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Chuck E. Cheese's animatronics band bows out
- tracerbulletx 2y agoAnybody vaguely interested in this story would probably enjoy this documentary about the the direct ancestor of this band. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTmhS6hcY-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTmhS6hcY-A
- sitkack 2y agoLet this be a warning in what your children get exposed to, they could be making a documentary in their 30s or 40s. /s These kids had an existential experience triggered by animatronic band. It was sweet to see how honest they were.
- Triphibian 2y agoI hope I live to see an earnestly made Skibidi Toilet documentary.
- uncertainrhymes 2y agoAlso worth listening to this excellent podcast about the two competing pizza-animatronic chains. The history is bizarre -- they were meant to make an 'arcade' feel less like a place for delinquents, and give the parents a chance to drink and watch the 'show'. https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2019/06/decoder-ring-explores-the-war-between-chuck-e-cheeses-and-showbiz-pizza-place-and-the-fate-of-their-animatronic-characters-including-the-king https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2019/06/decoder-ring...
- prettyStandard 2y agoI'm getting some real country bear jamboree vibes from that bear.
- Jgrubb 2y ago...which, my wife tells me, has also seen an overhaul lately.
- crooked-v 2y agoYeah, the updated version is basically a jukebox of modern pop and Disney songs with some light 'country' gilding. But, they did do a substantial refurb and upgrade of the animatronics themselves, which are working better than they have in a long time.
- Isamu 2y agoEasily the worst pizza I’ve ever eaten anywhere, the poorest quality control ever. But the kids had fun.
- notyourwork 2y agoNot sure why there would be any surprise. They aren’t in the pizza business. They are in the waste children’s time business.
- sokoloff 2y agoNate Bargatze has a pretty good bit on Chuck E Cheese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHrcGFKgWGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHrcGFKgWGY
- dannyphantom 2y agoI was probably around ~5(ish) years old when I went to Chuck E. Cheese for a birthday party; distinctly remember disliking the pizza (and cheese, by extension) so much that I thought I *hated* pizza altogether until I was ~16(ish) and started working at a local pizza place in town called Valeos where we'd get a free 16in to take home after every shift. I still use their sauce recipe to this day it's literally so good! At the time, I think a friends mom [jokingly] said the pizza was 'cardboard' and I began crying as I genuinely believed it was actual cardboard
- irrational 2y agoAre you able or willing to share the sauce recipe?
- nvahalik 2y agoTIL that Nolan Bushnell, of Atari, started Chuck E. Cheese!
- shagie 2y agoChuck E. Cheese’s, Silicon Valley Startup (2013) 122 points by duck on Jan 22, 2017 - 14 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453427 https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/chuck-e-cheeses-silicon-valley-startup-the-origins-of-the-best-pizza-chain-ever/277869/?single_page=true https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/chuck... http://web.archive.org/web/20170125082102/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/chuck-e-cheeses-silicon-valley-startup-the-origins-of-the-best-pizza-chain-ever/277869/?single_page=true http://web.archive.org/web/20170125082102/https://www.theatl... There's a lot of neat stuff back in https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Chuck+E https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Chuck+E
- lordfrito 2y agoIt might have been Nolan's idea, but the first Chuck E. Cheese was actually created, operated, and owned by Atari. Nolan wanted Atari to have a place to operate and profit from the arcade machines they built. But the engineering work, marketing etc. was all done by Atari employees. When Warner Communications bought Atari from Nolan, they really didn't want the restaurant. So Nolan bought it from them, took it private, and expanded it.
- otterley 2y agoAnd creator of the Pet Rock!
- pjot 2y agoFor weeks after my grandmother brought me to a Chuck E. Cheese for the first (only) time, I had recurring nightmares fueled by this band.
- 9x39 2y agoNo kidding. I peeked behind a literal curtain to see the 'band' cold, dead, and in various states of disrepair on a dark stage at a Chuck E Cheese when I was maybe 8 y/o. I still remember being horrified by the mechanical eyes of a particular animatron without any of the 'fur' on the face. Never wanted to go back for my birthday, let's say.
- bisby 2y agohttps://www.sj-r.com/story/news/local/2024/05/28/illinois-chuck-e-cheese-to-have-one-of-5-animatronics-bands-in-the-us/73840308007/ https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/local/2024/05/28/illinois-ch... Apparently 5 stores nationwide are being allowed to keep the animatronics.
- cgriswald 2y agoFor the curious, they are: Los Angeles, CA; Nanuet, NY; Springfield, IL; Pineville, NC; and Hicksville, NY.
- fullshark 2y agoI’ll take this opportunity to plug the YouTube videos of animatronics super fan Jenny Nicholson. Her videos on the Star Wars hotel: https://youtu.be/T0CpOYZZZW4?si=8bzPpb_9kPaTsTto https://youtu.be/T0CpOYZZZW4?si=8bzPpb_9kPaTsTto and the theme park Evermore: https://youtu.be/L9OhTB5eBqQ?si=utwaOeBFRpOQMStx https://youtu.be/L9OhTB5eBqQ?si=utwaOeBFRpOQMStx are peak YouTube content.
- ClassyJacket 2y agoJenny Nicholson is one of the best YouTubers, incredibly thorough research, and one of the funniest people on the platform. I just wish she posted more.
- simonw 2y agoHer Star Wars hotel video was effectively just her talking to a camera for four hours (2 hours at 2x speed), occasionally sharing a photo or clip, and somehow it was genuinely compelling viewing. Really impressive.
- Sebb767 2y ago> (2 hours at 2x speed) This is such a strange note. It's far too obvious to be meant as a genuine hint, but a snide remark would not fit your otherwise positive comment. Genuine question, why did you put this in?
- aoanevdus 2y agoSome people watch/listen to everything in sped up mode. It may not be intended as a slight against the content.
- marcellus23 2y agoMaybe he just included it because that's how fast he watched it? Doesn't have to have a purpose beyond informational.
- 2y ago
- debugnik 2y agoI would have expected animatronics to become more popular after Five Nights at Freddy's, not less. But I've never seen a store with animatronics in my country, so I don't really know how kids feel about them.
- Uehreka 2y agoIdk, parents took kids to Chuck E. Cheese for the (at the time seemingly) wholesome appeal. Having an extremely popular and visible IP point out how creepy animatronic animals are is not gonna make parents want to take their kids to Chuck E. Cheese more. Nobody wants to take their kids to an “edgy food and entertainment place”, that’s not a thing. I think this is a great textbook example of “There is such a thing as bad publicity.”
- paulryanrogers 2y agoDave and Buster's is an edgy arcade+alcohol place that plenty of people brings kids to. I took some friends who were 19 and 20 and we were turned away at the door.
- parpfish 2y agonow's their chance to make dave and buster animatronics. i'm thinking they could be a statler/waldorff style hecklers making fun of the patrons.
- mrsilencedogood 2y ago"Nobody wants to take their kids to an “edgy food and entertainment place”," This is 100% wrong though, my 5 year old is in kindergarten and they LOVED FNAF. Like, seriously a lot. I've done my fair share of Chuck E Cheese birthday parties - the place near me already doesn't have animatronics etc and is virtually unrecognizable by people who knew it in the 90s. It's literally just a single big room with 5 very long tables to host 3-5 birthday parties concurrently, taking up about 40% of the space. Then there's a smallish trampoline area (which requires paying an additional $10 or $15 or somesuch amount) comprising 10% or so, then the other 50% is just arcade machines laid out in a grid that take a card scan instead of coins, and pay out non-tangible credits instead of physical tickets. So I assume that's the future here - take a low-rent semi-large space off a side-street of a main road, fill it with low-operating-cost stuff, and let it collect revenue. Pretty sensible business, and also utterly soulless and has absolutely no cultural or sticking power. I really cannot believe FNAF hasn't done some kind of play here - you could absolutely charge 2-4x the price of Chuck E Cheese's parties for a FNAF-themed "what-a-6-year-old-calls-scary" birthday party / event space and no kid would ever go to Chuck E Cheese ever again. I'm guessing it's because Chuck E Cheese is busy being mediocre and barely existing, and why do physical stuff when you can make millions off selling plushies and funkos. So I really think this is just a case of capitalism being too lazy and profit-motivated to bother with providing something people - kids - would definitely want.
- wileydragonfly 2y agoToday you learned his name is “Charles Entertainment Cheese.”
- bozhark 2y ago"Sharl" needs to focus on his driving
- technothrasher 2y agoIf you're talking about Sharl l'éclair, he drove just fine yesterday.
- Uehreka 2y agoI’d heard this fact before, it was honestly kind of obnoxious how the writer kept wanting to remind us how much they also know this fact.
- rglover 2y ago"My government name is Charles Entertainment Cheese, but people on the street call me Chuck E. Cheese."
- reginald78 2y agoWild me I just realized I have always been reading the name as Chunk E. Cheese.
- astura 2y agoNo I didn't, it's already a widely known fact and it was even mentioned on Jeopardy! A week or two ago. Edit: here's the Jeopardy! clip, everyone got the question right: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IJ6Ra54q3wA https://youtube.com/watch?v=IJ6Ra54q3wA
- knowsuchagency 2y agoThey're now working on Optimus
- api 2y agoThe unfortunately defunct podcast The Nonsense Bazaar has a hilarious and wonderful episode on the Chuck E Cheese saga: https://thenonsensebazaar.com/listen/131-chuck-e-cheese/ https://thenonsensebazaar.com/listen/131-chuck-e-cheese/
- doublerabbit 2y agoSurprised that no one mentioned that Chucky E Cheese also ran from floppy disks. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/01/chuck-e-cheese-still-uses-floppy-disks-in-2023-but-not-for-long/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/01/chuck...
- xrd 2y agoI went with my kids to a Chuck E Cheese party a few years back. It was the perfect encapsulation of modern American capitalism. As my kids milled about, suddenly the employees started chanting "Chuck E! Chuck E!" And, encouraging the kids to pump their arms in the air. My kids did this as I stood there and the horror crept over me. Then, Chuck E came out. My kids were putty in his hands at that point. He could have said "Now, turn to your dad and murder him. Don't think, just do it." And, they would have done that. Then, they ate extraordinarily crappy pizza. I did too. It was a coping mechanism for me, I'm not sure why my kids ate it. After that, they went into the arcade and were encouraged to "earn" tickets. Those tickets could be converted into cheap plastic toys that cost $0.10 to make in China. Earning 100 tickets would cost several dollars on a debit card. And, the conversion rate was 10000 tickets for that cheap plastic shit. It wasn't a good exchange rate. But, man, my kids were sucked in. It was a gorgeous example of American capitalism. I have to tip my hat to Chuck E. He's a maestro.
- echelon 2y agoIt's fun. They sell fun, and kids aren't going to view this though a philosophically deconstructive lens. Memories like these will last kids their lifetime. I certainly remember going when I was their age.
- bongodongobob 2y agoLighten up dude, sheesh.
- drivers99 2y agoOne could say the same back. It’s just Gen X dark humor, being sarcastic about whatever is popular. (I’m Gen X too btw.)
- bombcar 2y agoImagine buying the per play games and not just getting the minutes.
- Aeolun 2y agoI feel like they can easily make the stuff you get from these things at least marginally worth it and still make a ton of money. It'd at least make the adults feel a bit better, but somehow it always seems to be the first thing they try to save on. Then again, I find that I'm often the only one that has issues exchanging $20 for fifteen minutes of fun and a $0.1 toy.
- b112 2y agoA call out to Bruce the Moose.
- neom 2y agoBankrupt - Chuck E Cheese's is a great 30ish min doc I highly recommend, actually everything put out Bright Sun youtube is super good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbI3zOm2BkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbI3zOm2BkE
- analog31 2y agoI wonder how many punk bands will bid on the robots.
- wpietri 2y agoYou might appreciate this repurposing of some Chuck E Cheese robots: https://chicagoreader.com/blogs/how-logan-arcade-got-its-misfits-playing-robot-dogs/ https://chicagoreader.com/blogs/how-logan-arcade-got-its-mis...
- jihadjihad 2y agoGood riddance. I was always so creeped out by the band as a kid. Just hustle it up so I can get back to Skee-Ball and Smokin’ Token, sheesh!
- staplung 2y agoFollowing Dolli Dimples nightmare decent into booze and drugs and Jasper T. Jowls repeated arrests for excessive drooling, the wheels really came off. Pasqually ended up in an psych ward after an acute psychotic break, Crusty the Cat contracted rabies under mysterious circumstances, and Chuck himself has never been seen after his crypto pump and dump scheme.
- rectang 2y agoFrom a 1977 video embedded in the article: > Dolli Dimples, the singing hippopotamus, is powered by a computer system capable of handling 450 instructions per second.
- enos_feedler 2y ago“At the time, Atari was selling its arcade games for US $1,500 to $2,000 each, but the real money was in the $50,000 in coins that a game would take in over its lifetime” Has business changed since then? Surely Nvidia isn’t selling GPUs with such a low fixed up front price only for the hyperscalers to turn around and rent them out for all the profits. Am i missing something?
- dgfitz 2y agoSelling shovels?
- kmeisthax 2y agoIf you mean the arcade business, absolutely, operators have gone through several boom and bust cycles and the business is basically unrecognizable from what it was in the 80s and 90s. To bring this back to your analogy, imagine if Nvidia decided they were going to charge a $10/hr license fee on the driver software for datacenter-licensed GPUs. This business model is called revenue share licensing[0] and all the Japanese rhythm and fighting games (i.e. the ones that are actually games) moved to revshare over the last decade and change. Naturally, American operators[1] hate this, both because it makes the network a single point of failure and because they can't hold onto old versions of games during lean times. When DDR came back to US arcades, Dave & Busters (back when Round1 was a lot smaller than it is today) specifically demanded a perpetually licensed version of the game, which made upgrade kits a pain in the ass. A lot of Japanese arcade games don't actually get official US releases because of this, or they're just Round1 exclusives[2], despite the fact that there's a fairly big and dedicated American player base for rhythm games[3]. The irony is, revshare licensing would fix one of the other biggest fears American operators have about running rhythm games: ASCAP. When Guitar Hero got an arcade port, the collection societies started going after arcade operators that had bought the machines. I suppose the entire perpetual licensing business model that arcade machines used to use is not actually legally coherent[4], at least for games with licensed music in them. But having actual per-credit licensing attached to the machines would be an easy way to tell collection societies to fuck off, because they already got paid when you paid your revshare to the arcade manufacturer, and they can't sue you if you paid for your license. There's two other big metas in American arcades: - Redemption arcades, or the "child-friendly casino". Chuck E. Cheese was a pioneer in this particular kind of arcade brain rot and most American operators just run these kinds of games exclusively. Actually, Japan does this way worse than America does; pretty much every arcade in Japan will have an insanely large section of crane games, gamble-able horse racing simulators, or literal slot machines. It's just that Japan also isn't horribly underserved like the US market is. - Retro arcades, which run older perpetually licensed games, typically on a "pay for entry" basis. Problem is keeping all these old games in order; they don't make new parts for old games. You basically have to be an electronics restoration expert to run a retro arcade well; I suppose this is why 8-Bit Guy got into the business with Time Rift Arcade. [0] The arcade cabs are always-online; they will fail to start if they cannot connect to their central server. Alongside buying the cab, you also have to buy a VPN box for the manufacturer's online service and pay a monthly fee, per cab, for access to that service. The online service then tracks each credit played on the machine and charges you some fraction of a dollar per credit. [1] There's two exceptions: Hawaiian arcade operators (which have a steady stream of Japanese tourists) and Round1 (which is a Japanese arcade chain with US operations) [2] Round1 has an exclusive rhythm game called Music Diver which they operate in both their US and Japanese locations. In the US, Music Diver's right up front and gets a lot of casuals playing. In Japan, it's hidden in the back and there's no one playing. [3] EU/UK is somehow even worse, even though they have the urban infrastructure for arcades and we don't. Best they have is DDR A20 PLUS with eAmuse stripped out - reheated leftovers from the Dave & Busters / Round1 deal that fell through two years ago. [4] It's one thing for ActiVision to license a bunch of rock music and stick it in an arcade machine, but buying the cab doesn't exactly give you a license to publicly perform the game and the music attached to it. Sort of like how game streaming is technically illegal, even though everyone does it, and the game industry wants you to do it.
- mrandish 2y agoI guess it's nostalgic for some but even as a kid back when the chain first rolled out I recognized right away that the animatronics were low rent versions of earlier Disney animatronics that were much better (albeit, significantly more complex and thus more expensive). I guess if you're a toddler it's still a big, colorful, moving stuffed animal that talks, which might seem fascinating. But for an older kid it wasn't entertaining or engaging while the Disney animatronics still were. Reflecting now on why one worked on me and the other didn't, I think the lack of variable speed motion had a lot to do with it because ease-in/out can add so much life and expression.
- vtodekl 2y ago[dead]
- ginkgotree 2y agoMy question is: Where can I buy the animatronic band members after they are decommissioned?
- andirk 2y agoSince the name is/was Chuck E. Cheese's (possessive), should this article title be: "Chuck E. Cheese's's animatronics band bows out"?
- hoseja 2y agoInstead of leaning into the FNAF craze?
- latentsea 2y agoFNAF feels like something you want to view from far away through a screen and not actually live it. Having played FNAF I think the real thing would be less appealing than more.
- avikumar0594 2y ago[flagged]
- frognumber 2y agoPersonally, I think this is a dead-end business decision. I've seen this gamebook play out over and over. It rarely ends well. The problem is that in 2024, kids can play video games and watch stupid videos in the comfort of their own home. Perhaps screens beat animatronics, ball pits, and whatnot, but there's no competitive advantage over superior alternatives in the new space. Examples: - Book stores. Cut costs to compete with online sellers. Move more and more digitally. Have no upside over pure online stores. Keel over. - Radio Shack. Stop selling electronics components, and start targeting to the bigger market of cell phones. Have no competitive advantage over Best Buy or cell phones stores. Keel over. In those situations, it's better to either: * Shift business models (e.g. Radio Shack could become a very competitive makerspace, host kid afterschool programs, maker camps, and refocused on Raspberry PI, 3d printers, Micro:bits and similar). * Shrink the business to follow a declining market without taking on debt (Radio Shack couldn't support the number of stores it had, but it could very much have supported 1/5 of the stores) Both of those approaches usually require starting to adapt before the sky starts falling.
- BoxFour 2y ago> The problem is that in 2024, kids can play video games and watch stupid videos in the comfort of their own home I always thought of Chuck E. Cheese as being aimed at hosting larger children’s gatherings, freeing parents from concerns about space or catering. The video games would just be an extension of things they already want to do, but the draw is no cleanup/planning. Considering how curated children’s activities have become (no more "free range" children), and how expensive housing is (more renters, less likely to host a big bash), it could actually address a growing need. Whether it’s more attractive than booking a dedicated kids venue and just ordering pizza is open to debate.
- slumberlust 2y agoAnecdotal, but all the 2-9 year olds who's party's we attend are at similar places to what you describe, but specifically NOT ever Chuck E. Cheese. It's usually a bouncy place, or dave and busters, or a special rental party place of some type.
- 2y ago
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoI'm firmly in the "creepy as hell" camp. I only was compelled to attend such a horror-show once or twice, and left early each time.
- shemnon42 2y agoIt's not about the stag show anymore, it's about the midway games that spew out tickets. A literal children's casino.
- low_tech_love 2y agoAs a programmer who refuses to use AI support in development, I feel like an animatronics character being phased out. :( The world used to love me…
- triyambakam 2y agoWhy do you refuse?
- keeganpoppen 2y agoI thoroughly enjoyed this article. I had no idea that Nolan Bushnell / Atari was behind the original Chuck E. Cheese, but in retrospect it makes so much sense. What an amazing playfulness and somewhat crazy thing for them to do-- i don't think having the kind of success Atari had was an accident when you read about visionary, long-term stuff like that (even if the venture itself didn't technically work out that well for Atari / Bushnell _this_ time...).
- bunderbunder 2y agoAt least in my area, Chuck E Cheese is experiencing stiff competition from places like ClimbZone, a kid-oriented climbing gym and ropes course, and Altitude, a trampoline park for kids. They all have the arcade, albeit in somewhat scaled back form. Their food offerings are vestigial. I've been to kids' birthday parties at all of these. Chuck E Cheese is the only one that doesn't have our kids asking to go back again on the ride home. They have a good time while they're there, but they don't perceive much "replay value". In light of that, this seems like a good move on Chuck E Cheese's part. They arguably can't completely get rid of the show component for brand identity reasons, but converting it to screens probably reduces their cost structure enormously. And it could free up some floor space, which would let them shift the focus toward physical play. That is something that has a lot more novelty value for kids nowadays than it did when I was growing up. I think probably because the availability situation has flip-flopped: they live in an ocean of high quality passive entertainment, but opportunities to jump and run with a crowd of other kids are becoming increasingly hard to come by. I still suspect it's too little too late though? Chuck E Cheese locations are physically too small to accommodate a really good indoor play space. They're typically in strip mall locations that don't offer the kind of floor and overhead space needed to install indoor play equipment that's up to modern standards for novelty.
- afavour 2y agoI can second this. Here in Brooklyn there was some big woop made about the local Chuck E Cheese getting a trampoline floor, seemingly a direct reaction to the arrival of these giant trampoline parks. We went to take a look and it was pretty sad, a tiny little area that had a time limit for each kid to manage demand. But like you say, they're stuck. There's a great (I mean, relatively speaking) trampoline park in the city but it's out in an industrial area where they could easily find a space the size of a football field. The Chuck E Cheese is in a shopping mall and clearly has no extra space to use.
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- conductr 2y ago
- astura 2y agoGood, they terrified me as a child. Really uncanny valley territory.
- lenerdenator 2y agoI mean, yeah, the animatronics are weird in today's age, but honestly, the whole premise is what does the chain's image in. Is it really anything other than chaos and sleaze distilled? You can have stoned 19-year-olds cavorting in the supply closet, drunken parents slugging it out at a birthday party, a man sneezing on a pizza he just baked, and a crying child defecating in the ball pit simultaneously. All against a hypnotic background of flashing lights and arcade sounds. This is a grotesquery, torn from the pages of Huxley. One can only imagine the Romans had a similar palace of decadence for children shortly before their collapse. No sane society would allow this to exist, let alone as a profitable enterprise. I know anglophone North America isn't sane, but isn't this a little too far, even for us?
- DiscourseFan 2y agoI remember when I went as a little kid the animatronics scared me so much I shit myself and I haven't been back since
- j_timberlake 2y agoDon't worry, if any of these android robotics companies actually succeed, Chuck will be back and livelier than ever.