swear I will not

make you all suffer through this 15 minutes is, and I swear I will not make you all suffer through this 15 minutes. Loving this. Folks, we're supposed to sing a medley of disco hits by John Philip Sousa, but Larry, our technician, he isn't playing our music.

Chuck E. Look! In the control room! That's not Larry! Chuck chucky cheese and his friends are about to take a musical detour into a past dimension a dimension not only of sight and sound but of commercials a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of fringe reception that's the signpost up ahead your next stop the TV zone okay so the TV zone okay this is 1991 first of all think about this

okay so they're gonna go into the TV zone what would you think they're gonna do parody cheers or something right they have to be doing that I would um yeah I don't know i would i would probably

my first guess would be like a swarthy rod serling puppet well that is that was the rod serling puppet is what i'm yeah yeah oh yeah that's what i probably would have done you would have probably yeah yeah really like yeah a tired uh drugged looking rod serling yeah yeah yeah okay so what yeah based on the uh michael jackson homage in 2012 it's safe to assume they're operating at least 20 to 25 years behind at any given time now yes that's you're on to something here because would you believe that the second parody i've skipped over the first, but the second parody is of Car 54, Where Are You? It's a hot day in the Bronx. Brooklyn's broken out in fights.

There's a traffic jam in the streets. Backed up to Jackson Heights. There's a scout trip short of childs. First chance to do it, I don't want it. Car 54, where are you? Francis. Yes, Munter? I think I cracked something.

Your brain? No, I cracked a case. I had my head on it. Your brain. Okay, so I assume most people don't even know what Car 54 Where Are You is or was. It was an old cop show. It starred two of the Mun al lewis uh and fred gwynn and i so the show i never really watched i think it was on nick at night a little

bit which is maybe why it's in this parody this whole real so i think this whole thing was done this was totally done for the parents because this is 15 minutes of nick at night parodies in 1991 not this is not for kids and they go everywhere they do adam's family they do uh they do a the patty duke show which is when helen gets to shine different as night and day where kathy adores the minuet the ballet ruse and grapes is it our patty loves to rock and roll the hot dog makes her look and roll now now it's suited helen not the robot helen from the start of the video it's suited helen dancing around to like a badly drawn backdrop that says hot it's like a hot dog stand and she's like just kind of shaking like doing a lazy twist let's not brush past the lyric says hot dog stand and she's just kind of shaking it like doing a lazy

twist. Let's not brush past the lyric a hot dog makes her lose control. And that is a real line. Who among us? That is a real line from the opening of the Patty Duke show and a real line that Jason thinks about every day.

You get Gilligan's Island here. You get let's see, you get the Chuck Van Dyke show. Now that sounds good. Of course, Alan Brady wants a new sketch on his desk in ten minutes. Ten minutes!

Alan Brady. And a cold head, too. A new sketch. Wait, I got it, I got it. Well, don't give it to me. Let's specifically parody the moments when Dick Van Dyke is at his job. Don't have Chuck fall over or something. We want to see him at the office.

They're all playing like Buddy Sorrell and the side characters. Mel, Ellen Brady's assistant Mel. Robots can't trip over Ottomans, so that's what they had to do. Yeah. So this thing,

they do all in the family here. They do the Jeffersons. Some of these are so ubiquitous. How do these characters do the Jeffersons. Wait, they just sing the song? I guess they just sing the song. Yeah, I guess that's why I didn't play or something all right so they do little inserts there's alfred hitchcock parody uh alfred hitchcock presents uh i like that f troop

then they hit leave it to beaver and they introduce puppet characters to beaver gee wally i think i'm really gonna get yelled at so now they have like different characters playing wally and the beaver from classic television and they've so they throw this in at the very end and uh dope many loves of dobie gillis i'm sure anyone anyone younger than us has turned off the podcast at this point uh okay so they do i love lucy of course oh lucy honey i'm home, and they just have puppets of Lucy and Ricky. Yes, and they're just puppets. They're not the characters playing anymore. I said your new guest star had been leaping into your arms all week,

and she pants and drools whenever she sees you. That's right, and I brought her home to meet you. You did? Sure, my new guest star is lassie okay so that's q lassie that's what the joke is here now here is when i almost fell out of my chair and there's a there's a reason this happens but here i'll just play without interruption away away no the confederate flag has appeared on the screen oh no johnny yuma was a rebel okay oh my god oh man oh man here here is munch singing the theme to an old show that i did i've never seen what is the

rebel johnny yuma what is i've never i barely know some of these that one just zero idea why that was so jarring so jarring filling the whole screen forming one star at a time. We had scarcely a moment to prep. Yeah. I mean, some of these shows were so ubiquitous with syndication and everything, but I don't think Dobie Gillis and like Patty Duke show were necessarily quite as re-aired as like Twilight Zone and Beaver were.

No. What even is this show? Like the- The Rebel Johnny Yuma. i had to go back and look this up because i don't was this even on nick at night f troop was on nick at night a lot of these they'll be gillis that was all on nick at night at the time i saw a little bit of that as a kid but but not even dukes of hazard like the the big one the the more obvious choice the more obvious confederate flag yeah show uh yeah so anyway

so they they do green acres and they close it out and that's that's the big well that i like sure of course guess what i have a chunk about the rebel johnny yuma the let me i'll i will

keep this quick because there is no, we do not want to spend much of our day dwelling on this. Oh, I know exactly what this is. 1979. This is footage from 1979. Here's the gang opening their frames they used to live in and then you pan across some flags waving robotically

and what do we have? Confederate flags. This is why this is why. This is why. Is that like Jasper Jowell's cannon? That's why Jasper's going away is because we're uncovering these clips of Jasper and the Confederate flag flying next to him in the old clips.

He's been canceled. We're canceling Jasper. You've also got, this is from an annual report from the early 80s. Here's Chuck in a white suit like Boss Hogg waving a Confederate flag. In Florida.

For Florida. Yeah, Florida's not the most Confederate. And a thing that I self-censored earlier, because it was too dark for the run we were in, Aaron Fector once made an entire animatronic show for a theme park in Tennessee, and the show was called The Confederate Critter Show. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Wow.

There are deep Confederate ties to the Chuck E. Cheese. What a dark episode. What a bummer. I'm sorry to say all that, but look, we can dovetail that. It's just bizarre that, mike i i wonder if you were thinking this must be the only instance of the confederate flag in chuckie cheese lore scott i wasn't thinking that i wasn't i wasn't you started smelling a rat as it were um so the uh i i can get us to a lighter place though are we are we sort of winding down or

or um because i think this this might be a fun place to i have two i have there's one last thing one last thing that i will say for next time because it's a 20 minute clip of a game you could play where chucky cheese you would call him you would pay to call Chuck E. Cheese, and he would ramble at you for about a minute, and then always go, well, call me back! So call me back! And it felt really needy, but it's too much to do. We'll do it next time. I'll save it. Okay.

This has motivated me, too, because it sounds like something that I should have done while the pandemic was really going but i i do have like a vague mission to at some point watch all the available show tapes oh yeah without p breaks if possible we should have contacted you when this all began because it would have taken like a year to get through it all. So you have a year to repair. And hopefully we don't have another year in which you, hopefully you are now watching show tapes instead of reuniting with friends and family. Yeah, I hope to use it as an excuse to never see my family again.

It's just this project. I have to do it. Oh, sorry. I have to go talk to these three guys about this. Well, it's called Chucky i have to do it sorry i have to go uh talk to these three guys about this well it's called chucky and the galaxy 5000 and oh boy don't get me started doesn't email my parents it's hollywood stuff it's hollywood stuff hollywood stuff it's a meeting it's a meeting uh general general generally about chucky cheese i yeah i'm amazed I didn't brave

the full Galaxy 5000. Perhaps for the next one. I watched it yesterday. Oh, wow. I watched it yesterday, the whole thing. Yeah, and I was like, we probably won't get to this,

but I'll have the notes for the future. And I need to watch it again. Do you? Unfortunately. Yeah, that is, I say that. say that yeah sorry scott you're 100 but coming soon maybe in the future yeah yeah well plenty more meat on the bone obviously i this this might be a fun just you know a light one one that you can't you can't hate on um this is again so much more 90s than i thought I would find. And this is from 1998.

It actually is, I think, current, relevant, topical, but still as fun to this day. Here's this. Oh, man. Whoa! Wow. Oh, baby. Oh, baby. Glasses and a blue suit With some ruffles

Chuck E. Cheese International mouse of mystery Wow And this is just some good fun forever They do the full opening credits Of the first movie Now like a Bobby comes up, glares But then they all dance together it's all

just all the jokes and beats what would i must empowers i uh yeah you know the the models that i'm trying to think any other moments i mean it's just every this it's the full thing um how and in the bit like they do the full dance he gets a little off sync oh he's a mascot. Hey, Scott, let's see this. He's an amazing dancer. He's doing pretty good. Yeah. And what a start. I mean, imagine the show that must have followed that.

Must have been one of the great showtips. Wow. Wow. Just a delight. Imagine having that on your directing reel. Just being like, look, I can do a lot. Yeah. Man, I would love.

Can I handle this marvel? Well, let me let this answer the question. And save the best for last. Oh, so good. Well well you know we we uncovered some skeletons in the closet but um you know this this reinvigorated the brand for me i feel great about it um i feel great about the future they've kept the content coming the youtube channel's been great um i don't know i do we think they're going to turn it around are they gonna will there be a chuck e cheese for us to do an episode about uh again that's a good question i

don't there is still the one right over here in burbank um that is still yeah operating with takeout and stuff but i i don't know i feel like they're going to make it I feel like Much like rats Can survive anywhere They can Humans can be wiped out And rats are still on the planet I feel like maybe Chucky will find a way Is it going to be a way we love

And would want to go Maybe not I think it's going to make it Into it's next metamorphosis. Yeah, it's not going to be my dream of the dwarves being flung open, him in the blue suit going, do I make you cheesy, baby? But, you know, I think they'll be that. I think they'll manage.

Yeah, hopefully. I agree. Yeah. Hopefully. I agree. Yeah. I mean, it's like they have made it very clear that they are willing to exhaust every possible option before calling it quits. They're not above tricks. They're not above scams. They're not above eSports.

They're not above anything. And they will continue to try until it's literally no longer possible. I mean, what they should have done during the pandemic is restore a show of animatronics and program it to top hit songs or parodies of hit songs,

upload those videos and go after the youth market. They should have done a drive-in show with a full band that you could pay to go see I don't I can't even imagine that yeah but probably what they are doing is figuring out if they could rent out half the restaurant to like a local

electronic store like that's probably really what's going on well can we make it smaller drone repair iPhone screen repair vape juice oh yeah it's a chucky cheese slash vape store slash everything everything repair store yeah yeah that's probably what's happening so anyway yeah yeah well uh i hope they keep plugging away i hope there's a great uh a bright beautiful

future for them uh jamie loftus you survive podcast the ride chuckie cheese too thanks for joining us once again what a blast thanks for having me it uh it always feels good to talk about chuckie cheese for two hours sure of course yeah thank you i'm glad that's the case i feel like some people might not be able to make that statement but i'm glad you're i'm glad you would like say the accountants of chucky cheese indeed uh let's exit through the gift shop where you can purchase items that are normally won through games uh is there anything that you would like to plug uh there if you want to listen to something really dark you can listen to uh my new podcast called lolita podcast it's about it's a complete uh taxonomy of the history

of lolita uh or if if you don't want to be upset you can listen to uh the bechdel cast on i hurt radio it's a feminist movie podcast that comes out every week and is only occasionally sad. Like this episode with its confederate but otherwise pretty delightful. Yeah, that's fantastic. Love My Year in Mensa, too. Oh, thanks.

Yeah. So, yeah, check out everything Jamie does. And for us, check out everything Jamie does And for us Check out our social medias And if you want three bonus episodes a month You can subscribe to the podcast Or at the second gate at patreon.com Slash podcast the ride

Well fellas Let's close the curtain up Or else or if there's no curtain Just stop moving entirely For at least 15 minutes. Yeah. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production.

Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.