Animatronics and pizza

Hell must have frozen over, because I am writing about ShowBiz Pizza. As a kid in the early 1990s, spending a birthday or two at a mall arcade blowing a pocket full of quarters on The Simpsons and Mortal Kombat was common. If you had even cooler parents, you had a birthday party at either Happy Joe’s or ShowBiz Pizza (and since Happy Joe’s is still around, we are excluding them for this story).

Most people know about Chuck E. Cheese’s with the pizza chain’s mascot being aimed toward kids ages 5-12. Thirty-three years ago, Chuck E. Cheese wasn’t the lead mascot, and he looked quite different than the kid-friendly mouse we now know. He was a gangster rat that smoked a cigar and might have sold your kids cigarettes in an alley. He had a New Jersey accent and was the master of ceremonies. He conducted puppet cabarets every eight minutes in middle-class, suburban establishments.

Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre started in 1977 with a location in San Jose, California, and was founded by Nolan Bushnell, who was a leader at Atari. The idea was to marry live entertainment, birthday parties and pizza (because it was considered the “most fun food to enjoy as a group”). How does a business provide affordable live entertainment every day and night? By using animatronic puppets that played pre-recorded music for nearly 10 hours a day. They included the games to keep children entertained while parents enjoyed alcoholic beverages. Seemed straight forward. I found an Australian news report from the late 1970s that described it as a place to enjoy a family night out without being bothered by the family. They also said their target demographic was young executive dads who suffered from YEG or “young executive guilt.” 

ShowBiz Pizza and Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre were two different businesses. Showbiz was owned by the Brock Hotel Corporation, which, at one point, owned the old Holiday Inn on Fleur Drive. Originally, Nolan Bushnell made an agreement with the Brock Hotel Corporation to have exclusive franchising rights for Pizza Time Theatres in 16 states across the Midwest and the southern United States. However, Brock discovered that Aaron Fechter, founder of Creative Engineering, Inc., was years ahead in the animatronics world and decided to break their agreement so they could open their own ShowBiz Pizza Place. They opened their first restaurant in March of 1980 in Kansas City, Missouri.

In 1981, Drake University’s basketball coach, Bob Ortegel, left coaching to become a vice president in charge of franchising ShowBiz Pizza. When he came on, there were only two in Iowa: West Des Moines and Davenport (16 total in the U.S.). In 1985, the original Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre filed for bankruptcy and was purchased by Brock, turning all the restaurants into ShowBiz Pizza Time.

Enter the ShowBiz Pizza I remember as a kid. The band on stage was The Rock-afire Explosion, which featured a bear named Billy Bob Brockali, Looney Bird, Dook LaRue, Fatz Geronimo, Beach Bear, Mitzi Mozzarella, Rolfe DeWolfe and Earl Schmerle. They would play the Kmart version of disco and some Frank Sinatra tunes. Rolfe would eventually retire and would be replaced by the gangster New Jersey rat, Chuck E. Cheese. The pizza was nothing to write home about, and, if I remember correctly, my parents felt the same way. But that wasn’t why people went there. The arcade games and the live shows were the draws.

By 1990, ShowBiz began shifting its branding to Chuck E. Cheese’s. The rebrand lost the original band, and even Chuck E. Cheese himself went from his gangster vest and cigar to the more kid-friendly design with a baseball cap, purple casual shirt and sneakers. I might have just been getting older, but I felt it was starting to exclude the entertainment adults enjoyed like drinking beer while a culturally inappropriate animatronic band played disco music.

Chuck E. Cheese was bought and sold several times throughout the 2000s. In April of 2024, the Chuck E. Cheese in Davenport permanently closed, leaving only the West Des Moines and Cedar Falls locations left in the state. 

“The Rock-afire Explosion” documentary was released in 2008, and Aaron Fechter still owns the rights to the animatronic band. In fact, there is a place called Animatronics Warehouse located in St. Joseph, Missouri, that features a fully functioning Rock-afire Explosion band. Private tours are available. ♦

Kristian Day is a filmmaker and writer based in Des Moines. He also hosts the syndicated Iowa Basement Tapes radio program on 98.9 FM KFMG. Instagram: @kristianday | Twitter: @kristianmday