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

Episode Date: July 12, 2019

Jamie Loftus (The Bechdel Cast) joins us to discuss corporate intrigue, orphaned mice, proper costume cleaning, and the wild history of Chuck E. Cheese. Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus New Second Gate episode next week: Patreon.com/podcasttheride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOREVER! DOG! Warning! The following podcast may contain soup being bowled for, puppets doing G-Funk, and literal explosions in a place that builds rock-a-fire explosions. Jamie Loftus joins us for a long-awaited topic. At last, it's Chuck E. Cheese on Podcast The Ride.

Welcome to Podcast The Ride, the show where a childless person in their 30s can be a kid. I'm Jason Sheridan, joined as always by Mike Carlson. Yes, hello. And Scott Gairdner. Sure can and always are. And our special guest today, one of the co-hosts of the Bechtel? Bechtel. I knew I should have checked that. The Bechtel cast. It's Jamie Loftus.

Hi, Jamie. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited. I'm a fan. Thank you. Appreciate it. And we're a fan of your work on this topic, on today's topic. Thanks. Yes. You know know you've like wonderfully

condensed all of this this maddening history and written some great articles about it and you can really identify like a span of a couple months where i was very underemployed in 2017 based on the sheer volume of what i wrote about this topic and just wandering chucky cheeses in a summer of 2017 was not interpersonally my best but you know the work was decent you made new friends at the chucky cheese i did yeah chucky cheese met met some met some people i wish i liked i was like and now we're married like that would be yeah sick well as we know there's a lot there's wonderful relationships that came together because of animatronic robots this is dealt with in the uh the the documentary the rock of fire explosion uh they hey they bring people together um and

actually you know there's there's a perfect thing i realized we need to talk to you about before we super dive into the topic um which is because it's applicable to your podcast and to today's topic. So you do the Bechdel cast, which is based around the Bechdel test, which is about measuring representation of women in media. And it's mainly like do two women in a movie or TV show talk to each other about something besides a man. That's sort of the main definition of it. Yeah. two women in a movie or TV show talk to each other about something besides a man. That's sort of the main definition of it. Yeah. We stumbled upon something a little while ago.

We have our own sort of like theme park version of this. Okay. That is based not so much in like, you know, how present is the character in the narrative narrative But mainly it's mainly about names It's mainly about do female Characters in theme park Attractions have In themed entertainment have as Interesting of names as

The men That's like a part of for the way we use the Bechdel test that's a part of what we use too is like do the Women have names That is a component of it Yeah because ours is specifically like We stumbled upon it during the That's a part of what we used to is like do the women have Names oh okay That is a component of it oh for sure okay okay Yeah because ours is specifically like we We stumbled upon it during the water world

Stunt show because there's like That's a good show the deacon And the mariner and then The woman's name is Helen Helen So we have the Helen test And the more we started paying attention The more and more we realized like wait What's their that's Helen

That character is also Named Helen yeah and Chuck E. Cheese obviously famous I mean it is Helen Henney Has a little bit of character But if you take if you're going Pure first names Helen Jasper Pasquale Munch and Helen all the same

Yeah this directly applies to the Helen Test right Yeah yeah yeah This was all triangulating We had to discuss The Helen test with you I mean Chuck E. Cheese Is very guilty of like Token woman character

Yes But I But there were characters That could have I think last This is We'll get into it But there were characters

That were introduced earlier That I feel like Could have lasted And we could have had An equal representation Right There should be parody In animatronics yes yes i agree but i don't know like it's it's a question of i've thought about this before and i haven't reached a conclusion so there's nothing

written on it but uh like whether we as a society are better off uh Helen Henney than we would have been with Mitzi mozzarella. I don't, I don't have the answers. I feel like maybe if I just dismiss Mitzi mozzarella as, you know, you're a run of the mill cheerleader, that's me being a little bit reductive of her and I would need to do more

research. And perhaps, I mean, I hear what you're saying but like don't you think maybe Mitzi mozzarella would have Maybe evolved also past the point Of seeing the characters very simple And now we never know because we

Never got to see Mitzi mozzarella in the 90s And 2000 because because everyone Is munch Pasquale they've all evolved They've all been around now for so many Years but Mitzi mozzarella we should say was The female character in The rockafire explosion which was the other band that was at showbiz pizza yes uh and at some point there was a consolidation and one got turned into the other we'll get into it i'm sure concept unification but so there was this alternate imagine a world without the

helen henney that we know so well who's so well defined but instead Mitzi Mozzarella a mouse. What do we know about her? We know nothing. Well yes I mean in the famous set of like 1991 era training videos Helen is at best bumbling. Yes. She cannot figure out the register. She

cannot figure out how to bust the tables. Yeah they really frame her as an incompetent person. Yes, whereas Pasquale is literally the master of pizza. And Pasquale's character, it's weird because now Pasquale is kind of the fumbling. Have you seen some of the recent videos? Oh, I watched a lot of them recently, yes. Because Pasquale now, I mean, I guess Pasquale,

I think he's one of the most well-defined characters currently. Yes. Because he now is not just a pizza master and a drummer he's also a comedian he doesn't stand up at the laffaroni yes he's branched out too he's trying to learn new skills he's doing new things they're really triple threat yeah he's he's emerged maybe as the most prominent character of the classic group. He's my favorite, honestly. I like Pasquale.

I like picking Pasquale. Credit where it's due, the Pasquale episode of Crashing, whether you like it or not. Pete meets Pasquale. It's classic. How'd they land that cameo? Biggest names. I am a little upset. I feel like there's some Munch stuff but I feel like Munch isn't

Being explored to his fullest No I don't yeah I think Munch is a little Bit slept on yeah Same goes for Jasper I don't think we know quite enough Chuck He's been rebranded too many Times I've had it I've had it The bowling for

Soup guy yeah who by the way Will not answer my emails. I know. You're going to voice an iconic character. Then you have to be the PR voice of it, too. How busy could he possibly be? Maybe that's mean, but I wish he would answer. He should answer.

Probably one of seven bands on a tour with Sugar Ray. Yeah, he's doing free summer concerts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got ships to play. It's a death march of eternal free concerts. Answer my emails. Be careful what you wish for if you have one to hit 20 years ago. He's going to dox me.

How dare you, Mr. Bowling for Soup Jasper is my least favorite I'll say offhand Really? I don't find a lot to like about Jasper He's a country guy, that's all I know I think because of country bears and all that I think a dog in overalls that likes country music I can't be mad at that

I can't have to like him Is it fun? Like I can't I mean it's A thing that always bothered me Was that it's Munch's make-believe band But Chucky takes

The lead Center stage Takes the lead Well but like Fleetwood Mac For instance I guess that's true Fleetwood's the drummer

Yeah So it's the same Oh wait no But Munch is the keyboard player Yes Yeah Uh huh Well it's then it's also

It's a little similar to Santana, where Santana doesn't sing. Right. So there's actually a fair amount of music. Right. There's precedent in the rock and roll world. Wasn't there a similar focus issue in the Rock and Fire Explosion, where Billy Bob is kind of the central guy, but the band is actually led by someone else am i i'm i'm i think you're right like he's like the free roaming one

oh because fats geronimo is like the lead singer but they're but like uh he's the musical director like really the music voice is the guy at the keyboard in both bands. Yeah. But then, for some reason, Billy Bob Broccoli, I'm seeing his last name is. Is it? Really? Which is a reference to Robert Brock, the investor that started the Pizza Wars. The turncoat.

Yes. Yeah. Interesting. But, yeah, Billy Bob was the center of attention. Who knows? Okay. Huh. But yeah, Billy Bob was the center of attention. Who knows? So you end up with the same band dynamics when one is a literally re-skinned version of a previous band.

Yes, right. So, yeah. So I always liked Munch the best. I will say that. I'm coming out as the biggest Munch fan. Always. But I am upset with what they've not done with him lately yeah well do you i think there's also some it's similar to chuck there is some voice confusion with munch because sometimes he's like a monster he's like uh like me eat he's a cookie

monster and sometimes he's like just a guy yeah i'm munch Munch. He's thorough Ravenscroft. With Munch and Helen, I have like McDonald's land confusion. Yes. Because it's very like Grimace and Birdie. Yeah, 100%. Purple Monster and then like, yeah, Chicken Woman. Chicken Woman who doesn't get a lot to do. Right.

Like, yeah, underdeveloped chicken woman character. But at least Birdie we know was into aviation. She had goggles. That's true. She had the cool scarf. Yes, Birdie I do. She wore pants. She wore overalls.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Birdie I think would be a little bit more in the mix in those commercials. That's my memory of it. I don't know if that's true or not. Because she was introduced because breakfast. That was like why they made her a character. She's the early bird. She's the early bird right to your egg mcmuffins i didn't realize how much i knew about you're in the right place oh this is good yeah yeah i know yeah we're speaking the same way

in terms of you mentioned the character named after robert block uh or brock um yeah i went down the rabbit hole of just like very quickly looking at all the ancillary Chuck E. Cheese characters over the years. And my favorites that I came across was the short-lived barbershop quartet, The Four Little Shavers. Yeah.

They're named Nolan, O'Nolan, Mick Nolan, and curly uh the nolan's a nod to nolan bushnell the founder of uh co-founder of atari founder of chucky cheese right i didn't know that that was their names that's cool so they only went in a handful of stores that were trying an ice cream parlor concept in a corner of the store so they're like the ice cream parlor ice cream um barbershop quartets kind of you know the stripes like um right ferrules sort of thing i think there's a real lesson with all the story of chucky cheese about homogenization and refining brands to the point where they're a little bit dull. Because if you look at the early messy history of Chuck E. Cheese, the first of which opened in 1977 in San Jose, California,

all the original ones had different showrooms and different acts. And there was a rotating guest star slot and in fact the first guest star was helen but helen stuck around and had longevity and became one of the one of the main five uh but uh the middle of second wave feminism we can't just rule her out we need a woman who's in the workplace right she's a gal well kind of all of the guest stars where they cycled through a lot of women. I don't think there was ever any talk of there being more than one woman in the band. Oh, no, no, no. No, you can't have that. They have the slot. I would sooner have a dog in overalls than a second one.

Of course, yeah. Another dog in overalls. Two dogs in overalls. As many as possible. But like, it seems like for the first five years or so there'd be these show rooms of these weird bands and this character who's only in this corner yeah as an ice cream place and uh this one has a lounge singer uh hippo lady foxy colleen the irish lass well or dolly dimples dolly yeah yeah yeah Dolly Dimples should still be a character.

This is what I was saying earlier. Dolly Dimples, Sally Sachet, these characters could have stood the test of time. They could come back now. Yeah. Krusty the Cat, who was originally Chucky's foil. Yes. That was back when they were all in frames. In frames. Yeah, the original ones were in frames above the rest of them.

Because they didn't have that Aaron Fector magic. No. They didn't have that pneumatic tube magic. No. Oh, is that what happened? Because the characters were initially just, like, they were just the upper halves. They were very, like, rudimentary animatronics, and then, I mean, we can

tear apart the Pizza Wars all day. Yes, sure. But Aaron Fector, thanks to Robert brock was funded to make this full animatronic band uh because he just they were more fluid and they were easier to customize because of whatever the tubing system that he had invented for whack-a-mole and then got scammed out of whack-a-mole even though he kind of stole it himself so he had the tubi system and then he made this band called the wolf pack five which is really fun and there's still videos of them uh on youtube and then robert brock uh

funded like saw saw their wolf pack five was like oh this is cool and uh funded him to to make the rocket fire explosion and it's no brock bro Brock worked for the founder, Nolan Bushnell, who was like a franchisee. Brock's a snake. He's a snake, because he's like, oh, shit, this guy's going to blow us out of the water. I'm getting in business with this guy, and just copies the Chucky formula,

which I always had at the other, I always thought Showbiz Pizza came first, and Chucky copied. Me too. Yeah, I did too. I thought that, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. So, yeah, Nolan Bushnell founds chucky cheese with his atari

money uh looking for a way to get arcades going again and to have and to find an excuse for you to be able to drink in an arcade because that was not like they weren't zoned for that or whatever so and for what are the adults doing while uh the kids are playing games which they will sit and watch an animatronic band i guess was the idea there was like a few like examples in like early chucky cheeses where they had like a mom's room and a dad's room where they would they were just like small rooms i think it was only in a couple locations but they would have soap operas just playing in one room there and that's where the moms go whoa and sports playing in another small room and that's where the dads go and so they can stay there for however long while their kids like spend all their money you can breastfeed in one you can scratch your

balls in the other there's a stag film playing in the dad's room like the parents are separated while their kids play in rooms that are that their children are not in so neither has eyes on their on their children no kid check the system to track your child right in the early days it was just the i just remember walking in like any restaurant it was just the honor system that the child you come with is the child you leave with yeah honor system yeah he's just throwing a tantrum he's upset he lost the game he's not mad because i'm abducting him that does sound a little dystopian like a little farinite 451 of like well we come home there's father's room and mother's room and child room right and if you don't like it make your own room yeah it's very i think that

that was while like pre-animatronic band, like while there was not much else to look at though. Like they're just like, oh, we got to give them something to do. So give them beer and then turn on a sport. Right. Do they have to tape soap operas to play at nine o'clock? Was that a time when like dad might say like, I don't mind that place, that Chuck E. Cheese's. That's not such a bad place we could go over there

Like that was a bad like a time when maybe You could have gotten your dad more on board To go because like it catered to him And like the kind of family time where you Don't actually have to be together which is my Family's favorite Everyone gets to kind of do their own Thing yeah I mean the early days of family

Dining does feel like You know how you hate your fucking kids but we all gotta eat here's some dark wood and some doodads and some beer like that was that is what i picture early bennegan's and and uh ground rounds and fiddle fat or whatever those fucking places i always wonder what the drinking cutoff was in early chucky cheese days because now it's two i can say from personal experience you can't get more than two you get two x's on your hands and if you've got both x's you're too you're fucked up you know you can't yeah you can't drink any more blue moons and chucky cheese but But I wonder, I feel like It might have been open season back then.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Also, at the time, I found the menu for the original Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theater. Soft frozen yogurt. Enjoy the latest taste sensation. Toppings include granola, shredded coconut,

wheat germ, dates, chopped nuts, and shaved almonds. So very trendy, I guess, at the end of 70s. Wheat germ. Wheat germ. 70s food was really strange in general. Yeah. Yeah. All that weird

just gelatin hanging out. There's also they had like a vegetarian pizza and then a protein pizza where they just kind of doubled the cheese and then put shaved almonds on top. Really? And then ground beef. Yeah. That was like a-

Almonds? Yeah. I was going to say like this is a weird California pizza kitchen like precursor. The food has always been pretty gnarly there. Yeah. There are some people who will defend the food, but from my experience, it's pretty indefensible. The pizza is very sharp. I don't subscribe to the Shane Dawson conspiracy theories or any garbage like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, Shane Dawson put forth the theory that they Recycle their Pizza that they Easy to wrap your head around system of taking Uneaten slices and reconstructing Them into a new pizza And that is a theory presented by One of YouTube's most popular Racists

A competitive area How do you keep track of them? Yeah yeah yeah This is a register of the top 10,000, but he's up there. Kicking a business while they have been down for 15 years. Yes. So much has befallen them. Actually, I think it did make me mad.

I think I did get to, like, don't throw this on them. Piss me off. And there's all these fights happening. There's horrible fights happening all the time in the Chuck E. Cheese's. And also the misinformation that the robots are going away entirely. I mean, they're probably on the way to it. But we've heard it said, like, I've seen a lot of people say they're gone. There's no more of them.

For the most part, right? We've asked our listeners, send us pictures of the full of give us full munch. I want to see the full munch. there's a lot of them out there i have the full so the way to know whether you're getting the full munch or not is to uh know when the chucky cheese was opened because they're starting to remove them now it's been like two i think like two years since they said they were going to yeah and now they're starting to remove them and then the plan is to make it like an open dance dance space yeah and then they're just making that now they're starting to remove them. And then the plan is to make it like an open dance space. Dance floor. Yeah. And then they're just making that.

Now they're just making those like short sketch videos with puppets that look like the animatronics sort of. And I want to know who writes the videos because I want in. But I watched a YouTube video of like the production team. Really? I'll send you that. I'll find it. Did it say who the writer was?

They talked to a guy who I mean, it seems like it's all hands on deck. I think it's the Muppet Workshop. I think you're puppeteering in your writing scripts. Oh, wow. And you're directing it. I'm going to find their LinkedIn and be like, I'll work for free. I don't care. If you're willing to move to Irving, Texas.

I'll go. I'll be like, we need to do some work on Helen. I'm uniquely qualified. That's a legitimate angle, I think, to make your way in on. By any means necessary. But if the location was open prior to 1998, there should still be a full band there. Post-98, they start scaling down the animatronics to just a Chucky. Yes.

Studio C, they call that model. And that Chucky is made by Garner, designed by Garner Holtz, a popular animatronic creator and company. Oh, I knew that. He does all of the, I mean, it's the same company that built all of the robots for the Cars ride. And all of these really good recent Knott's Berry Farm rides where they've added and refreshed robots to these sort of ancient attractions. And the new robots are wonderful. But he did all the that's the one good thing you could say about the Studio C trucks. He made the new truck? Oh, that's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Good company. Had a really good exhibit to the museum in San Bernardino recently. The Studio C trucks are criminally underused. They're just kind of sitting there. No, and look good. Very fluid. They look great. Yeah. Are they taking those out, though? Slowly they are, yeah. Where are they going?

Do we know where they're going? I don't know. I really want to know what they're doing. If they're being dismantled for parts, I'll lose my mind. They have to be, right? I know. Or they're going in a big unmarked grave. Like an unmarked robot grave.

Oh my gosh. Do you know what happened to Nolan Bushnell twice? Oh yeah. think like unmarked grave they're burning some of the ets to make room in the right grave for chucky so we're saying if you go to a chucky cheese and you walk in and there's just screens and maybe like a little camera that you can be on the green screen. And then a single solitary robot. That is a Studio C. Yes. The one, if anyone pre-gamed our Dynasty Typewriter show at the Chuck E. Cheese, that one is a Studio C. And the robot is still there.

The one near the Dynasty Typewriter? Yes. Yeah, yeah. And so, but then, so those are the most at risk is what we're saying. Yeah. And so but then so band up at least into 2012. I watched a video of the band from 2012. Then I saw like a walkthrough of it in 2016. And I think it was gone. But kept the Sky Tubes.

Had not yet removed the Sky Tubes. But the band was gone. And that was the one i went to growing up i remember uh apparently usually we would go when if we got good report cards we went we were good boys so we always got good report cards at a certain point after a few and then friends birthdays a certain point after a few years my mom was like look we'll go to ch Cheese, but can we go to a cheaper, better pizza place before? Can we just eat? And then I'll give you a token. We'll get you tokens.

We'll play the games. But I do not want to eat there, Jace. Like, I don't. It's a waste of, and I feel like me, my dad, and my brother always liked the food, liked the pizza. I, as a kid, always liked eating at the place i was going or it's like we're staying at the hotel well i want to check out the hotel restaurant it just made it it's probably a

holdover from disney of like well it's you're here you want to do the stuff that's here yeah i remember my dad being weirdly defensive of the pizza as well yeah i don't really know why like i don't think he liked being there though my my childhood one was closed while I was still a child. Oh, no. I know. But I don't know if it was because it was under attended or it was like kind of like not the best neighborhood or what it was. But yeah, it was that was our good report cards. We had to end up going to Bugaboo Creek, which is another.

You guys ever heard of Bugaboo Creek? No. That was I think it must have only been in canada and maybe like new england but it's a animatronic restaurant where the theme is canada and there's a animatronic tree at the front that would greet you and be like welcome to bugaboo creek sit down there's a 500 hour wait and would tell jokes and then there was like talking moose on the wall it was kind of like rainforest i think it was they were ripping off rainforest cafe they're like what rainforest cafe was canada right and then that's where we went was there a mountie of some kind like a mountie

robot or something there no they're the the waiters were dressed as like like all like lumberjack okay but there was i i definitely remember there were a bunch of moose there was the talking tree because i used to be really afraid of it and there was there was a few different but i haven't found many people who have been to bugaboo creeks that's totally unfamiliar to me they're all gone now i think i'm wrapping i've started to not be afraid of talking trees finally in my 30s because there's a lot there's that the sanrio pura land is very that vibe and then i remember being freaked out by them at fao schwartz there's a lot of talking tree animatronics out there yeah i'm trying to think i mean the scary trees on snow white scary adventure but

they didn't do they talk yeah but those i'm talking those you're talking about the real hello they have kind of like apple cheek they have like big like brown cheeks there's a part of the wizard of oz talking trees too oh yeah well they grab they grab you there's also there was a type of fruit snack where in the ad there was a talking tree yeah it goes oh and he like rains fruit snacks from his branches you were afraid of him a little bit yeah yeah that's a scary there is something scary about a tree, like the bark face. Yeah. Bark face, whatever reason.

Yeah, it's strange. The only talking tree I ever really loved was Grandmother Willow from Pocahontas. My mom. She was great. She was awesome. And there was like a, we had a, I don't know what kind of tree it was outside when I was little. And my mom went on it and like put a little smiley face on it and sharpie and was like a, we had a, I don't know what kind of tree it was outside when I was little. And my mom went on it and like put a little smiley face on it and sharpie and was like,

you can go talk to it. So I would just talk to a tree outside. But it wasn't grandmother willow in your mind. It was just another talking tree. No, it was grandmother willow in my mind. Yeah. I was loving it. That's great.

Yeah. Teaching you lessons about preserving nature. Yeah. She was teaching me about colonialism outside my house. Wild. The story of mine you watched is not true. Not one word of it. So a friend told me about this place called, has anyone encountered this?

They were in the Midwest. Similarly to Bugaboos, an offshoot. Major Magic's All-star pizza review no it is a chucky cheese like that's major magic he's a little guy and he's a little little captain crunch guy um was that a pancake or i think that's a drum i think that's a drum with a face. He's got those apple cheeks I'm talking about. We looked this up. Hi, Jane.

We looked this up. The website I found the most of the stuff about on was a man named Dennis Machine Gun Thompson, who was the drummer in the MC5. What? What? Was involved in this Chuck E. Cheese offshoot. Yes. There is a cool...

Pizza drama. There is a cool, like, fox girl in a pink jumpsuit playing guitar, too. Wow. Yeah. Here. She's cool. This is so good.

Oh, that's, like, the best of all three. Whoa. Wait, what is this band called again? Major Magic's All-Star Pizza Review. What's the name of the band? Oh, of the band. I'm not sure. Flash the Drummer is a guy.

I think that's a, she's rad. The sax player was Sergeant Pepperoni. Perfect. Funny. This guy had the title vice president of entertainment and then had to recruit people oh this is a real no no the the guy from the mc5 oh that was his title um that wasn't a puppet's name okay no i mean the puppets puppets were clearly military right oh yeah sure sergeant pepperoni major. There's no vice president in the military.

Yeah, so, yeah, Major Magics is a whole other rabbit hole. Oh, my God. Sorry, Bugaboo. Bugaboo Creek. I feel like my mom did used to go to like a Bugaboo Steakhouse. Yeah, that was it. Is that it? Yeah, yeah. They might have changed

the name at some point. Maybe they changed it, but I don't remember Animal. Geez. Yeah. No, that's a whole nother. some point. Maybe they changed it, but I don't remember Animal Kingdom. Yeah. No, that's a whole nother. This is so sad. Major magic not enough to keep restaurant open. Oh my God. The Toledo Blade.

Oh. What day is it? Roasted by the Toledo Blade. It's also like an alternate path for you being the pizza reporter for local newspapers. If only this was still needed by anyone. I know. There's no longer anything to cover. Pizza beat reporter?

I went to a Chuck E. Cheese in Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago. And it was in pretty good shape. It was a Studio C model. But I went to my boyfriend's hometown in Racine, Wisconsin, and we found some good stuff. This one had to have opened sometime after 1998, but they had the dressing of... They'll do parody posters at Chuck E. Cheese sometimes. And these were the best ones I'd ever seen. There's an ER parody.

What is that? Is it just like a... It's just Chucky and Munch in a surgical room. It's called ERRR, which I don't know what the joke is. Okay. So, yeah, there'll be these parodies posters and they did it for albums too. And the one you were in was TV shows. And it seems like sometimes it's pizza puns and other times it's about that they're like dumb or fat.

So I regard that as like they aren't smart like doctors. They're like. That's what I think of it. Galaxy range. It's a very Mad Magazine style. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Like they're dumb. You get the word doofus or Claude in there. My favorite one is Chuck Feld. We talked about Chuck Feld. Chuck Feld is a classic. Chuck Feld, which is a post... Okay, so Chuck Chuck E. Cheese is in a blazer. He looks kind of

like Jerry and he's doing stand-up for seemingly the backs of the heads of human Kramer, George, and Elaine. Yeah, he's doing stand-up for the cast. Yes, yeah. It's still the regular. So these people who know their friend Jerry Seinfeld today are seeing a different stand-up show by another guy named Chuck Feld.

Yeah. Jerry Chuck Feld. Jerry Chuck Feld. Or is it Chuck E. Chuck Feld? Yes, that's right. Charles Entertainment Chuck Feld. His, yeah, his stand-up pseudonymonym is um was there there's an x files i think there's yeah the c files of course uh-huh and then perhaps the laziest of all chuck trick

not even like pizza track or something which or like the symbol could be in a pizza not even that if if we're in the area of the parody posters uh i have i have a little bit of stuff prepared we can keep jumping around the history and whatever but so those are the tv posters uh i remember being around ones in uh mine was in my childhood one was in northridge california and they had a lot of classic album covers. They had Yellow Submarine Sandwich. They're in sort of Beatles cartoon style. Saturday Night Retriever.

Oh, they had these ones at my childhood one, too. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yeah. I loved the I legitimately like have very fond memories of seeing. And they probably I was probably acquainted with, for example, Braun in the USA. Braun.

I think I knew that before I had ever seen the cover of Born in the USA. So I think similarly, Bad Dog, a Michael where Jasper is presented like Michael Jackson. Michael Jasper. Michael Jasper. Thatael jasper that's one joke yeah they wish they thought of that um but the the flabby road another one because a lot of the song parodies also they'll just talk about being fat and the pizza makes them fat which is a strange message in your pizza restaurant but the one i legitimately like a lot i really like this is a and it's a deep cut for them to be parodying is a parody of iron butterfly and agata devita and they they make it

ivagata pizza and the artist not iron butterfly but italian pizza guy that's thoughtful yeah one step further with it and i i love these album covers, and they've always made me so happy. And I've always thought they needed to exist in other... It pains me that they stopped doing this in a certain era, so you don't get any past 1990, or there may never be a new one again. And they stay with albums you might know, and i always thought it needed to cut deeper so this is you know mike we just talked about you just resuscitated your twitter account uh right the topical genie from the aladdin show at california adventure you did that you were doing that in like 2010 2011 i had this idea about doing new chucky cheese album covers in 2008. Wow. So I'm gonna

show you a photoshop that I made in 2008 and I finally have a place for it. I was just like, how about like artsy or album covers? So let me show you this. Here, this is Chuck E. Sane. It's kind of an Aladdin Sane where

he's Chuck E. as the Bowie stripe. I'll post all this on the Twitter. It's a little scary, isn't it? I would vaguely androgynous Chuck. And I would have been like, you would have been like, that was in the restaurant. I've been like, oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I wasn't even trying to go too far beyond what the kind of thing they would actually have.

This they probably wouldn't have because it's a little too sexualized. But I was thinking about the greatest album covers of all time. There's the Cars Candy-O. Oh, right. And i've turned that into the hens pizza oh uh then we're looking at helen in kind of a body stocking lying on top of a of a big slice of pizza right right um and then this was this one i just made the other day just to keep this going but here because they never went metal so I'm what I made is Pasqualica master of pizzas

and this is a graveyard with many pizzas and the disembodied hands of the master Pasquale so what I'm saying is I'm going to post these on the Twitter but I would. There's lots of great artists out there listening to this show.

More of these, please. I don't have a catchy name or a hashtag for it. I mean, maybe it's just Chucky Covers, just hashtag Chucky Covers. But I want to see more. Like if our feed could be full of classic album covers or tv let's let's uh you know throw if you have a good chuckfeld idea yeah as well and this isn't a contest dude none of this none of these assets have to be legally clearable just send like let's all share some some chucky album covers since they aren't making these things anymore yeah i was also going to say, like, don't limit this to great artists. Yeah.

Yeah. If you suck, let's do it anyway. Is it your first day of art? Yeah. Give it a shot. Please. Like, we'll see any. Yeah, actually. Perhaps my prefer the worst.

Give us a rough draft. It doesn't matter. Oh, yeah. Let's get these moving. Let's get a listicle. Yeah. I recall seeing. I recall seeing. I recall seeing because they had like, you know, they had the channels you would watch.

They would have TVs playing and it would just be a loop of entertainment. Sometimes featuring a character named Mouth or. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember.

I remember Mouth. Very unpleasant. Like fucking Rocky Horror Mouth. Yeah. And I remember not caring for that video loop at all like because there were games around there were big robots but there was this yeah this loop of comedy and then mouth a lot of talking on your mom's leg mommy it's mouth yeah mommy you want to go home it's mouth did they play at the one i went to when I was a kid, they played a lot of old Pink Panther

cartoons. That was like. Oh, interesting. Something they would play between animatronic shows. And that was, that was like probably the first time I would have seen those cartoons. I guess they played cartoons. They did play cartoons, but I don't have a memory of what they were. But yeah, there would be breaks, I remember, in between.

Yeah. Of like their spot, their content. Now it's music videos that they play between their content. And it's like music videos that they seem to have licensed in the mid to late aughts, like at least 10 years ago. You mean like real music videos? Yeah, there's one. I remember the last time I was there, because they only have like 45 minutes worth of them.

And then it goes back to Vanessa Carlton, A Thousand Miles, which is a song from 2002. Yeah. It's very old. I was going to say Michelle Branch. Yeah. But Vanessa Carlton, very similar. Yeah. It was similar at the same time.

Yeah. Who Bestank the Reason? Is that in there? That would be a little different. It would probably line up. Yeah, yeah. Alien Ants. Maybe Alarm.

Oh, At the Movies? The fun one? Well, they did the Smooth Criminal cover, too. Well, yeah.arm. Oh, at the movies? The fun one? Well, they did the Smooth Criminal cover, too. Well, yeah. I don't remember at the movies. Movies was the name of the song, I believe. Oh, okay. They were dressed like the Ghostbusters in it.

Yeah. Sweet. They would talk about going to the movies. We had the best day dressing up like Ghostbusters. Boy, being in Alien Ant Farm is a dream. Maybe they just didn't license music past Bowling for Soup at their peak.

Maybe they just used all his connections. He's like, yeah, I know Vanessa Carlton. Probably hook you up. I'll hook you up. That's what you get when you're in business with Bowling for Soup. I was watching the Tonys a couple weeks ago, and they're like, coming up after the break,

David Byrne and Vanessa Carlton. And I'm like, what? What is this combination? And they were presenting an award. And the reason is David Byrne is doing like a one-man thing on Broadway. And Vanessa Carlton is taking over as Carole King in the Carole King movie. Wow, really? Oh, that's kind of cool.

Yeah. I actually like that. Good for her. I've heard that show's okay. I kind of like A Thousand Miles. Carole King. Wow. Really? That's kind of cool. So good for her. I've heard that she was okay. I kind of like a thousand miles. I do too. Yeah. I'll also come out.

This is going back to, I shouldn't just be equating them, but Michelle Branch, the, I like that. I want to come out in favor of that Santana song. Just about to, I was just about to say,

I was just about to say, I like that song. Pro game of love. I'm a big fan of that song as well. A little bit of this. Wow. I think I'm an everywhere man myself oh everywhere i think that's i think that other one is better but i'm all right with it i'm all right with it yeah you guys ever have hit clips were the wait the sense familiar that's not the thing you got from mcdonald's is it

they had them at mcdonald's at one, but it was like a little tiny USB-looking thing that you could plug into a fake boombox, and it would play exactly one minute of a hit song. It was only a minute? I remember each one had one song, but I thought it was a full song. Wow. No, it was just a minute of a song,

and we would get, because my family couldn't afford the current ones, so we would get one minute of abc by the jackson 5 and that would be wow they made vintage ones too and then like sugar ray would be on sale so we have those ones sure a minute bad news guys we're pricing it down they're going down to 149 from 209 uh wow these are the things that are going to make us that already are making us sound old. They're so bizarre. Our parents

were pretty clean. We used to have records. Ours are like, we would download 45 second real player clips of songs from MTV.com You could listen to songs and cd quality no no we need to listen to a scratchy clip scratchy lady marmalade boy those are the days yeah um you were starting you were talking about the the loops um oh yeah

i was just saying like i don't have a good memory those. I don't have any fondness for them in my brain. I mean, I think there was just too much stuff I liked better, but a lot of it didn't stick with me. They are all on YouTube. Yeah. There is so much. In talking about tackling a Chuck E. Cheese episode, I just had to ignore giant swaths of stuff, because it would take full days to watch all of the material that's been archived on YouTube. It's a ton and i

would get no uh pleasure or enjoyment almost any of it yeah there i mean there were whole like it's crazy to me how thorough the programming was at the restaurant like at its peak where they would make a new hour-long show every single month for like a long time for and i guess this would have been post uh them getting you know reskinning the rock of fire explosion but there was a while where there was like a new show every single month and then i think it went like a seasonal show and then it just was like eternal uh just the same vanessa carlton music. But they used to program like new stuff all the time where it would be, they would play different songs and then they would, it was just, it was,

and the Rockafire Explosion was doing the same thing when they were trying to stay in competition with each other. So there's all these long ass, it's archived on, I forget what the website is, but I think it's like a Rockafire Explosion fan site where there's a lot of like of the hour-long programs uh like archived which in a lot of it's that mixed media where this stuff has always been confusing where sometimes it's puppets and sometimes it is people in suits and then sometimes

it's footage of the robots who you're watching right there but in other cases it's a robot like the studio c chuck doesn't look like the one that's on the screen. And it doesn't look like the one that's outside because that's the Alvin and the Chipmunksified, the Bowling for Soup one. Like I swear there are – there's vantage points you could have in a Chuck E. Cheese where you're looking at five different iterations of Chuck E. at once. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance for it. Like, I must be confusing as I remember as a kid being like, wait a second, Chucky is there and moving. Yes. And then Chucky is also on stage.

Yes. And then you just have to reconcile with that. Yes. I feel like that doesn't usually happen in play. You're only supposed to see, like, one character at a time, right? Yeah, like, Disney, that's a no-no for, like, if you were taking a photo with mickey and you saw him walk out of an exit like that would freak you out yeah

but chucky cheese the second you walk in the door yeah you could be looking at three or four different media like you're just he's on the screen as the puppet he's a walk around character but there's a robot of him in the back and Right. And there's art of multiple kinds of him. And he'll be on a machine looking different than he does on the wall. And he's also sitting in the little car ride nearby. Yeah, yeah. There's so many of him. Yeah.

And then they could also show that like there's a 40 years of Chucky thing they're showing now, which has all the old clips in it, which. It's a good show. Can you imagine how confusing that would be for you as a kid there is a there is a really good uh shirt that they were selling they i i get if you get like an xl uh t-shirt at chucky cheese because they don't make them for adults but that will like about fit me and they had a they had a great line of 40th anniversary merch i got it all oh really, really? Oh, my God. I need to look this up.

Is this on eBay? Can I look at this now? There's a bunch. My favorite was, it was like a red t-shirt that said 40 years of Chucky and showed you every iteration of Chucky all the way up to 2017. So, that's like 19 varieties. It's a lot. So many.

Back when he was still a rat, they changed his damn species. Oh, yeah. He started as a rat. Did they literally define him as a mouse now yeah it was a rat okay and that at the very opening of the company i found this interesting they want it was originally going to be called coyote pizza and then nolan bushnell was informed the costume he bought was a rat not a coyote and his his pitch for uh like okay we can fix this the name now it's going to be rick rat's pizza yeah rick rat and the company uh the board went uh no no it is not going to be rickack Pizza. Rick Rack is so funny. I mean, he definitely had his eye on a different prize. Because the quote he says when asked about, why did you pick pizza to serve? He said, I chose pizza because of the wait time and the build schedule.

Very few components and not too many ways to screw it up. Now, that is a man who makes computer things talking about food. That's a programmer's approach to a restaurant. That is a normal way to talk about food. Little room for error. Very few bugs. Don't you think hot dogs would have been better? Well, so they did serve hot dogs okay for a little while and in the training the night the infamous 1991 training videos they show you how to make the hot dog which is you take a sheet

of tinfoil you wrap the bun in half the tinfoil then you put the hot dog on the other half and then you put that on a pan and put it in the pizza oven I have never seen a baked hot dog before. But then in the video. They very gingerly then put it in the bun. And present it on a plate. With like one mustard. One ketchup. One relish. And a bag of Lay's.

And it is a beautiful presentation. Of a hot dog and chips. A beautiful presentation. A beautiful presentation. A beautiful presentation. That was never uttered until this moment. Right now they're really pushing their salad bar which i would not recommend i've done the i would recommend the lunch buffet if you because

they're trying to so they're trying to basically make it like a panera bread with a dance floor where like they have solid wi-fi now they have coffee all day they have like they're putting in electrical outlets to encourage because I think that that's the new soap opera sports room is like, oh, you can come here and like do your stuff while your kids are, you know, like losing their minds on the dance floor or whatever. But they have like a daytime Monday through Friday, like open buffet for like eight bucks. That's decent. The salad bar.

Don't touch it. Scary. Does the buffet have pizza in it then yeah yeah it's like pizza cinnamon sticks uh there's like a couple different options i've and then you get a drink with it and then you just refill it you know until until there's too many families there and you start to get uncomfortable i shouldn't be here but it didn't seem like on their earnings report or company history they're like history, they're trying to get adults without kids.

They're trying to get that arrested development kind of older millennial. And remove the robots? Are they out of their minds? That's what I don't get. For any reason, an arrested development person would... Look, there's fucking lines for four hours to get into a brand new bar with a robot performing called Oga's Cantina. That should teach him something. Maybe just what they need to do is invest in better robots.

I want to see Chuck and Munch and Pasquale and Helen and Jasper with all of the super hydraulics of Rex. So has anyone seen this 30-minute commercial for the Endless Salad Bar? Yes, the ASMR video. Yes, it's a yoga-y ASMR kind of new age thing, and it's 30 minutes long. I am aghast. My mouth is wide open. It's so weird that companies are getting into ASMR now. Yeah, it's a couple years.

Weird co-op. So I'll play a couple. I watched a few minutes and honestly I didn't. I was like kind of funny. It's cute. Yeah it's kind of cute. Crunchin. 30 delicious choices it's an unexpected joy as you embark on the journey that is a family trip to chucky cheese this is all of us tonight we have the soundest sleep we've ever had listening to a peaceful voice talk about chucky cheese they just switched their the advertising company that they work with.

So I think that they're trying to be like a fun brand now that will like, I don't know. What was the brand that threatened to commit suicide or something? Oh, I know what you're talking about. There was a brand that, yeah. Was it Stakehams? Stakehams is very online. Stakehams did something.

I think it was Sunny D. Sunny D. Yeah, Sunny D was like, I don't know how many more days I can have. Yeah, Sunny D was like extremely depressed. Yeah, and Hostess was like, no, come on, we're here for you. And Wendy's trying. It's a dark world. Darkest timeline.

It is a darkest timeline. Oh, yeah. Sunny D said, I can't do this anymore. And Roundtable Pizza wrote back kill yourself. Pop-Tarts replied. Jackbox replied.

Everything. It's Crest replied. Oh, my God. Jackbox replied. Everything. It's Crest replied. I hate. I like to imagine that is two people in the same office just, like, logging. They're in different Hootsuite windows just tweeting each other. Reading passwords. Uber Eats at UOK. Having a breakdown through brand accounts.

Moon Pie replied. Man, that's what I'm thinking of, that Moon Pie's got involved. Moon Pie replied. That's what I'm thinking of, that Moon Pie's got involved. Oh, God. What's happening? I don't know. I miss when it was robots instead of

bizarre, alive corporations yelling into our pockets. I appreciate that Chucky has remained fairly uncool consistently throughout the history of comedy. Yeah, their attempt

at cool was he skateboards and even then has a helmet and pads that restrict being able to see him. He's so safe. He's so panning out. Skateboarding in the very flat parking lot, like mile-long parking lots that are next to Chuck E. Cheese's.

Yeah. The most dangerous version of him was the grifter rat. Yeah. The cigar chomping. The joisty guy. Smokes cigars. Yeah. Joisty rat.

Yeah. Joisty rat. Yeah. Ricky, what's his name? Rick Rat. Rick Rat. Yeah, that was a scary. Yeah. That was curious, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Ricky. What's his name? Rick Rat. Rick Rat. Yeah. That was a scary.

Yeah. Here I am. Chuck E. Cheese. I've realized that the voice of that early Chuck that I do is or that we were both doing. Is Jay Leno? Yes. Precisely. But I also then I was thinking about that and realizing

there's some crossover there because think about it he's like he's like the entertainer uh uh you know like traversing the country every little like every little podunk town he's there he's making these entertaining people another guy comes along and it's thought that maybe they can coexist. Oh, right, right, right, right. And then he crushes the other one. Right. Sends him packing. He's not around anymore.

You know, Billy Bob, he just wasn't selling the pizzas, you know? That's what it boils down to. He wasn't bringing in the numbers. You know, Fats just wasn't as good of a band leader as much. Chuck E. Cheese hiding in a closet to, like, listen in on the unification talks. That's the way they had to rebrand him into this, like, little child skateboarder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He could not be an entertainment sleaze.

Billy Bob's a family guy. I wish him well. But, you know, do you want to put me on the marquee i guess all right i guess okay i'll do it yeah i'll do it if you want me to come down if you want to look it's not up to me i'm around here uh yeah i didn't really i hadn't thought about it that they're exactly the same they're this this exactly the same equals chucky uh back a quick real quick back to the food we my sister was the only one in the family To ever have a birthday here

And it was a breakfast birthday Because I think it was cheaper It was a little cheaper McDonald's did the same thing Like a breakfast thing I think one friend had a McDonald's birthday And it wasn't even at a McDonald's With a play place

Which is insane So you just went? of course yeah yeah yeah it's still mcdonald's i mean it's still like the best place other than chucky cheese or discovery zone but i was just saying the breakfast was uh just uh french toast sticks that doesn't sound bad like i i'd rather if going to eat there, go with something they can't really get wrong. But was that just like cut up pizza with syrup on top? It was just, yeah, no cheese. It was, yeah, just crust.

Crust sugared. The salad bar prep videos from the 90s. There's a very funny moment in one of them where they're like, here's how you cut this. And here's how long you can leave these out. they're like and don't forget the garnish use lots of kale around the containers as the garnish and it's all these wilted looking vegetables and then giant stalks of kale of food everyone now knows and uh has strong opinions on but. But that was the most healthy thing was the garnish. It's all this kale. Like no one's eating it.

It's just there for decoration. Just sat on the ice. Love it. Yeah. Also that garlic, they would brush everything with this garlic spread and the how to make it. It's like take your jug of liquid margarine.

Liquid margarine. If I walked into a friend's house like now and was like why do you have a margarine in the fridge like i don't think i've ever met i love i love the demos of like how to put the costume on oh my god god you just watch a bunch of teenagers like struggling with it they're like keep the head clean which yes certainly has never happened 409 yeah it was 409 i have i wrote down some of the instructions when we find them great yes i'm on the website website looking at jobs just oh please by the end of the episode you get hired you do a virtual chat interview while we're talking all right she's a general manager

oh entertainment experience. That's great. Our middle name is entertainment. To clean Chucky, 409 or similar cleaner should be used on the face, hat, or toes. Any upholstery cleaner like Woolite should be used on the fur. When you put Chucky away at night, spray a little disinfectant in the head to keep it fresh. Hands, vests, and body Can be machine washed in cold water At the lowest setting

Vests can be air dried That never once happened No one kept the head fresh For the next person to wear it It was good that most of the stuff Was machine washable Except at the very end of one video They're like, Helen's dress must be dry clean only.

Everything machine washable except this one piece. Strange. Also, like, putting a big mascot uniform in a washing machine, could that keep it looking good? Like, that's not a place for something like that. Can't be what Disney does. Yeah. I don't understand, like, where.

What's a big enough. Whose job is that to do? Do they have them backstage, I'm guessing? Oh, yeah. Just go to the laundromat. I think it's laundromat. Or, yeah, and sit on top of the machine for a while. Insane.

If you. So, in those same videos, in the 90s ones, the guy hosting them is a guy named Todd Horchner. And I watched a bunch of those. And then I watched a video from 2007. And I did a double take. Because the guy in the 2007 video, it says Todd Horchner. And I'm like, he looks 20 years younger. He looked younger in 2007.

And then I found his LinkedIn. He was the head of training at Chuck E. Cheese for 25 years. Wow. So he was a company man. He stuck it out and looked great in the 2000s. Now I think started his own consulting company. I got a little taste of Todd Horchner and Munch interacting. Okay.

The goal at Chuck E. Cheese's and Pizza Meg, is to ensure a quality product in ten minutes or less. Hey Todd, when is it that we get to eat? Huh? Munch, Munch. And remember Munch, Munch. Munch, Munch. That's that regular guy. Hey Todd! Yeah, yeah. Just a loud man.

What do you prefer, do you think, with Munch's character? I think I like loud man. I think so. I agree. Like, you expect it's the first choice to go, me want pizza. And that's still pretty grimacy, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. You could go the other way where he's like dumb and slow. But yeah, I kind of like, yes. Todd, more information, please. You should voice Munch Yeah come on That would be an achievement Yes

How do I audition for that? Are you on a part of the website? Are they hiring for Munch right now? I was looking at jobs in Irving just to see You know if there's any creative positions Opened it looks like they're filled right now But you know I'll wait it out The first time I went to Chuckucky cheat like when because i i originally like went as like for a goofy piece i was writing when they first made that like kind of tone deaf bizarre announcement

that like adults can go alone now and so i was like all right i'll go and i went to one at the eagle rock mall uh nearby and that is a studio c which i didn't i didn't even know what that meant then i was the days of ignorance i was a fool um but obama was still president it was wild but it was but i went and i met because I was, you know, like, one of the, it's mostly, like, nannies and kids, and then me. And there was a guy there who was troubleshooting the arcade games, because I wasn't super busy. And then he did a little bit of maintenance on the animatronic. And he was, like, an older guy, seemed very friendly. And then, like, spotted me alone.

And, like, you know, some clogged me. I was like, oh, what is going to happen? And then he just, he just left a fistful of tokens on the table and he was so and this was like right before they switched from tokens to play passes so tokens were still 20 summer 2016 uh so i guess i was ready about this for a full year anyways the the and then i ended up talking to him for a little bit and i was and his job was to um to do maintenance for every animatronic in like the bottom half of california like he there's so and he'd been he'd been working for chucky cheese for i want to say at least 15 but possibly longer he had at one point been the manager of the Chuck E. Cheese in Vegas.

Yeah. Something like that. And he was just like, the stories I could tell you. And it was like, he was like, it was too much. I know. Like, he left the state. It was too much. Cool.

And, yeah. They allowed gambling at that one. I really want to go to the Chuck E. Cheese in Vegas. It's a little off the beaten path, so I didn't get to go. They should do like how they have that like Taco Bell cantina. They should do a Chuck E. Cheese on the strip. Like with a bunch of fun, colorful drinks. Margaritas.

Margaritas. No kids. And then the classic and like Rick Ratt in there. Yeah. That would be so fun. Maybe bring Rick Ratt back. People would like that. Yeah. If this brand was smart at all, they would at least in one place, rat in there yeah so fun maybe bring rick rat back people would like that yeah if they're if

this brand was smart at all they would at least in one place like have a destination like old school like using original assets original videos we know they have all of it and it's vegas is the place i think hell yeah vegas is the place for taco Bell is like starting a hotel. Yeah. Palm Springs. Yeah. I'm down. Are you trying? I'm going to try. I signed up for email notifications. How much is it? It's like a regular hotel reservation, right? I don't know. Comparable to Palm Springs. It's $2 a night.

$300 a night. Oh, that's a lot. Well, you know, put on a crack car, see what happens. Yeah, money isn't real. It's paid for by someone. Actually, but it's in the heart of, it's. 280 and 90 something. Put on a crack car, see what happens. Yeah. Money isn't real. It's paid for by someone. Actually, but it's in the middle of August. So, that's off season for Palm Springs because it's technically so hot. So, I guess you're paying a little bit of a premium for the pop-up aspect.

Right. Interesting. But seeing like really good working animatronics is other unlike disney universal is rare they had was it last year they had the rock of fire with deadpool which i was conflicted about yeah um but it was like make of it yeah i mean they only had two songs playing but to see really well like working yeah uh bill Billy Bob and Mitzi was there, too. Yeah. But, like, then Deadpool, of course.

But it was good. I was like, whoa. So, just, if you saw, like, pristine Chuck E. Cheese characters, classic looking characters. Yeah. That's going to trigger something in your child brain. But it's got to be originals. And Chuck has to be in the hat. Bowler hat.

Red hat. Red. He has to be shady. You have to be suspicious of him. That to be in the hat bowler hat red he has to be shady you have to be suspicious of him that's the fun cigar he's poisoning you have to feel unsafe around him the neil hamburger style tuxedo like wrinkled tuxedo yes if he were a human man you shouldn't trust him you wouldn't want to spend time around him that's the one i want the rocket fire explosion also they had like another weird encounter with like a questionable uh but they did they did something with silo like during yeah silo right right right yeah and they're in keanu the are they in peel movie i don't know that it's not much of it but they're like in a warehouse with them somewhere. Oh, gotcha.

Why? Well, they'll pop up in various things. And there's been a couple of music videos. Mayor Hawthorne, one of my favorite guys, did a video with them. And it's never clear whether, I guess there's multiple ways. You can either participate, you can get Aaron Fector involved, the inventor. Right. Or you can go to one of these places like in Mississippi where a guy is just keeping a perfect replica of one.

Our friend Doug Jones went and had a very bizarre time. We talked about that in an episode. That's so cool. Yeah, so they're around. But so what's it? Well, maybe we should talk about that copyright thing. A lot of, like, if you watch the documentary, if you watch the documentary, The you watch the documentary the rock fire

explosion explains all this and there was also this really good podcast uh recently uh slates decoder ring i think is the name of it and they they broke down a lot of this stuff but so the the divide we were starting to say brock is the name of the guy robert brock robert brock who was like going to he was like a holiday inn investor and he was going to open a bunch of Chuck E. Cheese's. Yeah. And Fector started getting antsy to like get the contract and maybe have his own original band put in instead of Chuck E. Cheese because they were more experimental at the time. They'd have Dolly Dimples, the hippo lounge singer. There'd be weird other stuff.

We haven't even talked about the king. That's all. We'll talk about. We still have that to get all that stuff to get. At least read some descriptions of characters. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, keep going.

But so the base history, Brock breaks off with Vector, makes a new place, showbiz pizza place, as opposed to Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theater. And these places end up in a bitter competition. Immediately gets sued. Yes. Immediately get sued. Yes. Immediately. And it's like over two years of them in court before it's settled. At the peak of both businesses. Tons of money. Insane.

And they would open down the street from each other. Yeah. It was a war. And there was a solid two years where both businesses were turning a profit and then yes you know that's stopped because they wore each other into the ground they opened at an unsustainable pace and were suing each other they both built each other up to just immediately collapse because there was just hollow cores uh so there was there it hit a breaking point where the only way is to propose a merger of the two businesses that had been suing each other.

So what's so strange is that Chuck E. Cheese was first. Showbiz Pizza ripped them off. But Showbiz Pizza kind of swallowed Chuck E. Cheese. Yeah, they were in the better state financially when the merger happened. But Chuck E. Cheese had the brand recognition. So keeping the band made sense and there was a time a la leno conan we tried to coexist anyone can do the 10 slot and one could do 11 30 uh and they so there's ads where it's billy bob and yes yeah and you would go to the restaurant

and not know which you were going to see. So an unbelievably confusing brand. Though I love that. What an exciting time. That would have been so cool. You know? I would be like, oh my God, it's like a different, it would be so, it would be thrilling. Yeah. Yeah.

Would there be just two Showbiz pizzas like in the same half mile from each other? Maybe. But one would be chuck and one would be because ours was showbiz first and then they obviously we branded a chucky cheese i don't remember you guys know these yours was showbiz first yes i don't i don't ever remember the rock of fire being in there i never saw them i don't think i ever saw them with them till like a decade ago yeah mine was a pizza time theater that had the other rooms so it also had my the one i grew up with had the king the elvis oh wow the beach bowsers the beach boys equivalent and the

beagles the dog beetles wow all at various times were in my childhood that's unbelievable jamie do you remember i'm trying to figure it out i showed i showbiz pizza closed forever a few months before i was born so i definitely never went but i'm trying to figure out if my location was ever i don't know else yeah i want to i okay so mine was a showbiz pizza in brockton mass uh showbiz pizza uh was at the westgate mall they turned it into a Chuck E. Cheese. The area grew too violent. No more fun. Oh, that's what happened? It closes. It's just dead entirely? Yeah.

I guess, well, there's, yeah, one of my, like, another childhood one of mine became part of a dead mall, the Fallbrook Mall, which now is back together, but became an empty. Oh, thank God the mall is okay. Yeah. Did yours ever recover Or is Brockton Westgate mall is yeah no Westgate mall is alive

And well my brother worked at FYE there until that closed So my Chuck E Cheese I only remember Chuck E Cheese There I never remember Showbiz Pizza But for a while it was like A real catnip for me because two doors down Was a comic book store

So like good report cards come around I'm like a real catnip for me because two doors down was a comic book store. So like good report cards come around. I'm like a pig in shit. And then the comic store closes. Chuck E. Cheese keeps going. When I'm in high school, a different, better comic store opened there. And the day after my senior prom, you know, everyone's still hanging out. Like we're too far away from the beach uh but we're like what are we doing that's some somehow we came to the consensus let's go to chucky cheese

uh so we went to chucky cheese and this is this was how uh cool i was i was like can i sneak away to the comic store for a little while no i probably shouldn't but i was should i sneak away from my friends to go look at comic books no i'll just keep hanging out with chuckie cheese that's fine so you didn't do it i didn't do it no what a choice you faced what a what a choice yeah so i had my eye on the pry it was really like focused on uh high school graduation activities i'm like i got my driver's license uh i guess i can come back to the comic store another day. I'm on the retro pizza zone boards right now. And there's someone who visited a lot of Chuck E. Cheese's in the early 2000s and writes a very depressing description of my Chuck E. Cheese in its last.

This is not how I remembered it, but I'm sure this was an adult and they had a more objective perspective. But they said, I visited once in October 2002. Brockton, it was a part of a mall. It was very tiny. To say the least, my mom was worried about driving to this particular location because Brockton was not a town she was familiar with. And she said it was considered a tough city. Oh, man. she was familiar with and she said it was considered a tough city oh man i visited and was disappointed in the store size the condition of the show a two-stage so tiny that the characters were crammed together literally on top that is true munch was almost dead except for a slow head

twitch helen's mouth was shut and her eyes were closed jasper's back head was on the stage with his hat dangling off and Pasquale only moved his mouth. So I guess it died a really slow death. Pasquale had signed a document saying unplug me if I my wish is to not be kept alive. Euthanization is. Is there a good resource for all the Chuck E. Cheese's that you're looking at? I'm just on the retro Pizza Zone message board. So I don't know if there is like a... Pizza Zone, I think that that's the website that does most of the archival stuff of the old shows and stuff like that, though.

I think this is about as close as it gets. I think I had searched that site to find out that the Northridge want location was a pizza tie or as they say like yes Northridge was a PTT and it became a phase three like there's all this crazy terminology which I'm happy to know now I'm sorry about the decay but in your mind none of that's true they're all more alive than ever and a child's brain processes trauma in wild ways i remember it being you know a little small but beautiful describing uh town in brockton massachusetts as a tough town just i just imagine like whitey bulger waiting at the city limits like you're coming into my town i beat up the chucky cheese be careful brockton. People are, the haters, they're just upset.

Yeah. Retro Pizza Zone, it's just jealous. Brockton, Massachusetts is called the City of Champions. Rocky Marciano's from there. Wow. Nice. Yeah, we got a 50-foot bronze statue of Rocky Marciano. Oh, wow, really?

He's married to the 50-foot Marilyn Monroe in Palm Springs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're separated. It's a long-distance distance relationship but I make it work trying to work it out yeah ups and downs ups and downs so the two chains are coexisting but

at a certain point it comes to a head and there can only be one and partially because they own the copyright to the Chuck E. Cheese characters but not to the Rockafire. And they offer Aaron Fector a deal, which is let us take the characters because there's no other plan and we will give you nothing for it. And at least that's how he describes it. he just thought it was a raw deal and that uh he was going to do something else with the

characters to keep them alive and that they would have a life in movies or tv um and uh so that he said no which just led to that all of the rocket fires were dismantled and turned into munch's make-believe band because they because they, they were still the Pizza Time players. Right, right, right. Phase three, as my store was described as, is when they became full bodies, no longer in the frames. Right. And all of the characters, so like Fats Geronimo is at the

keyboard. He was stripped of his gorilla hair and turned into Munch. And Mitzi becomes Helen which is a really disturbing one because she's like she's got like breasts it's weird like when they when they strip her down like like the skeletal version is really bizarre it is very because it cuts off after the titties it just is like titties and then skeleton it's very very jarring to look at it's somebody's like really bizarre erotic art

i do feel like there are like nipples too i think they like for some reason like or at least very pointy breasts sure yes you're just like what who you can i i have a guess at the gender of the designer it is insane we've had a lot of body horror themes on this show. Will Smith Genie. What is Phase 5? I don't know offhand. Because I was Phase 5.

Yeah. I was Phase 5. You're all about to witness a great becoming. In Phase 5 they all light on fire. Phase five. I show you my true form. Yeah.

Streamwood was the one on Barrington Road. Streamwood? Yeah, that's the town. What a weird town name. That sounds like a one season Fox show about a town with a lot of secrets. Wait, phase five circles of light do you know what that means no that sounds like chucky cheese kills god like that yeah it sounds of life wish it me now i get to panic good lord i gotta figure this out what does that mean

circles of light phase five i think i've seen like a lot of light show stuff. Like, I don't know why they think like, yeah, kids want dance floors and light shows. It's like kids always like robots. Like robots haven't gone out of fashion. I don't know. I think the kid that the consensus was with like, it sounds like they thought that the robots that were there were scary to kids. Which is like not unreasonable. Yeah, that's fair.

And that it would have been too expensive to replace them with better robots. Sure. That's probably right. I was more scared of the walk-around characters, but I'm wondering how much ground did they lose in the late 90s to laser tag slash go-kart places? Oh, that's a good point.

I don't know. I've heard nolan bushnell he did an episode of it was like a business podcast oh is that how i made this i think it's called or well i don't know i think that's why i have a lot of money or is he still no he's he's with he's with us okay uh okay i think this came out like last year but i think his if i'm remembering correctly it was his working theory that like the business slowed down because they were banking on people coming back to the restaurant very frequently when people would only come like a few times a year with for report cards

and so they ended up losing money when they weren't making a new show every month because people would be like well i already know what that is i'm not gonna go and so like when they couldn't like keep up the hype of like it's just not a place you would go every week so then they started to esteem or that's his theory that happened there was just an article about that the san gabriel valley where there's a lot of uh chinese like chinese food restaurants that have been there forever um these massive dim sum places could not keep up because they were it was it was places where large uh weddings or or birthday large parties was the core of their business but then like middle of the week people aren't throwing events of that size right so then having to keep that much like food and different kinds of meat on

stock, like operating costs just add up. Right. Yeah. It's just an occasion place. So they have not yet cracked having young professionals go work there on laptops and only get coffee. They'll get there and then they'll rue the day they got rid of the robots. Yeah.

I'm hoping they're still in Pasadena. I went to the Pasadena one. They have a beautiful full band still. Hey, Aria. Totally operational. I went on my birthday in 2017, but I don't know if it's still there. I think they might still have them. I'm not totally sure.

My pitch for that is maybe like if you want to have us go during the day you change Chucky's clothes give him I know it's going to be a similar face but at least give us a bowler hat and a vest and we'll fuck we're idiots we'll go right up there and see it why do we like the bowler hat it's because we saw

it when we were kids that's all it is I mean mostly but I think also it's a more interesting feeling like old timey all it is? I mean, mostly, but I think also it's a more interesting feeling like old-timey choice, which is always... I just respect vaudeville, so that's why I like it. I mean, that's where it all goes back to that. Everything's vaudeville. That's an acceptable answer.

I have phase five here, but that's like really what the newer version is called. So, I guess they're just saying that it's rock and roll Chucky at my Streamwood Barrington Road Chucky Cheese. Sorry to that i'm sorry for your loss do we know what were the last place to have bowler hat chuck was i don't think we know that i don't know could there be one there could be in america that like kind of they just ignored what they were supposed to do and they forgot existed that does have bowler hat chucky cheese there's got to be some like rogue locations that have just been forgotten even to the company like why would we throw this out it works why we throw it out because that's all these unification all these training they were

like if it's bad throw it in the garbage right it's a very very uh early 90s uh world of plenty sort of feel. And they're not really thinking about reduce, reuse, recycle back then. No. At the very least, there would be maybe the old suit lying around somewhere in someone's back of their restaurant. Yeah. Somewhere.

Maybe international. There's a lot of them international. In Australia, his name is Charlie Cheese. Ooh. Because they did not like the colloquial version of vomiting down there. Chuck. Up Chuck. That's more strongly there. More strongly.

So they went with Charlie Cheese. Throw up cheese. We'd be remiss if we didn't talk a little about the full name, which is Charles Entertainment Cheese. Right. the full name which is charles entertainment geez right uh facts that apparently people did not really know and it sort of like caught internet fire a couple years ago yeah it was a hashtag viral story which they chucky cheese manages to do that every once in a while which is another thing i think their cluelessness with their own audience and that like all of the interest with this place is like semi-ironic people in their

30s uh uh like most you know fucking marshalls doesn't have stories uh going viral uh once a year twice a year in marshalls is dreams they're gonna have to start threatening to kill themselves like all the other cool brands every now and then I see a post about Marshalls and it's like, look how old these truffles are. Like, look how old these perishables are. I love it. It's so bad now that it's like, there's just so much exhaustion with like brands trying to be cool that when you just see them like blowing it, you're like, awesome. Like, great. That's what you've been doing.

You're supposed to do that yeah show me a listicle about like bowls i don't care i uh um wait what there's the other middle name too that we haven't uh or they're the full name uh which is even more delightful to me than charles entertainment cheese the squally pea pie plate yes and it's but then also his origin is that chucky discovered him in the kitchen playing drums on pie plates so there's both those things his last name is pie plates but also he was playing drums on the pie plates so it's a little cloudy maybe oh can it be both? Also, it could be both. It is both. That is canon, so it's both.

Wait, I forgot this whole thing I just found. Did you guys catch the pretty recent backstory of Chuck E. Cheese? Like another, maybe related to what you talked about, but like I read this whole book that they recently put out about how Chuck E. was an orphan mouse. He lived in an orphanage and he would sing and he was sad because because he was an orphan nobody he his favorite song was happy birthday he was all but he didn't know his own birthday so nobody could ever say i did not come across day for him uh but he taught himself to sing and happy birthday was his favorite song and he moved he okay a very very important

information he was very good at singing and also got really good at pong and he won fifty dollars in a pong contest at the orphanage and that was enough for him to catch a bus to go start residing in new york city why didn't he just sneak into a pipe in the bus because he is a mouse i couldn't tell you he need but he paid he's a good boy he paid the ticket 50 he went and lived he also really liked pizza so he went to live above pasquale's pizzeria and then showed up like was he was caught in the kitchen and pasquale was gonna like get him like kill him and then he started singing and he thought oh that's well i shouldn't kill a singing mouse so then he i feel crazy saying this is like dark where is this where is this in for what is

this i'm trying to find it chucky g's pas.'s Pasquale backstory. There's so much. I love this. It's pretty neat. But also. Oh, wait. I'm sorry. I missed something big. He grew up at St. Marinara's Orphanage. That's good. I like that.

Also, the Business Insider, the website where I found this, makes a point of the book has no author. Well, he gave it to us. The book has no author um well he he gave it to us the book has no author he's just passed down the lord yeah straight yeah right yeah um pasquale was so shocked that he dropped his rolling pin a mouse that can sing my restaurant is saved i'm gonna make you a star so he set up a restaurant immediately called it chucky cheeses right it was just pasquale's pizza place he's like never mind it's chucky cheeses now and everybody like big grand opening everybody come see this singing mouse he'd never sung in front of a crowd before so he buckled everybody

booed and left this is like eminem in eight mile yeah the first time he tries to battle rap i mean that i wish they kept modernizing it because we could have had a poster that said chuck mile oh yeah somebody make that please um and it's in his case it is pizza sauce not mom's spaghetti yes yes no no i would it's no spaghetti is available but But anyway, people started leaving. They changed the name of the restaurant to be his name. Everybody left. Boo. And then he noticed a kid and started singing happy birthday to him late.

And then everybody filed back in and was like, ah, cool, let's stay here. Right. So Chuck fucked up. He didn't do. But this is a whole other. Chuck E. Cheese is clearly Different than Rick Ratt Rick Ratt Yeah 200 year old mutant Well yeah abuses his talent

This child sweet Chuck E. Is that's the new Yeah that's the new origin of Chuck E. Essentially yeah that's from like five years Right wow that I like Yeah that there's some sort of like Chuck E. Maybe like Rick Ratt Died in some like freak

accident and chucky saw his opportunity to like really sure he took his name john draper dick whitman rick rat is the dick whitman character or no other way around yeah yeah rick rat is oh we're saying he stole the story and invented this bullshit story. And then Krusty the Cat or whatever is the brother who's like, it's you. You're Rick Ratt. It's like, I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. Here's $10,000. Here's $10,000. Leave town.

Krusty the Cat hangs himself in his flophouse. That's why he didn't keep being in the band. Yeah. This is a dark reimagined. Like if this was a movie, it would be just called Chuck. Yeah. Why is, and maybe somebody found this and I didn't. Has there ever been talk of a real TV show or movie?

Because there's those that we watch that directed DVD or directed VHS. There's a couple of those. From like what, from. From what years? There is a movie from 1999 that is entirely digital environments that's also about an orphan

and Chuck needs to do a race in outer space to pay for... I'm trying to remember. Medicine. What? This guy is really sick. We're going to give you a transfusion. Put sauce in your body.

The healthcare system is fucked up. We need to raise money in a race. While you're proposing here, say what you were saying and I will ready my material about Chuck and the Okay, good. I mean, while you're proposing here, say what you were saying, and I will ready my material about Chuck and the... Oh, okay.

Yeah. Okay. Good. Good. Yeah. Because I'm basically like... Longest episode ever. There is so much content still being produced.

And we'll get to that. Maybe that's that last thing we'll do. Sure, yeah. We'll start driving. Because I found... I'll tease it now. I found a new... And maybe you've...

There's an album worth of songs. Oh, no. Made in the last few years Oh man I have it on I put it on Apple Music It's a free download off of their YouTube Whoa

And there's other music videos and stuff Of things that I'm also fascinated with But for a company that makes so much content And for a character that so many people know And is easily identifiable Why would they never have attempted to make a real TV show or a real movie? I mean, it's honestly, you just shit it out like the Sonic movie or Alvin and the Chipmunks. Like, who cares if it's good or not?

Like, I'm surprised that it's never happened. I think in the 90s, there was For a very brief period And even if you could Work around it You get away with it There was the idea of shame in children's Entertainment like well we can't It can't just be a commercial

On the other hand Mac and me And Mac tonight And all this fucking kids Oh yeah there's video games. Yeah right. There's video games. Seven Up Dots. There's Chuck E. Cheese video games as well. What? There's a Wii Chuck E. Cheese Wii

game. Oh. Which we have to find somewhere and play. I watch a little of it. It's kind of like you're in the playroom. Then there's mini games and like it's just Chuck and Munch. Kind of basic. Yeah. Fun nonetheless. I'm glad they did one. Still yeah. Before you pull out the music stuff there's one thing. like it's just Chuck and Munch. Kind of basic. Yeah. Fun nonetheless. I'm glad they did one. Still, yeah.

Before you pull out the music stuff, there's one thing. He's going to have to. There's like a weird fact about Robert Brock, who we mentioned earlier. Yes, yes. So, Robert Brock has, there is a lasting impression that if you drive around any like major area with office parks, Robert Brockck is there present there because as we said he was a holiday in franchisee he was like a business guy franchising things was his business one of his business was the residence line of hotels that was bought and is now residence

in by marriott so if you see like any extended stay hotel, like he was one of the first guys doing that. If you see residence in by Marriott, that's Robert Brock. That snake. I hope he's burning him now. He started a war. You're an extended stay person.

Extended stay suites. You don't like residents Brand loyalty yeah Let me jam through my material On galaxy 5000 it's just two quick Clips it really really this film is Kind of a proto speed racer It's all it's a race and it's all digital

Environments but with The it the component Of there is There's some romance In this film There is So all of the characters that we know Except Pasquale is a human being

In this very disturbingly But the rest are all mascots And their mouths do move Like a human man? No head? Yeah he's just a guy With a mustache He looks like Captain Lou Playing Mario, right?

Exactly, yes So it's all really strange and disturbing They're getting ready for a race And they go to space and find a human Woman who Wants to mount Chucky Very badly And there's a lot of weird

Like Chuck and Jasper eyeing this woman as you know as she shades away and like like you know she bends over and picks up a handkerchief and they like ehhh. Where is this available? It's on YouTube. It's like porn. I think it was a prize.

I think is how they were originally giving it away. Cool. Yes. If you got enough tickets, you could watch Jasper ogle a human woman. It was playing in the dad room. Uncalaxy 5000, uncut in the dad room. Okay, guys, make sure your dumb wife's not around. Here's something for you. There's a tastefully cut one in the mom room.

Yeah, very fade to black. yeah yeah leave it to the imagination it's almost it's almost sexier that way to imagine uh but the chuck impression that i do is very much from this and this interaction where the human woman is making helen very jealous bye Bye, Chucky. I was going to see if you'd come to the soda shop with me after the qualifier tomorrow, but I didn't know that you were taken. Oh, you mean Helen? Oh, she's just a friend.

You know, she's like one of the guys. Right, Helen? She hates that. Oh, that is so many different levels of... What is that background music? They should have contacted me. Yeah, I'm sorry. I really should have prepared you for this.

Yeah, she thinks that they're dating. This is oddly akin to Mickey, Minnie, Kermit, Miss Piggy, where the terms are unclear, and the woman seems to want to be in the relationship much more than the man but that's like chuck doesn't even isn't remotely aware that they're an item no uh and it's just right in front of her like yeah look at that ass and and but then cut to later i'm doing everyone a favor by only playing these things these are kind of the only entertaining things in the Galaxy 5000. Wow.

But then there's a song where you get to go to the aforementioned soda shop, which is a giant space dome. And from there, Helen sings a song venting her frustrations. And here's a little taste of that. Why can't he see what real me is? No. He doesn't even know who I am. How could you say that I'm just one of the gods?

Oh, my God. They keep saying it over and over. This is her hopelessly devoted to you. Oh, very much so. Absolutely. That's totally what it is. Oh my god. How could you say

that I'm just one of the gods? I love that so much. What is that chain? What is that key chain? One of the gods. It's the phrasing. It's the phrasing you're talking about. I love that so much What is that chain? What is that key chain? What are they going to do? It's the phrasing It's the phrasing you're talking about In my eyes Let's Bechtel test this

Oh god There's not another woman for her to talk to Well I guess there's human women Yeah They're fighting about a man Now that I know this exists I'll do a full watch and report back If it does

You know it's a flawed metric. It's not perfect. Yes, the pining for it. And during that song, she's on top of a space dome watching Chuck fix a strangely proportioned computer car. So he doesn't even like come to bed with her or whatever. She's just like, I got to work on the car. Well, Jay Leno parallels are bound. Oh, no.

Poor Mavis singing this song. Great. Mavis is just watching this YouTube video every day crying. Why does he hang out with Kevin instead of me? I would be so on board for a Mavis musical. Oh, man. I want to touch his tonight show money. He says I can't.

Jay Leno is my college commencement speaker. Wow. That's great. His whole speech was Jay's top 10 Hollywood tips. It was a listicle. But he took the top 10. Yeah. It was flagrant.

Oh, my gosh. It was flagrant. That's insane. Wow. That's so great, though. That's the only way that this parallel doesn't work is that Chuck didn't rip off all of his material. But Rockafire was the rip off. Yeah.

But you might say they kind of did the more like creative kind of like. That's what the. Crazier stuff. Like you're really a fan. We haven't talked about that. That there are. There's the community that thinks it's blasphemous when we say. And I like the Rockafire characters.

But I have much more affection for Chuck E. Cheese. But I think that is a really aggressive statement to some fans of Rock of Fire who were like, they're by far the better band. Yeah, band-wise, people really stand for them. Yes. Well, I think that that was Aaron Vector's fault, though, wasn't it? Because he had an opportunity to include them. But then, I do remember remember some this might have been

in the documentary but he said something like but i saw such potential in that like he valued the ip over the invention and that was like his fatal mistake and so he's like these are gonna be movies so he why would i do this you know and then there were no no they just i mean the reason i value one over the other is just because I know them. I never got to really see the Rock and Fire explosion. Videos don't really tell you everything. As Doug himself tells us, you had to have seen it. You had to be there.

And he had to go see the band. Had to drive to rural Mississippi. That's amazing. Which I guess we all need to do. I guess we need to do it. But no, I think I might agree. I might like them more. I just didn't have them around.

They weren't there for me the way Chuck and Pasquale were. Yes, I agree. Yes. And there wasn't a purple character, which I always liked. I do. I do like purple. Although, yeah, Fats seems cool, too. Fats was probably cool.

In this Slate podcast that just came out, Aaron Vector himself is comparing the two. And he says something like it's it Truly is like you know because they're Similar bands but to me you'd have to be a Just you know total Dumb dummy idiot To think that the Chuck band is better But I don't know I guess he's

Like really he's yeah he thinks You are a moron if you like Munch's Make a band more I like that there's a Beatles stones thing about them. Yeah. Like, which band? It's very much an individual, a reflection of you, more so than of me. And apparently, far in the distance,

an MC5 going on. Oh, yeah. In its own little ecosystem. Strangely, like the little cult one. Yeah. It's like more off the beaten path Sure Those line up exactly

Yeah What do you got Mike? Because we're at risk of a three hour Oh yeah I mean there's Let me zoom through here So there's a lot of modern stuff We'll post

We'll post photos I do want to talk a little bit more about like Sally Sashay But that's okay I mean you can look her up And we'll do a bit more About like Sally Sashay But that's okay I mean you can look her up And we'll do a full Character study Of Sally Sashay later Wow

She's the skunk You know what I'll read her bio No I'm not I'm just saying Let's be done Before you Yeah yeah

That's fair An hour and a half No I understand She was often She was often She was often Called the beauty From Biloxi

And she was also Dubbed the disco skunk The character often The character often Poked fun at her perfume And She was confused at how someone who would make Your ears feel so good but can make your nose Feel so bad

Sally was rather sassy and wouldn't bite back at Chuck E. Cheese's insults and defend her singing Again this is what I'm saying Why isn't Sally Sashay in the mix Now I feel like she's the more complex Female character I completely agree

She sounds like she's got more agency than poor Helen Yes poor Helen How could you say I have no agency It's more like Mae West kind of like Yeah Madam Oink

The piggy from Paris She was a guest star She was sultry and spoke in a thick French accent She was in the frame right Yes Also apparently Jasper flirted heavily With all of these Yes

Foxy Colleen The Irish Lassie She was in multiple show tapes She was sweet in nature And was known for singing traditional Irish Irish folk songs This is So much erasure taking place

All the Male Band members get to stay Ridiculous I guess that's a point against the Rockafire explosion. If they retrofitted everything, it seems like Chuck E. Cheese has had a wealth of female

characters to pull from, but only one robot with titties. Is that why they had to pick Helen? Maybe it's a practical reason. Yeah, maybe so. Because there were not female robot bodies?

But the original Helen, if you look up on one of these sites, now I understand the name. Helen Henney was clearly supposed to be a play on Helen Reddy. Right. Because she was a real folk singer. She was much skinnier and long, hippie hair so she may have been like more of a joan baez or something i don't i don't know i don't know what she was like what she's saying about but i think she may have been a little more like thoughtful poetic that

was the idea she was a yeah like joni mitchell or something yeah i think so and there was that one summer where helen sang the it don Worry Me song from the end of Nashville. And everyone's screaming about who fired the gun? God. I would like to. I would love to program. I will say I do know that reference. You do know that reference.

I know you do. I know you have that movie. I would love to program the Chuck E. Cheese robots To sing the songs from Robert Altman's Nashville If you bought the band If I bought the band Side note really fast also These are robots that never got built Who got left behind

Because clearly if Helen Henney was a parody of Helen Reddy I think they were going to make that more of a thing That the guest stars would be a play on a real singer that you know Always current, that CEC That more of a thing that the guest stars would be a play on a real singer that you know. Always current, that CEC. And who could be more current in 1977 than Elkton John and Glen Camel. That's good. I like that. I hear that new Bruce Springsteen record is real heavily Glen Camel.

It's a lot of same song. Glen Camel, yeah. Yeah heavily Glen Camel. It's a lot of same song. Glen Camel, yeah. Yeah, Glen Camel. Yeah. Bruce Skunkstein. Yeah, sure. And there's no pictures of those. No, those never got built.

Those never existed. There was like a PR material saying Glen Camel is coming. That's, oh, what a letdown. Imagine going back being like any day now, Glen Camel is coming. A child is calling the restaurant like, hey, what a letdown. Imagine going back being like, any day now, Glen Camel. A child is calling the restaurant. Like, hey, is he, is Glen there? The us of 1977. That sounds like it would be like, if they did like one of the live characters, that

would be a two person suit to Glen Camel. Probably. One person would have to be his ass. Gary lifting that hump. ass yeah for sure so yeah as I was saying before the current Chucky YouTube is very active yes they posted two days ago five days ago five days ago is when that salad bar thing came out like that's new and they are very active there's these cute little I got push notifications there's these cute little uh puppets they use now and there's a lot of

there's a lot of first of all dances i won't we won't get into them but they make up a lot of dances i think that's just a prep for the for the new stuff yeah yeah they're trying to like i mean look and just the drawing they're all so much sexier than they used to be. This is like. I mean, they're like CGI now. CGI. Yeah, those are the CGI versions. Yeah, yeah.

Current Munch is real creepsville. I don't like. I don't like Current Munch at all. No. He's, boy, he's got the sonic teeth. Yeah. So, let me start. Current Munch is sliding into some DMs that he should not.

Some fan DMs. He's a little too horny Let me start Let me start with this So this is an example of One of my favorite new Chuck E. Cheese music videos This is called Rockin' Robot

And Chuck Look at the outfit Chuck is wearing. Someone describe it. It's like a big, it's like an open red hoodie and a chain. Was there a style equivalent? Yeah, I'm trying to think how you would describe it. It's like a sleeveless sweatshirt. I'm ready to get into, I mean, I feel like this is almost an attempt at some sort of

hype beast aesthetic for Chuck. Which I'm ready for. It's a good next evolution. So this is a taste of what they're doing now. He does have that Xan on his. He just decided he didn't want to go to school anymore. All he wanted to do was build a robot. Which sounds pretty cool, but there's

much more to the story. Listen, I'll tell you about this kid that said, I am through. No longer writing. This place called school is a waste of my time and it makes me sick. I've had enough reading, writing, and arithmetic. His parents said, no, you've got to learn. Grow up big, get a job, and bring your earn earn. They'd scratch their heads, they'd get him not. But all he wants to do is build a rocket robot. This is like some Silicon Valley pro-stem bullshit. This would inspire a young Aaron Fector today. Tomorrow's Aaron Fector.

A kid told his dad, not all school is bad real quick to when the robot gets built in this video. And you'll have, we'll link to this video. And oh, there it is. And the robot is terrifying. So I'll fast forward here. He's playing air guitar. Or something. Do you think he dabs?

Whoa! This robot has titties too! He kind of looks like the fish from The Shape of Water. Well, like with a tic-tac for a head. I do like the

skee-board solo. No, this is so good. Cause that's it, son. I do like the keyboard solo. No, this is some good... I think that his dad is like 25. Yeah. down the business to learn everything he can so he can build things. Why did this little boy give the robot such a sculpted chest? I don't know. Again, surely tomorrow's Eric Becker. The parents are really proud.

Chuck E. Cheese used to encourage you to go into the career of being a dirtbag entertainer performing for kicks. Yeah. Rent a cabaret. I kind of like the Chuck E. Cheese YouTube channel. I like it.

I do too. I like it too. They're churning out content all the damn time. Yeah. It's a fun thing to wake up to. There's a lot. You'll watch new ones as they. Do you recall any you've

seen lately not all of them they're they're doing some like videos with helen they'll make comedy videos with pasquale where establishing shot the laffaroni pasquale is always headlining and he'll tell pizza buns i like i mostly watch the pasquale videos there's uh there's a rip off of Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy with Munch. Which I don't love. Which is a weird reference to be making at this point in time. There's a show loop from a few years ago with a Don Pardo

impression introducing Pasquale pea pizza! Pea pie plates. Pie plates. I want to make sure you have it right new blood in the writing room yeah um so yeah so there's an l but that that is not rock and roll but does not appear on the new album okay okay um which is funny because i'm looking at my apple music in the first two it's prince's originals then the munch's's Make Believe Band. Songs in the Key of E?

Yeah, okay, like Chuck E. Cheese. Of Entertainment. Yeah, yeah. That's Mike in a Nutshell. If somebody needed to, like, just found your phone and needed to write a report about you. Yep. Oh, the third thing is Patton's Greatest Speeches. Very strange.

Very strange. Patton. All right, so you'll notice, like, on this, I won't play all the songs, but a lot of the songs are parody or inspired by like, let me get here. Don't stop until you get enough, seemingly. And then the chorus is very much like thrillers. Like it's clearly. Michael Jackson is not canceled in the Chuck E. Cheese.

No. It's too hard to do. But this song is called Let's Have a Party. This is what Timberlake does. This pastiche. Yeah. With Bowling for Soup. Is he still the singer? Of the Chucky?

Yeah, he's been here about 10 years. Or maybe a little less. Oh, they put us in the restaurant all the time. Me day. And then we have Me and My Friends. Oh, hey, this is familiar. The blues. Oh, shit. They even do the ding I mean this is great I love this

I'd rather listen to this than Fucking kids bop where they Like actually they take the real song Right ripping it off but they have it Sung by there's some innovation here Yeah Helen has still make it its own thing yeah helen has uncle helen's game in time oh game in time yeah i've seen that video i'm about to get today's high score oh wow you're doing great yeah yeah if helen's not hungry i'll eat hers there's a lot of

don't worry munch kind did a lot of... Don't worry. Munchkind did a lot with like, are you not going to eat your pizza? Right, another, yeah, the dumb spin. This is kind of good. What? What? Did you have sex with her? I got this in me I guess this is in me this is it's always

it's always a good time by Owl City yeah yeah yeah it's always a good time wow

it sure is so they got that so now I like most of this album is there one song I might call problematic oh no yes it wouldn't be this has been a problematic I like most of this album Is there one song I might Call problematic

Yes This has been a problematic episode It's called Dad Try to Order A Third It's not so Bad but maybe I mean you tell me You tell me And you'll know

You'll know exactly Dad brought nips to the restaurant. Let's go to the dad room. It's called dad room. Mom's crossing the wood bridge. I won't even say. Well, I will say it. It's called Another Chucky Day.

So here we go. Don't listen. No! Oh my God. That kind of problematic. No way. Wait till you hear it. Well, it's a brand new day and the sun is out shining.

Birds are chirping, everything is fine. And as I open up my eyes, I just gotta say, I got the feeling that it's gonna be another chunky day. Say my head on back down. I won't stay in bed. But I found that I just can't dally as my day begins. I got to be a Chucky Jesus hanging with my friends. Hop out of bed like a kangaroo.

I just may get through all the morning things I got to do. I brush my teeth till I get them both shiny. Even soaking in the bathtub is where you're going to find me. And not his call ultimately Not the night business Pizza was the case they gave him And the next thing you know I got to go Because I

Chucky cheeses with my friends Where the fun just never ends Cause it's another Chucky day You never did another Chucky day I would love to see Chucky The guy from Bowling for Soups It's Riz really the one. He could have

gotten in there and said I'm gonna pass on that one. Yeah. I mean and now try listening to that one Bowling for Soups song after like hearing any of these Chucky videos it's like so him. It's wild. Right. He's barely changing his voice. Right.

Oh, he was kind of whiny already. Springsteen, Nirvana. Oh, they were that song. Or Madonna. Yeah, that was him. That's like a cousin of that Boys of Summer song. Yeah. Ironic list.

Right. Eesh. So there is another Chucky day. La-di-da-di. Chuck likes to party. I have some bad news, too. Chucky is canceled. Pasquale, unfortunately, the famous videos where Pasquale teaches you how to make pizza

were filmed at the Chucky Cheese location in Texas in a town known as White Settlement, Texas. No. White Settlement, Texas. God. I did not change that name in the not. I don't know. Has that been changed maybe by now? Yeah, let me look

that up. Yeah, a bit on that though. I've got to roll over to White Settle Man. Laura Ingram just like nodding her head like, this is good. This is tight. No, it's still, oh my goodness.

It's still a city in Texas. Jesus. Northwest suburb. Well, we ended on a dark note, I guess.. Still a city in Texas. Jesus. Northwest suburb. Well, we ended on a dark note, I guess. Well, so. We can talk about the fights. We can talk about all the fights that happened there. One of my favorite facts about Chuck E. Cheese I learned, Chuck E. only went non-smoking in 1993, which I guess is about when most restaurants did.

But in a corporate history, it yeah they did see a drop in business i guess i think everywhere was slowly starting to go and everywhere did see a drop in business and then rebound it but that was also made me laugh because that the same year they went non-smoking was also the year they introduced kid check which is the black light the hand stamp where they stamp the kids hands and the parents hands and they have to match before you can leave which is there to this day which is there to this day don't worry about it if you're a lone adult you don't no need to get stamped you just get a stamp for fun yeah yeah i yikes um i just i like that if you type Chuck E. Cheese into YouTube, you get current cute puppet videos about building robots that are a little well done.

You also get bizarre charisma-free training videos from 1991. You also get some of the scariest fights ever witnessed on camera. It's such a wide breadth of content the one i have so many clips from the fights in march a fight at a pittsburgh chucky cheese i don't know what year it was chucky cheese involved up to 50 people after an argument between a one-year-old's parents escalated there's only so many people inside of chucky cheese at any given time which means the one-year-old could have gotten involved don't talk to my parents like that motherfucker sprayed milk in my eyes you're trash

it's like hair yankings that are so like the fights get bonkers and another chucky cheese in brookfield wisconsin two women were arrested following a mass brawl Involving 20 people on July 27th The brawl was sparked, according to the police By one child taking too long To choose a toy Wow I don't know

The Galaxy 5000 doesn't look good to me It looks like it might be a problematic film It might be a pornographic Wow But then you have to, with these fights Keep in mind that as It looks like it might be a problematic film. It might be a pornographic. Wow. But then you have to, with these fights, keep in mind that as 50 people are all fighting and deep in the background, the trusty Munch's Make Believe band is performing like none of it's happening. It's like the Titanic is sinking and the band plays along.

They're bar band veterans. They've seen everything. They don't care. They're not even... Especially band veterans they've seen everything They don't care they're not even Especially the Vegas ones I don't know that like good wifi is gonna The idea of like Suburban parents just Begrudgingly sitting there with a

Strong wifi connection on Instagram Just like getting mad at their Neighbors like I can't believe They got a boat like Getting gassed up At like whatever suburban parents Do on the internet AOC said what

I gotta go to Nextdoor I gotta do some posts on Nextdoor and Citizen There was This is the last one I want to read There was an ABC Nightline story about it And it said it had become Chuck E. Cheese had become a hot spot for violent brawls Between adults

And they happened mostly at birthday parties Police had been called to one location in Pennsylvania 17 times in 18 months Yet Brockton gets the rap As the rough area It's ridiculous Bring back the Brockton Chuck E. Cheese Bring back Whitey Bulger

At least stuff was organized Yeah let's back Whitey Bulger At least stuff was organized Yeah, let's bring Whitey Bulger back to life Let's do it Rocky Marciano only fought when the bell rang Now some towns are asking Chuck E. Cheese To step into the ring Amid pressure from local politicians Some Chuck E. Cheeses have stopped serving alcohol

And added security guards who carry pistols. You have to have an armed man. Or woman. Arm the bot. Arm the bot. He's from the sky. You're going to fight me here. I'm going to give you some lead.

Hot lead. Arm the walk around Chuck. He's, arm the walk-around Chuck. He's got a little gun in his boot. Oh, I wonder if they have... Okay. How surprised would you be if the walk-around Chuck had like a knife? Not at all. I would not be surprised if they had a knife for their own safety.

What if he used it like to cut pizza also? Yeah. Oh, that's the that's yeah it's a pocket knife but it says pizza on it so it never falls out for pizza and for nothing else yeah yeah that's a fine but like walk around chucky doing that like fake you know would do the split sometimes do the like almost split yeah in those videos just like doing the split and their gun goes off my favorite part of the walk around chucky is if you watch you know because he'll come out once every like 15 minutes or something i'll count down to it in the restaurant he'll come out he'll do his bit

children will chase him around the restaurant and then he'll you know i like the two seconds that chucky thinks that he's no longer inside of the people and he drops the act and you see the shoulders fall and you just see someone like yeah go back to just take the head off for 10 minutes wait anytime anytime you see like a performer switch i that's my favorite thing i'll never forget the the time i saw uh in storyland in new hampshire when i was little uh cinderella on a smoke break and that like fucked me up oh yeah that's yeah and my mom was like she's just like me like she was really trying to be like she smokes misty menthol 120s as well oh man she's mommy. You can trust her. Yeah.

Just to give everyone a heads up, if you were wondering, are there posts of concealed carry advocates mad that Chucky says, please no weapons in our store? The answer is yes. Oh, yikes. Good lord. A right unexercised is a right denied. Says this one. Says Munch.

A right unexercised. Here's a news story on guns.com. No! Some guy just pumping their fists a decade ago going like, yes got the i got guns.com yes for more information about my thoughts about freedoms and liberty uh wow yeah i don't know what a place what an evolution the pizza wars came and went Before any of us were born And now

We're left with just one hub For hair pulling And gun violence and inedible food I wonder do we think there could be Another pizza war Like very famously Professional wrestling used to have Monday night wars and now there's a new company

That's going to challenge them Very soon and there's going to challenge them very soon. And there's going to be more war. Like, wars are great when they're not real wars. Sure. Yeah. Business wars are fun to watch because the only losers are people who have money anyways. Yeah.

So, it doesn't matter. Low stakes. Yeah. I would love for there to be more Pizza Wars. I feel like if there was like a very modern version of Chuck E. Cheese. Yes. It would be cool. Like if they made it like a not laser taggy, but like they have all those VR experiences now.

Yeah. Or something like that. Gaming arena is a phrase I've heard a lot lately. What does that mean? I don't, I'm afraid to inquire more. Dave and Buster's has been around for a long time. Obviously, that's the adult version of it, but there's got to be some way

to do a more modern version for more kids. Well, if we also, it'd be great if there was a re-schism and like we start, if we became Chuck E. Chai's franchisees and switched it back to the bowler hat and he's a rat now. And then that grew and other people were with us and others were against us.

But there's another some of the Chuck E. Cheese is all split. All press is good press. Yeah. Are you a gun Chuck E. Cheese or not? Well, we'll have to be a gun Chuck E. Cheese, I think, because we'll just have to get more people in and that'll be at a track. That'll be part of it. Tiptheg bring your gun put it on the table we don't care uh-huh yeah rick rath's got four of them and then we will just go against the corporate mandate and change all the things and we can bring back the scum what's her name sashay

skunk oh sally sashay sally sashay thank you yeah absolutely We can start throwing the old Guy beach bowsers are back Yeah if we round up all the like new The animatronic people and get let's get Fector back on board you're back in Hey storming the country company He's still in Florida with the animatronics And now he helps throw

He is a thriving YouTube Channel and he Has he lets people do birthday parties. Kids from Orlando can do five nights at Freddy's themed birthday parties at the haunted animatronics factory. Oh, yes. That was a big resurgence for them was Five Nights for Freddy. Yeah.

A big hit. I don't know if that movie is actually going to happen or not, but I feel like the animatronic, they will rue the day the animatronics left if that ever worked out right yeah they'll be so relevant again yeah and aaron's factory is the place to make it i mean it is pretty much doing fine except when everything exploded because he was inventing a experimental fuel called Carbohydrillion. That sounds like Marvel. Yeah, yeah. Throw some

scary words together. Stan Lee invented Carbohydrillion. Write it down. It's got to be printed an hour ago. There's a lot of, there's talk now, there's been talk, but there's now another article a round of articles about toys r us coming back oh but there's a little talk yeah already i mean

everything is just a big shell game toys r us basically bane capital saddled it with so much debt even though it was making money it couldn't pay off of its debt and then everybody from bane capital just made a ton of money But then they still own everything And they just could It's just they're waiting for the right time to go back So they didn't lose so much money It's all just a

Everyone's a big crook So nobody ever lost Love or faith in Jeffrey? No people love Jeffrey The only people that got hurt were the employees of Toys R Us Right okay The people in charge all made a lot of money Great yeah yeah it sucks

But anyway they're talking about bringing Toys R Us back which I think it will They've already rebranded as Jeffrey's Toy Box and there's Weird kiosks in Kroger's So like what they're just already Trying to get some money. So you will come upon,

I don't think any out here maybe, but in the Midwest, you'll just see a kiosk that says Jeffrey's toy box and a Kroger. And there's just some random toys. Just codes for Fortnite skins? Yeah, maybe. But they're talking about like bringing stores back now.

They're going to, I forget, there's a decent amount. They're talking like maybe by the end of the year which i don't know if that'll happen but they're talking about like more of a kid environment play area birthday party thing which is something they did but feel like more of when we were kids yeah so it's like man come on toys are us if you really want to get back in the game and win us back over let's get get a Jeffrey robot and some of his friends that we may never have heard of before.

That's what I'm saying. Ooh, that would be so great. Yeah. And booze and guns. And booze and guns. Let us drink in a Toys R Us. Like a Whole Foods, you can take a glass of wine. Toys R Us on this Newsmax article complaining about places that don't allow you guns.

Toys R Us right above Chuck E. Cheese. Wow. Wild. Alright. No more trampling on liberties. That's the way of the future. This was, boy, this was everything I wanted a Chuck E. Cheese episode to be.

So thank you so much Jamie Loftus. You survived Podcast The Ride. Oh, thank you. Yes, thank you. And thanks for like, you know, all your articles on it are great and so fun to talk to you about all this stuff. Anything that makes it feel worth it. Your dark time, the dark days of 2016-17 now results in a very dark podcast. Hey, let's exit through the gift shop.

Is there anything you'd like to plug? Oh, you can listen to the Bechdel cast every Thursday. That's on iHeartRadio. It's a feminist movie podcast I host with my friend Caitlin Durante. If you happen to live in Scotland, you should come see my show at Edinburgh Fringe this summer. Oh, yeah. And yeah, that's it great thank you for having me

you're gonna be a star awesome yeah well thanks so much and you can find us go to twitter once again hashtag Chucky Covers I'd really like to see some of those subscribe to the second gate at patreon.com slash podcast the ride where I can only imagine

there will be a lot more content to come. Oh my God. Because it's a, it's, I mean, this could be its own podcast. The four little shavers episode alone. Wow. My opus. All the Nolans. All the Nolans.

So they each get their own. And yeah, we got t-shirts on TeePublic Check us out on Instagram Follow at Topical Genie Follow at Topical Genie We can I set up at If you haven't found it already

Follow at ET goodbye And ET will say goodbye to you And That's not enough topical g goblin the g is gonna be yeah the g is gonna be hard two g's in a row yeah my god my goal is for us to end up with the longest plug list in all of podcasting like by the end of it you need to follow 40 things for it to be as dense and confusing as the as showbiz pizza place versus pizza time theater um we're hoping to open the podcast time theater i've got a bunch of check out est

check out i i have the rights to nexium now i'm rebooting nexium but it's gonna be cool it's gonna you're in charge now yeah i'm in charge now it's gonna be more dance floors. It was really a leadership issue. It was a leadership issue. Studio N is coming. You're plenty charismatic. I'll get a brand of you any day. It'll be a me animatronic and then quickly a dance floor and puppets. All right. Then follow Vanguard,

a.k.a. Jason Sheridan. Hey, that's it. Thanks. What a blast. See ya. See ya later. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson,

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