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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of My Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show

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Speaker 1: that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating

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Speaker 1: facts and figures behind your favorite TV shows, movies, music,

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Speaker 1: and more. We are your two alarming yet avuncular animatronic

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Speaker 1: animals of anodyne apocryphile. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan

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Speaker 1: Runt in the arms race of alliterative intros, fired another

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Speaker 1: volley and Jordan's. Today we're doing a rare for us

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Speaker 1: return to the end More corner of the t m

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Speaker 1: I universe for a discussion of the uniquely American phenomenon

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Speaker 1: that merged the culinary, video game and plastic ballpit industries

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Speaker 1: and briefly revolutionized childcare as we knew it. That's right,

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Speaker 1: We're talking about Charles Entertainment Cheese, or as he's better known,

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Speaker 1: Chuck E. Cheese, the pizza rat and animatronic nightmare on

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Speaker 1: Canny Valley Horror Show. You know, he's called Charlie in

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Speaker 1: Australia because Chuck is so synonymous with vomit there. I

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Speaker 1: didn't know that. I did not know that, but you

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Speaker 1: know what I feel like, I always see maybe I'm

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Speaker 1: just imagining this, but the animatronic and cartoon versions of

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Speaker 1: Chuck e Chees giving the thumbs up, and in Australia

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Speaker 1: the thumbs up is basically the middle finger. So well,

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Speaker 1: Charles is what a little stinker he is in Australia,

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Speaker 1: he's got a little rat bastard. Um. You know, I

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Speaker 1: have such fond memories of attending birthday parties at the

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Speaker 1: Charles Central Pennsylvania abode and forming my lifelong attachments to

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Speaker 1: music and pizza and rats. I don't have any traumatic

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Speaker 1: memories from this. I but do you? I have very

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Speaker 1: little memories at all of this because I, um, my

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Speaker 1: hometown in Central my Stitusetts was very spoiled for wholesome activities.

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Speaker 1: Um against tiny, tiny New England town right come from.

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Speaker 1: I think we just got our second stoplight like a

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Speaker 1: few years ago. We didn't even have a grocery store

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Speaker 1: for a lot of my very early years. But we

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Speaker 1: had a full scale, hundred year old amusement park called

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Speaker 1: Whaleham Park, complete with water slow yes you've talked about

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Speaker 1: this before here. We had a drive in movie theater.

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Speaker 1: We had not one, but two bowling alleys. We had

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Speaker 1: a video arcade, and then a mall nearby that also

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Speaker 1: wasn't in town, but I had another video arcade too,

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Speaker 1: mini golf places, and a roller rink. All of these

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Speaker 1: were ten minutes from my house. Basically, um, exactly. None

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Speaker 1: of these are open anymore. The last of them, the

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Speaker 1: Bowling Alley, closed last year, which is you know, this

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Speaker 1: is where we punched in Joni Mitchell's laugh. Um paved

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Speaker 1: Big Gel Taxi corner. Yes, paved paradise, which in my

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Speaker 1: case was a combination bowling alley and mini golf and

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Speaker 1: put up I don't know what they put up, but anyway,

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Speaker 1: So yeah, whenever I tell my friends about the they're

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Speaker 1: always like, oh wow, and the one do you love

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Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties because that's basically when you grew

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Speaker 1: up And it's true. Um, so I really wasn't exposed

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Speaker 1: to the original pizza rat. The big corporate kid's birthday

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Speaker 1: emporium in my area at the time was called Discovery Zone.

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Speaker 1: You have Discovery zones, okay, well, no Chucky Cheese beat

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Speaker 1: Discovery Zone. Discovery Zone was a big everybody came at

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Speaker 1: Charles Man everyone there, you know, and and he killed

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Speaker 1: he crushed them all yeah, God, I mean rats, dude. Yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: Discovery Zone actually flowed has failed, and Charles hung on

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna call him Charles. Yeah, I mean it was funny.

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Speaker 1: Once all the mom and pop amusements in town started

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Speaker 1: shutting down. When I was in like high school, a

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Speaker 1: Chuck E Cheese did open in our local mall, but

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Speaker 1: I really only went in there when I was working

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Speaker 1: on like a babysitter and brought kids that I was

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Speaker 1: watching in there, and uh, yeah, I don't know. My

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Speaker 1: main thought, after years of going to all these kind

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Speaker 1: of rinky dink um places, was that Chuck E Cheese

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Speaker 1: has kind of seemed sort of souls soulless. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: thought it was a little soulas. And the pizzas real bad,

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Speaker 1: feel bad. And there's the whole rumor that they like

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Speaker 1: recycled pizza, yes, which has been debunked, thank you. But

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Speaker 1: if you look at the pizzas, like none of the

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Speaker 1: slices fit together, yeah, it looks like they're taken from

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Speaker 1: I sure. I mean, yes, there's a horrifying Uncanny Valley

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Speaker 1: aspect to any animatronic stuff, But you know, I hope

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Speaker 1: to disprove that assessment. With this episode, which shows how

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Speaker 1: much blood, sweat, and tears went into pizza. Wasn't animatronic,

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Speaker 1: High pizza was real, and none was all together. It's

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Speaker 1: not a circle. They're from different pies. Well. From the

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Speaker 1: company's roots in one of the most iconic video game

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Speaker 1: brands of all time, to the semi obscure Animatronics whiz

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Speaker 1: kid responsible for the famous robotic band who later blew

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Speaker 1: up a unk of his inventory trying to invent an

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Speaker 1: alternative cooking fuel, to the horrifying Lea dickenziean official backstory

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Speaker 1: of the rat. Here's everything you didn't know about Chuck

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Speaker 1: E Cheese. I never thought I would hear you could

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Speaker 1: say that it's never gonna get old. Uh. Any discussion

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Speaker 1: of Charles must begin with the man who birthed him,

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Speaker 1: Nolan K. Bushnell. Bushnell was born in Clearfield, Utah, to

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Speaker 1: a middle class family who are predictably members of the

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Speaker 1: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints a k.

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Speaker 1: The Mormons, and he bounced around Utah universities in the

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Speaker 1: early to mid sixties, eventually graduating with a bachelor's in

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Speaker 1: electrical engineering. As a young Mormon, Bushnell's dream is to

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Speaker 1: become an imagineer, Disney's catch all term for its theme

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Speaker 1: park designers and architects, and he worked at Lagoon Amusement Park,

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Speaker 1: about eighteen miles north of Salt Lake City to put

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Speaker 1: himself through college. He was made manager of the game's

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Speaker 1: department there and familiarized himself with the ins and outs

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Speaker 1: of both the earliest forms of arcade games and the

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Speaker 1: theme park business in general. But Bushnell up sticks from Utah,

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Speaker 1: moved with his first wife, Paula, and their two daughters

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Speaker 1: to California in nine to follow his bliss. This is

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Speaker 1: when we punch in uh fortunate song, or if you're

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Speaker 1: going as if well, we always punch in credence. That

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Speaker 1: just works for everything. Unable to get hired at Disney,

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Speaker 1: Bushnell took a job at a division of Ampex called

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Speaker 1: Video File in Santa Clara. He explained to Medium in eighteen,

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Speaker 1: I became infatuated with a game of Go, and we

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Speaker 1: drive to San Francisco every other weekend and spend basically

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Speaker 1: most of Sunday morning playing Go at the old Buddhist

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Speaker 1: church by Bush Street. Did you know Go? I don't

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Speaker 1: explain to me about Go. It's an old game from

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Speaker 1: Chinese antiquity, incredibly hard to play it. It almost looks

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Speaker 1: like checkers. Um you have black and white little um. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I've seen this and I think I've tried to play

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Speaker 1: it before. But it was very smart, smart, very hard.

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Speaker 1: But it had like a resurgence in the sixties as

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Speaker 1: part of you know, anything that was from Eastern cultures

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Speaker 1: was examined in California around that time, and it was

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Speaker 1: like a real like hippie thing. Yeah, yeah, that's scans.

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Speaker 1: And while at one of these Sunday morning go marathons,

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Speaker 1: Bushnell met a guy who worked at the Stanford Artificial

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Speaker 1: Intelligence Lab and he said to medium. One day we

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Speaker 1: got to talking and he said, have you ever heard

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Speaker 1: of Space War? I was like space War. The first

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Speaker 1: time I played Space War was at the University of

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Speaker 1: Utah in n Or nineteen sixty six. We left and

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Speaker 1: drove up to the Artificial Intelligence Lab and played until

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Speaker 1: all hours of the night. Space War to the Unfamiliar

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Speaker 1: is a space combat video game developed in two and

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Speaker 1: written for the newly installed d E C P d

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Speaker 1: P one computer at m I T. It was a

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Speaker 1: huge hit in the tight knit early programming community of

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Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, and since its code was in the

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Speaker 1: public domain, was widely recreated on other systems, and so

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Speaker 1: bush now seeking to recreate the thrill of playing Space

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Speaker 1: War on a smaller and therefore more monetize herble scale,

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Speaker 1: in October nine enlisted a guy named Ted Dadby because

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Speaker 1: he was really really good at analog circuitry in Bushnell's words,

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Speaker 1: and roped in a company called Nutting Associates the only

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Speaker 1: which phrasing guys come on, which was the only corn

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Speaker 1: operated machine manufacturer west of the Rockies, and by nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy nine the first coin operated arcade video game, Computer

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Speaker 1: Space made this nascent partnership three point five million dollars

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Speaker 1: and empowered them to start a Torii, which is named

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Speaker 1: for a Japanese term borrowed from the game of Go,

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Speaker 1: which is it basically equivalent of saying check in chess.

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Speaker 1: My sister's college dorm was on Nutting Street, and they

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Speaker 1: kept having to replaced the sign because the guys from

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Speaker 1: the frat houses would keep going up and stealing it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which tracks by recruiting their first engineer, Alan alcorn Atari

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Speaker 1: set out to develop a workable arcade game that would

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Speaker 1: be the springboard for a more commercial concept. The game

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Speaker 1: they developed, though as a means to a later end,

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Speaker 1: became one of the most iconic video games of all

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Speaker 1: time upon its release in two. That was a little

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Speaker 1: game called Pong. It is nuts how old Pong is? Like,

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Speaker 1: it's just crazy to me to think that they had

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Speaker 1: screen based video games. Yeah, that's so crazy to me.

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Speaker 1: What's Bushnell's law? Jordan's This law is uh. It's an

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Speaker 1: aphorism generally attributed to the Atari founder Nolan Bushnell says,

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Speaker 1: all the best games are easy to learn and difficult

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Speaker 1: to master. They should reward the first quarter and the

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Speaker 1: hundredth quarter. Oh it's like life. Really. Yeah, But in

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Speaker 1: the back of Bushnell's mind, it all came back to

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Speaker 1: the roar of the grease paint and the smell of

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Speaker 1: the crowd. I think that's backwards, but that's it's not.

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Speaker 1: I googled it. I googled it. Roar the crowd and

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Speaker 1: the smell of the grease paint. That's the correct phrase.

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Speaker 1: But the this is a joke, Yes it is. It's

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Speaker 1: a that's the musical. The musical is called come On,

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Speaker 1: You're a theater dork. It's musical that has the it's

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Speaker 1: the spoonerism. It has it flipped. It's called the roar

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Speaker 1: of grease paint. The smell of the crowd. Huh, come on,

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Speaker 1: come on, that's the that's the musical. That feeling good.

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Speaker 1: They need a Simon song. I okay, and it comes

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Speaker 1: from Wow. Come on, damn it, run dog. Bushnell's associate, Daphne,

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Speaker 1: He said, no one had this brilliant idea. He's a

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Speaker 1: Carney guy, Back Mountains Carney, and he thought a pizza

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Speaker 1: part are carnival type pizza parlor would be a great

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Speaker 1: thing to do. He liked that kind of atmosphere and

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Speaker 1: he always wanted to build a restaurant that had that

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Speaker 1: in it. And Dad they added a Fast Company in seventeen.

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Speaker 1: His whole thing was a pizza parlor with talking beer barrels.

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Speaker 1: You imagine calling anyone a back Mountain carny mountain. Can

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Speaker 1: I forget how that relationship ended. I'm guessing not well.

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Speaker 1: Bush Now rather loftily explained his pet project to Fast

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Speaker 1: Company said, throughout history, there was a celebration, and the

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Speaker 1: celebration had food, drink, and games without exception, whether you

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Speaker 1: were talking about the summer Solstice with primitive Man to

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Speaker 1: the circuses in Rome. There was always an entertainment element.

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Speaker 1: I always felt there was something that was lacking in restaurants.

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Speaker 1: I wanted to add a dimension of fun to the

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Speaker 1: act of having a meal and a rat. Well, okay,

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Speaker 1: well we we we can't really have people killed like

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Speaker 1: we could in gladiatorial times, so so what about a

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Speaker 1: robot rats the next best thing? Bushnell told Mel magazine.

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Speaker 1: Atari was selling coin operated games for one thousand, five

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Speaker 1: hundred dollars to two thousand dollars, and during their lifetime

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Speaker 1: they were in fifty dollars. I felt that I wanted

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Speaker 1: to be on that side of the equation as well,

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Speaker 1: but I didn't want to compete with the people I

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Speaker 1: was selling games to who are already in the existing locations.

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Speaker 1: I had two goals to create a big, freestanding arcade

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Speaker 1: and to have a place that was kid friendly. We

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Speaker 1: knew kids wanted to play the games, but they had

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Speaker 1: no place to do that, as bars weren't possible and

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Speaker 1: arcades were teenage hangouts, and Bushnell I supposedly at one

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Speaker 1: point towards with the idea banning teenagers altogether from what

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Speaker 1: would become Chuck E Cheese, and I sort of had

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Speaker 1: that sense myself as an eighteen year old bringing the kids,

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Speaker 1: like baby sat at the Chuck E Cheese. I got

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Speaker 1: the sense that I wasn't supposed to be there, But

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Speaker 1: I was eighteen and in the suburbs, and maybe I

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Speaker 1: just didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. Now poetic, No,

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Speaker 1: I mean, the whole the whole history of arcades is

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Speaker 1: really interesting. And you know, they evolved from like the

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Speaker 1: car They did evolved from the carny atmosphere and sort

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Speaker 1: of the midway and boardwalk style stuff. But you know

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Speaker 1: they did become um basically training grounds for kids to

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Speaker 1: who couldn't yet drink. So there is an interesting liminal

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Speaker 1: age zone there. As far as the American cultural conception

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Speaker 1: of teenagers now with rats, you know, pinball was illegal

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Speaker 1: in New York City from like the forties to the seventies,

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Speaker 1: right because they were just like, we can't give teenagers

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Speaker 1: a reason to congregate. Well that and also it's a

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Speaker 1: training crown for bars and gambling. Really good, good, I say.

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Speaker 1: But back to Bushnell, He's quoted as saying, I decided

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Speaker 1: pizza was the right food because it had a delay

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Speaker 1: time that would allow for gameplay. Every food has delay time.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's like pizza. I don't know, cheap any

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Speaker 1: idiot can make it. It's hard to screw up. I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna go with that instead, Bushnell continued. Back then, the

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Speaker 1: most successful pizza parlor in the Bay Area was Pizza

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Speaker 1: and Pipes, which had a deconstructed Wurlitzer theater organ It

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Speaker 1: was extremely successful when they had an organist, but it

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Speaker 1: was quiet when there was no organist. Kids love organs.

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Speaker 1: Everyone knows this. Kids love pipe or kids. So sorry, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I wanted entertainment that didn't involve labor. When I took

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Speaker 1: my kids at Disneyland and I saw the Tiki Room,

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Speaker 1: I felt that could be the solution, a mechanical, computer

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Speaker 1: operated entertainment system. All this seems way more complicated than

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Speaker 1: it has to be. Well in a way, I mean

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Speaker 1: it's really the r text of every tech streaming middleman. Now.

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Speaker 1: They're like, I want the money from art to come

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Speaker 1: to me without the trouble of artists. I want people

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Speaker 1: to come to my place and spend money because they're

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Speaker 1: interested in live music. I don't want to deal with musicians.

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Speaker 1: You know who does well fair uh. Funnily enough, though

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Speaker 1: other than pizza and pipes, musical pizza parlors had an

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Speaker 1: extensive history in the Bay Area. Shakey's Pizza. Do you

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Speaker 1: know about Shakey's. I don't know about shake He's, No,

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Speaker 1: let me tell you about. Shakey's Pizza was founded in

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Speaker 1: Sacramento in nineteen fifty four by Sherwood Shakey Johnson and

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Speaker 1: Ed Plumber. Johnson was World War Two veteran whose nickname

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Speaker 1: came from the nerve damage he sustained after abount with

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Speaker 1: malaria front of the pod. Nerve damage. Uh. Johnson played

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Speaker 1: traditional jazz piano in Shakey's to entertain patrons, and this

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Speaker 1: evolved into him hiring musicians to play for them. And

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Speaker 1: this is actually funny that it turns into that Shakey's

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Speaker 1: launched a renaissance in traditional like Dixieland jazz in the

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Speaker 1: Bay Area. They had a radio program that popularized the

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Speaker 1: music as well. And Shakey's Pizza is named in the

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Speaker 1: American Banjo Museum in oak Lahoma for hoping to popularize

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Speaker 1: banjo's throughout the mid century. Ah yeah, and they they.

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Speaker 1: The other thing that they did was they would have

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Speaker 1: the repertoire, the lyrics to the repertoire that the band

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Speaker 1: is playing printed on their menus. So the whole idea

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Speaker 1: is that you would go there and there will be

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Speaker 1: a band playing, and then everybody could kind of join

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Speaker 1: in and sing along. Dinner theater. Yeah, it reminds me

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Speaker 1: of that Italian joint where the Wonders play and that

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Speaker 1: thing you do. Yeah, like the classic red sauce joint. Yea,

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Speaker 1: all that stuff, all these dinner clothes, all that stuff

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Speaker 1: was so popular back before, like CBGBs made combining food

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Speaker 1: service and music disreputable, but like, yeah, bring that back,

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Speaker 1: bring back the copa man. Oh, I know I can

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Speaker 1: still some bum that closed. Although I would imagine during

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Speaker 1: our fifteen twenty years in New York City it was

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Speaker 1: not a fun place to be. Yeah, the bad kind

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Speaker 1: of rat um. By the end of nineteen seventy three,

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Speaker 1: Dabney had left the company that they had found it together.

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Speaker 1: He told NPR that Has Bushnell took over more and

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Speaker 1: more of the company's operation and direction. Quote that was

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Speaker 1: the end of our relationship. But in six bush now

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Speaker 1: then the sole owner of the company, sold Atari to

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Speaker 1: Warner Compation billion. He wanted to continue funding and developing

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Speaker 1: what would become the Atari, but he also wanted to

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Speaker 1: establish his rat based pizza empire. Dabney continued to the

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Speaker 1: Computer History Museum and his interview. Bushnell finally got the

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Speaker 1: money from Warner Communications, and he decided to do that

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Speaker 1: pizza time theater thing. And so he'd asked me if

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Speaker 1: I wanted to go in with him. I said no, no, no, no,

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Speaker 1: I'd rather be your friend than your partner. So he says, okay, well,

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Speaker 1: at least go take a look at my pizza parlor

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Speaker 1: and tell me what you think. So I did, and

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Speaker 1: it was crappy. It was dirty, it was noisy, the

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Speaker 1: pizza wasn't very good, and this was a brand new place.

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Speaker 1: So I came back and I told him it was dirty.

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Speaker 1: He said, I'll take care of that. I'll fix that.

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Speaker 1: I said, also, it was so damn noisy, I couldn't

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Speaker 1: tell when my pizza was ready. And the pizza is

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Speaker 1: not very good. He says, oh, mediocre pizza is good enough.

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Speaker 1: That's true, as every pizza parlor located in any amount

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Speaker 1: of square pakreage near a bar will tell you, yes,

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Speaker 1: it is. According to article and s f Gate, Bushnell

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Speaker 1: spent two point five million on R and D for

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Speaker 1: his pizza, his rat pizza idea with a company that

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Speaker 1: made animatronics. You know, I'm being a bit disous, being

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Speaker 1: a bit disingenuous here because actually, as of nineteen seventy four,

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Speaker 1: he wanted to call this Coyote Pizza because he wanted

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Speaker 1: these costumed characters and he thought that Coyote would work.

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Speaker 1: And so this is a very funny for what for

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Speaker 1: the bit? For the bid for the bit? Jordan, he

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Speaker 1: did this all for the bit? No, he was I

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Speaker 1: think there's I mean, yes, he's like a tech doric loser,

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Speaker 1: but there's something very sweet to me about being like

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Speaker 1: about like working at a theme park as a kid

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Speaker 1: and wanting to be like a Disney imagineer and everything else,

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Speaker 1: but everything else in your life just getting going back

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Speaker 1: to this dream, Like, yeah, I made a tari. I

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Speaker 1: made like one of the most successful video game companies

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Speaker 1: of all time. I've made scads of money, But what

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00:19:18,160 --> 00:19:22,240
Speaker 1: I really want to do he's the animatronic pizza parlor.

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Speaker 1: I had no idea well, first of all, that Atari

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Speaker 1: was an American based company. I assumed it was Japanese.

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Speaker 1: And I also had no idea that the guy who

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Speaker 1: created a tari had anything to do with let alone

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Speaker 1: founded well passionate about chuck cheese, about pizza rat. Now

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Speaker 1: we're putting the we're putting the horse ahead of the car,

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Speaker 1: the cart ahead of the horse. Here. But what people

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00:19:46,200 --> 00:19:49,920
Speaker 1: of our generation no is Chucky Cheese is actually derived

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Speaker 1: from the Chucky cheese competitor that sprung up, So let

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Speaker 1: me finish. He was at the International Association of Amusement

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Speaker 1: Parks and Attractions convention when he saw what he thought

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00:20:08,359 --> 00:20:13,359
Speaker 1: was a coyote costume. He ordered one, and when it

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00:20:13,440 --> 00:20:16,000
Speaker 1: arrived in the mail and he started displaying it to

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00:20:16,119 --> 00:20:18,840
Speaker 1: ATARI employees, was shocked to find out that what he

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00:20:18,840 --> 00:20:23,560
Speaker 1: had ordered was a rat costume. Coyotes, rats, I don't

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00:20:23,560 --> 00:20:27,160
Speaker 1: know animals, so funny to me. He was like that, guys,

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Speaker 1: it's a coyote. And apparently they pulled the bottom half

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Speaker 1: of this costume out and saw the long, slithery naked

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Speaker 1: rat tail and we're like, Nolan, it's a rat costume.

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Speaker 1: But he kept on, he kept he kept it, kept

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Speaker 1: into his office, named it Rick Rat because he was

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00:20:43,440 --> 00:20:46,520
Speaker 1: not an ideas man, and this was This costume was

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00:20:46,560 --> 00:20:51,280
Speaker 1: occasionally donned by Atari employees at various company functions, so

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00:20:51,640 --> 00:20:56,159
Speaker 1: Coyote Pizza had to go away. Uh Dabney, who was

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Speaker 1: still developing the concept at this point, brought in a

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Speaker 1: guy named Gene Landrum to help. Uh jeem is this

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00:21:01,320 --> 00:21:04,440
Speaker 1: electronics gaming veteran who had done the rollout planned for

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Speaker 1: the attar And he told Mail Magazine, I went to

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Speaker 1: Disneyland to do some research. They had hundreds of games,

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Speaker 1: and you could go to the park and see all

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Speaker 1: these animatronics, like the Country Bear Jamboree, and of course

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Speaker 1: they had Mickey Mouse. So I said to myself, I

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00:21:18,040 --> 00:21:21,160
Speaker 1: got it. They have Mickey Mouse, I can do Chucky Cheese.

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00:21:21,520 --> 00:21:24,359
Speaker 1: It sounds the same. So that's where I got it from.

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Speaker 1: And Nolan had a rat costume in his office, so

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Speaker 1: it worked out. They also say there's something in that.

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00:21:31,520 --> 00:21:34,040
Speaker 1: The repeated line is when you say Chucky cheese, you

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Speaker 1: smile three times. Yeah, that's some corporate speak. Another factor

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Speaker 1: in changing the name, Landrum explained Fast Company, was we're

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Speaker 1: making this a kid's place. We can't have a rat.

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Speaker 1: A rat is too predatory and too lethal. Bushell did

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Speaker 1: this oral history for the Smithsonian and he said, so,

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00:21:53,560 --> 00:21:58,240
Speaker 1: I said, Rick Rat's pizza went into the marketing department.

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Speaker 1: They said, no way, They said, rats are dirty. This

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00:22:01,320 --> 00:22:03,840
Speaker 1: is a restaurant. You can't even say rat and food.

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Speaker 1: At the same time, I said, well, okay, can it

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Speaker 1: be a rat, but we'll just de emphasize his rat nous.

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Speaker 1: They said, well, maybe that'll work. How much of your

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Speaker 1: life has been de emphasizing your rat tycle none. Um.

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Speaker 1: We could say in some ways that Gene was the

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00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:25,840
Speaker 1: founder of Chuck E Cheese, pushing all told fast Company

377
00:22:25,880 --> 00:22:27,760
Speaker 1: because he was the guy I hired to bring Chucky

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Speaker 1: Cheese into fruition. He was the guy that found the

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00:22:30,280 --> 00:22:34,280
Speaker 1: pizza recipes, He rented the facility, hired the first pizza.

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00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:38,439
Speaker 1: He was very, very instrumental. Lander also wrote the menu,

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00:22:38,760 --> 00:22:41,480
Speaker 1: designed the floor plan of the first restaurants, did all

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00:22:41,480 --> 00:22:44,880
Speaker 1: the stuff like revenue streams and gross margins. Well, Bushnell

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00:22:44,960 --> 00:22:49,399
Speaker 1: was sitting around playing with the rat costume. Well, I

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Speaker 1: have I have a question, and that the term spirit

385
00:22:52,640 --> 00:22:55,960
Speaker 1: animal gets thrown around way too much these days. But

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00:22:56,600 --> 00:22:59,199
Speaker 1: rats for you. Having known you as long as I have,

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00:22:59,240 --> 00:23:02,399
Speaker 1: it really seems to be Yes, it seems to have

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00:23:02,400 --> 00:23:04,720
Speaker 1: a special place for you. Wrote a song several in

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00:23:04,760 --> 00:23:07,679
Speaker 1: the band that we were playing. Yes through several I

390
00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:10,399
Speaker 1: love you rat that. I want to ask you more

391
00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:13,680
Speaker 1: about what rats mean to you. Well, they're survivors first

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00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:16,520
Speaker 1: of all. Uh, you know, and I don't know. They

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00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:19,680
Speaker 1: were just well represented in media that I consumed growing up.

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00:23:20,440 --> 00:23:25,480
Speaker 1: I often think of Templeton, Templeton, Yes from Charlotte's Web, Ratigan,

395
00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:31,640
Speaker 1: Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective, voiced by Vincent Price,

396
00:23:31,840 --> 00:23:35,600
Speaker 1: Christopher Lee some horror icon did that? Uh no, you know,

397
00:23:35,680 --> 00:23:37,840
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'll say they're cute. They're cute guys.

398
00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:42,320
Speaker 1: I like them. And like I said, tenacious, do you

399
00:23:42,400 --> 00:23:45,800
Speaker 1: relate to rats? Oh? Very much, so, very much so.

400
00:23:45,800 --> 00:23:50,200
Speaker 1: So Yeah, well well represented, diverse range of of rats

401
00:23:50,240 --> 00:23:54,720
Speaker 1: in children's media. Um, that's the big three, Templeton, Ratigan

402
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:59,880
Speaker 1: and Chuck E Cheese. Yeah. What about is the father

403
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:05,280
Speaker 1: sounded Holy Spirit? Which is which media rats you've mentioned?

404
00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:09,200
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, Um, Templeton's probably the first, right, So he's

405
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:13,320
Speaker 1: the father? Okay, rat Agan the Holy Ghost because it

406
00:24:13,320 --> 00:24:16,880
Speaker 1: sounds cool. Yeah, wow, Yeah, that's your new band name,

407
00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 1: Holy Rat Ghost Rat, Holy Go Rat Rat Agan the

408
00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:24,680
Speaker 1: Holy Ghost Rat again the Holy Ghost verbal contract. That's

409
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:29,439
Speaker 1: a trademarked We're going to take a quick break, but

410
00:24:29,520 --> 00:24:32,040
Speaker 1: we'll be right back with more too much information in

411
00:24:32,119 --> 00:24:50,760
Speaker 1: just a moment. Anyway, Yeah, let's get this back on

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00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:54,159
Speaker 1: the track. Well. Guided by a current copy of the

413
00:24:54,200 --> 00:24:59,200
Speaker 1: International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Directory, Landrum also

414
00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:02,359
Speaker 1: started sus sing out who would build the animatronics at

415
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:05,720
Speaker 1: this restaurant would be anchored around by virtue of being

416
00:25:05,760 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 1: the only company that responded to his request, Harold gold

417
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:15,080
Speaker 1: Branson's Fantasy Forest Manufacturing was tapped, despite their primary expertise

418
00:25:15,160 --> 00:25:19,320
Speaker 1: being mascot costumes rather than animatronics. So they just had

419
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:22,679
Speaker 1: all these mascot costumes. Just almost stick some pistons in.

420
00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:29,280
Speaker 1: There'll be fine. Yeah, okay uh. After bringing the gold

421
00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:33,440
Speaker 1: Branson Corporation on board to create the costumes and animated puppets,

422
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:37,160
Speaker 1: Landroom hired Bob Allen Black, who was an artist who

423
00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:40,359
Speaker 1: worked previously with Atari. Bush No essentially handed him to

424
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:43,280
Speaker 1: Rick the rat costume and said, yeah, make everything look

425
00:25:43,320 --> 00:25:49,919
Speaker 1: like this. Ah. Starry artists Bob Flammate designed Chucky Cheese

426
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,880
Speaker 1: and other characters. Why engineers such as Larry Emmons and

427
00:25:52,960 --> 00:25:56,800
Speaker 1: Ron Miller of Atari's Grass Valley California, think take. Scian

428
00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:01,760
Speaker 1: Engineering provided the mechanical designs for them. Mike Hatcher programmed

429
00:26:01,800 --> 00:26:04,879
Speaker 1: many of the robots movements, which were powered bynumatic pistons

430
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 1: and triggered by computer controls from signals on a prerecorded

431
00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:11,879
Speaker 1: reel to real tape that could be shipped to each store.

432
00:26:12,600 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 1: At first, the characters were essentially animatronic portraits that spoke

433
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 1: and moved out of frames mounted on the wall, but

434
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:22,040
Speaker 1: then animated torsos were seen from the waist up, and

435
00:26:22,119 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 1: finally the full body robotic band, which didn't debut until

436
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:29,240
Speaker 1: many years after Chuck E. Cheese first opened. The first

437
00:26:29,320 --> 00:26:32,600
Speaker 1: voice of Charles was John Woodlocke, who modeled the rast

438
00:26:32,600 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 1: demeanor after a nineteen forties film character named Mugs McGuinness

439
00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:40,520
Speaker 1: played by Leo Gorsey in the East Side Kids. I

440
00:26:40,680 --> 00:26:44,359
Speaker 1: might have a fact about this guy? Is that where

441
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 1: we get the classic like, oh a wise guy, A

442
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:51,119
Speaker 1: like that kind of like joysy accent? I think so? Uh.

443
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:55,639
Speaker 1: Leo Gorsey was um somebody who was initially included in

444
00:26:55,680 --> 00:27:00,280
Speaker 1: the Sergeant Pepper montage, but he refused to allow his

445
00:27:00,520 --> 00:27:03,000
Speaker 1: license to be included unless they paid him for under

446
00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:05,560
Speaker 1: Bucks and the Beatles didn't want to start a precedent,

447
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:09,040
Speaker 1: so they airbrushed him out, and I believe he's on

448
00:27:09,080 --> 00:27:11,680
Speaker 1: the back row. You can just see like a little

449
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 1: bit of blue where clearly a head should be, and

450
00:27:14,080 --> 00:27:16,480
Speaker 1: that was where he was. I believe there are a

451
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:18,680
Speaker 1: few other people that they cut out. Yeah, they cut

452
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:21,199
Speaker 1: out Gandhi because they were worried that it was just

453
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:25,200
Speaker 1: so soon after the bigger than Jesus um controversy that

454
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:27,679
Speaker 1: they thought having Gondhi on an album cover would be

455
00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 1: a bad idea because Chuckie Cheese later got in trouble

456
00:27:31,280 --> 00:27:36,600
Speaker 1: for saying he was bigger than Jesus. They had a

457
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 1: Brian Wilson mannequin that they didn't add, and uh, I

458
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:42,120
Speaker 1: think they had a cut up made of Hitler from

459
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:44,440
Speaker 1: John And for the same reason that they didn't put

460
00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 1: Gandhi in, they decided it's probably not the best idea anyway,

461
00:27:50,040 --> 00:27:53,399
Speaker 1: as the ark of the universe must turn to my

462
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:57,760
Speaker 1: beloved Beatles. Anyway, the original voice of Chuckie Cheese based

463
00:27:57,840 --> 00:28:01,000
Speaker 1: his voice on that character from you Know. On old

464
00:28:01,080 --> 00:28:06,080
Speaker 1: forties gangster movie East Side Kids, originally Charles Entertainment, Cheese

465
00:28:06,119 --> 00:28:09,000
Speaker 1: was pictured holding a cane and a cigar with a

466
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:12,320
Speaker 1: cigar incorporated into both a walk around costume and the

467
00:28:12,359 --> 00:28:16,600
Speaker 1: animatronic version of the character, but it was officially discontinued

468
00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:19,840
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty when Chuck E. Cheese gave up smoking

469
00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:23,520
Speaker 1: during the Great American Smokeout campaign. You know that giant

470
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:26,639
Speaker 1: rat we have walking around cracking wise in a Jersey accent.

471
00:28:26,960 --> 00:28:29,440
Speaker 1: Lose the cigar. That's the most off putting thing about

472
00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:33,160
Speaker 1: him anyway. The original voice of Chuck E. Cheese, John Woodluck,

473
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,960
Speaker 1: voiced him from ninety seven through four and on the

474
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 1: original demo Real I Guess. He performed the voices for

475
00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:42,240
Speaker 1: all of the characters at Chuck E. Cheese, but production

476
00:28:42,280 --> 00:28:44,840
Speaker 1: decided to go with different voice actors to decrease the

477
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 1: amount of post production work required, and Woodluck was allowed

478
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:50,440
Speaker 1: to choose which character who wanted to keep working on,

479
00:28:50,840 --> 00:28:56,640
Speaker 1: and perhaps wisely, he chose the titular rat. Mike Hatcher

480
00:28:56,680 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 1: was the man behind the original portrait style animatronics, but

481
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: chl told The Atlantic Mike was a really good programmer,

482
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 1: a puppeteer, and a screenwriter. He wrote and designed the

483
00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:09,000
Speaker 1: authoring system that programmed the units. He'd sit back with

484
00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 1: the Impressario and programmed the movements one at a time,

485
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:15,640
Speaker 1: basically to coordinate with the tape. San Jose Mercury News

486
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:18,280
Speaker 1: ran a short story about hatch In that revealed it

487
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: took him three hours of programming for every one minute

488
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 1: of animation. There were often two movements going on at

489
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 1: once during the shows. And also Hatchard worked the graveyard

490
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:31,280
Speaker 1: shift because he had to troubleshoot all this stuff after

491
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 1: it closed. You have to see what have you seen?

492
00:29:34,160 --> 00:29:37,480
Speaker 1: Like the original reginal original post one. Oh yeah, they're amazing.

493
00:29:37,720 --> 00:29:39,800
Speaker 1: They're so beautiful. I love them. I want this in

494
00:29:39,880 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 1: my homewman. I just said to yeah, it looks like

495
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:47,800
Speaker 1: a drag queen. It looks like a rat drag queen

496
00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:56,400
Speaker 1: like with the lidded the heavy lidded eyes. M beautiful. Uh.

497
00:29:56,600 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 1: All the characters were built on neumatics, i e. Pushing

498
00:29:59,520 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 1: compressed air through a series of tubes. Factories are run

499
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:06,400
Speaker 1: on pneumatic Bushnell told the Atlantic components are cheap and

500
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 1: they never wear out. They just run and run and run.

501
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:12,440
Speaker 1: It's probably the most robust motion technology in the world.

502
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: You start, who called the Internet a series of tubes?

503
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 1: God it was I don't remember. Ted Stevens, Senator Ted

504
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 1: Stevens from Alaska. You start with the armature and then

505
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:26,040
Speaker 1: you dress it, he continued, And if you want some

506
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 1: fun nightmare, if you you should google Chucky Cheese armature. Uh,

507
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:32,480
Speaker 1: pretty much. They were the same. Inside. There were two

508
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:35,960
Speaker 1: different jaws if you're a dog versus Mr Bunch. If

509
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: you were a snout animal, you had a different jaw.

510
00:30:38,520 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 1: We also had one for beaks. They just look like

511
00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:45,320
Speaker 1: like furbies if you take the skin off. I did

512
00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:48,600
Speaker 1: google Chucky Cheese armature, and I wish I hadn't good

513
00:30:50,120 --> 00:30:53,600
Speaker 1: Uh fun. Fact in Insider reached out to Chucky Cheese

514
00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:56,480
Speaker 1: Is corporate office for the official backstory of the name

515
00:30:56,640 --> 00:30:59,960
Speaker 1: Charles Entertainment Cheese and was told, Unfortunately, we don't believe

516
00:31:00,040 --> 00:31:02,760
Speaker 1: that Charles has ever been on any official literature or

517
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:06,560
Speaker 1: documentation we can provide to you by public relations manager

518
00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: Christal DuPont I googled this woman to make sure this

519
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 1: wasn't a hoax. She has quoted in all of these

520
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:13,840
Speaker 1: articles about people getting in fights at Chuck e Cheeses.

521
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:16,960
Speaker 1: She's just like, we do not get Charles does not

522
00:31:17,080 --> 00:31:23,360
Speaker 1: condone violence. Um, yeah, yeah, he clearly does. But she

523
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 1: pointed the writer to an official online biography of Mr.

524
00:31:26,480 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 1: Cheese reportedly written in two thousand four to aid in

525
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:32,000
Speaker 1: a rebrand of the character, when he was redesigned more

526
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:36,480
Speaker 1: mouse like, thus betraying his roots. The rough outlines of

527
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 1: it are as follows, and I'm paraphrasing Chuck E. Cheese

528
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:43,200
Speaker 1: grew up in an orphanage called St. Marin Era's where

529
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:47,600
Speaker 1: It's pretty good right. Where As an orphan, he was

530
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:51,960
Speaker 1: unaware of his own birthday but loved celebrating others. When

531
00:31:52,040 --> 00:31:54,400
Speaker 1: he became of age, he moved to New York City,

532
00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: where he was homeless and sought shelter in a pizzeria

533
00:31:57,840 --> 00:32:00,320
Speaker 1: where the owner attempted to kill him before hearing his

534
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: beautiful singing voice, and subsequently decided to keep the rat

535
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 1: employed to sing to customers sounded like Tony Clifton Bennett

536
00:32:09,640 --> 00:32:16,520
Speaker 1: all right whoa. But during his first ever performance, Charles

537
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 1: got stage fright and he was booed by the crowd

538
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:21,959
Speaker 1: until he saw a child wearing a birthday crown and

539
00:32:22,080 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 1: was moved to sing beautifully. The crowd cheered, and the

540
00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:29,240
Speaker 1: pizzeria became the most popular spot in town. The last

541
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:31,960
Speaker 1: line of the story is Chuck E Cheese hasn't stopped

542
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:36,560
Speaker 1: singing or smiling since it's like a star was born.

543
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:43,560
Speaker 1: Oh that's like as bad as the Sonic Bible. Wow,

544
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:47,280
Speaker 1: well it was Chuck E Cheese is time to shine.

545
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 1: The first Chuck E Cheese Pizza Time Theater opened on

546
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:55,959
Speaker 1: May seventy seven in San Jose, attended by Mayor Chanet Grave.

547
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:01,800
Speaker 1: It was a big thing. Like he was he They

548
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:04,520
Speaker 1: were like the guy from Monopoly, from Monopoly, the guy

549
00:33:04,560 --> 00:33:08,200
Speaker 1: from a Torii is opening a like essentially like an

550
00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 1: amusement park in San Jose. It's a big deal. Come on.

551
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:15,719
Speaker 1: It operated of a five thousand score foot former brokerage building,

552
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 1: was loaded with a hundred and twenty thousand dollars worth

553
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:22,400
Speaker 1: of arcade games and what is referred to as quote

554
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:26,760
Speaker 1: a huge toy Swiss cheese for kids to bounce around on.

555
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:31,760
Speaker 1: And of course Charles himself. Early newspaper stories couldn't decide

556
00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:35,080
Speaker 1: on his exact background there, perhaps baffled by his accent

557
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:38,520
Speaker 1: as West Coasters. Uh. The U p I story reads,

558
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:46,640
Speaker 1: there's also a character costumes. There's a there's also a

559
00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:49,880
Speaker 1: character costumes as a giant rat called Chuck E Cheese

560
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: who escorts customers to the table with a Brooklyn accent.

561
00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 1: The Sacramento b whoever referred to him as Chuck, a

562
00:33:56,720 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 1: street wise Jersey rat. All right, you can't be both. Pushnell,

563
00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 1: no doubt, thrilled that his long held most impossible dreams

564
00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:14,440
Speaker 1: finally become a reality, told The Atlantic, I chose pizza.

565
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:19,360
Speaker 1: He's explaining the method to his madness. I chose pizza

566
00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:22,839
Speaker 1: because of the light time and the build schedule, very

567
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:25,719
Speaker 1: few components and not too many ways to screw it up.

568
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:28,640
Speaker 1: I didn't have any preconceived idea that I knew how

569
00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:31,960
Speaker 1: to run a restaurant, but I knew simple was better. Again,

570
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:36,799
Speaker 1: it's it's Bushnell's law for video games translated into restaurants.

571
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 1: Kind of the reason for doing the animals, believe it

572
00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:43,319
Speaker 1: or not, was not for the kids, he continued. It

573
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:45,560
Speaker 1: was meant to be a head fake for the parents.

574
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:48,440
Speaker 1: Kids are really smarter at knowing how to play their parents,

575
00:34:48,640 --> 00:34:50,319
Speaker 1: and the kids knew if they said I'm gonna go

576
00:34:50,360 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 1: to Chuck E Cheese and play the games, the parents

577
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 1: would just see themselves as spending money. But if they

578
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:57,480
Speaker 1: said I want to go see Chucky Cheese Entertainment and

579
00:34:57,520 --> 00:35:00,719
Speaker 1: it's free, they'd be good to go. The other thing

580
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:02,439
Speaker 1: was that we want of the parents that have something

581
00:35:02,480 --> 00:35:05,120
Speaker 1: to amuse themselves while the kids were in the game room.

582
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:08,240
Speaker 1: If you listen to the dialogue by these animatronic figures,

583
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 1: it was fun, edgy stuff, kind of like toy story

584
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:14,319
Speaker 1: written as much for the parents as the kids. Yeah,

585
00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:17,520
Speaker 1: there was actually quite a divide between Um. Like he

586
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:19,480
Speaker 1: talks about some of the earliest scripts were like a

587
00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:21,920
Speaker 1: little bit more risque like they had like like more

588
00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:24,319
Speaker 1: vaudeville humor, like Chucky Cheese was kind of a dick

589
00:35:24,400 --> 00:35:26,160
Speaker 1: to some of his like band like other guys in

590
00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:29,640
Speaker 1: the band, everybody would like he would like crack like

591
00:35:29,640 --> 00:35:32,319
Speaker 1: like rip On, I think like the hill Billy Dog.

592
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:35,840
Speaker 1: Um And they actually at one point and had a

593
00:35:35,880 --> 00:35:39,560
Speaker 1: separate room for adults. They had like a separate lounge.

594
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 1: They had. The separate room had a performances by Dolly Dimples,

595
00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:49,160
Speaker 1: who is a hippopotamus keyboardist, singer with breasts who sang

596
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:55,560
Speaker 1: torch songs and bantered with people cigar cigarettes, Yes, yes, exactly.

597
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:59,040
Speaker 1: Despite the apparent success of the Pilot Store, it caused

598
00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:02,279
Speaker 1: friction between Warner Brothers in Bushnell. They didn't like him,

599
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:05,120
Speaker 1: as they saw it shirking his Atari duties to focus

600
00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:08,960
Speaker 1: on his pizza rat John ellis Atari's VP of consumer

601
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:11,399
Speaker 1: engineering at the time, told Fast Company that Bushnell had

602
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:15,840
Speaker 1: told him around ninety six to investigate creating a robot

603
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 1: that can mix drinks and bring them to you, which

604
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:22,120
Speaker 1: I love um Bushnell told Fast Company, I had spent

605
00:36:22,160 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 1: a lot of money and a lot of engineering time

606
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:26,320
Speaker 1: on a lot of projects that I thought were the future,

607
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:29,400
Speaker 1: and Warner didn't want to have anything to do with them.

608
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 1: So in June of Bushnell bought the first Pizza Time

609
00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 1: Theater as it was called them in San Jose and

610
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:38,680
Speaker 1: all of its intellectual property rights from Warners for a

611
00:36:38,719 --> 00:36:42,160
Speaker 1: mere five hundred thousand dollars and opened a second location,

612
00:36:42,239 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 1: nearly four times the size of the flagship that was

613
00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:48,480
Speaker 1: at the time the country's largest pizza parlor. They thought

614
00:36:48,480 --> 00:36:51,600
Speaker 1: he was a sucker, Bushnell's friend and fellow Atari pioneer

615
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:55,360
Speaker 1: Alan Alcorn told Fast Company. But Bushnell quickly incorporated the

616
00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:58,680
Speaker 1: business into Pizza Time Theater, Inc. And began expanding his empire.

617
00:36:59,120 --> 00:37:01,560
Speaker 1: In fact, by nove Ber, he'd left a Tory completely

618
00:37:01,560 --> 00:37:04,040
Speaker 1: to focus on Pizza Time Theater, which he did by

619
00:37:04,040 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 1: pursuing franchising deals across the country, one massive one in

620
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:12,759
Speaker 1: particular with Bob Brock, president of Topeka in Management, who

621
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:15,759
Speaker 1: had made his fortune as the largest franchise ee of

622
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:20,360
Speaker 1: Holiday Inn hotels in the United States. Remember that name, folks.

623
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:25,200
Speaker 1: During nine and nineteen seventy nine, Bushnell invested one and

624
00:37:25,200 --> 00:37:28,280
Speaker 1: a half million dollars of his own money into Pizza

625
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:33,800
Speaker 1: Time Theater for two additional locations. But Trouble, But Casey,

626
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:36,960
Speaker 1: case and Boys. But Trouble was on the horizon for Bushnell,

627
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:40,600
Speaker 1: Charles and the Nesson Empire. They were building together well.

628
00:37:41,080 --> 00:37:44,160
Speaker 1: Eighties saw the advent of arcade classics like Missile Command,

629
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:48,480
Speaker 1: Berserk Centerpede, and perhaps the most famous of all, pac Man.

630
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:51,319
Speaker 1: In the next year of its pixelated life, pac Man

631
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:55,080
Speaker 1: would earn over one billion dollars in quarters in the

632
00:37:55,160 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 1: United States, much of that at You Guessed at Pizza parlors.

633
00:37:59,040 --> 00:38:03,399
Speaker 1: Video game designer Washington University professor Dr Anne Bogost wrote

634
00:38:03,400 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 1: at The Atlantic in as tavern culture gave way to

635
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:09,680
Speaker 1: the video arcade of the late seventies and early eighties,

636
00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 1: secondary pursuits like ordering food gave way to the primary

637
00:38:13,120 --> 00:38:16,840
Speaker 1: pursuit of additional game play. Chuck E. Cheese was an arcade.

638
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:20,640
Speaker 1: It's games encouraged continual play and cross cabinet play. It

639
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:23,200
Speaker 1: was a restaurant. Food and drink drew players to the

640
00:38:23,239 --> 00:38:25,680
Speaker 1: locale and kept them there longer. And it was a

641
00:38:25,719 --> 00:38:28,719
Speaker 1: mid lay. Players collected tickets from games of skill and

642
00:38:28,840 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 1: chance like ski ball, in hopes of exchanging them for prizes. Again,

643
00:38:33,080 --> 00:38:35,200
Speaker 1: this is just so fascinating me. I mean, the guy

644
00:38:35,239 --> 00:38:38,319
Speaker 1: created video games and then jumped head first into like

645
00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:43,280
Speaker 1: the arcade culture of the time. It's it's just so culturally,

646
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:45,359
Speaker 1: it's so interesting. Anyway, I'm doing all this, this, all

647
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:48,799
Speaker 1: this throat clearing is to explain why Charles quickly had

648
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:53,080
Speaker 1: a target on his disgusting rat. Back in the early eighties,

649
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:57,399
Speaker 1: the hip off of pizza time theater proliferated. You could

650
00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:02,719
Speaker 1: visit Bullwinkle's Family Restaurant, Major Magic's All Star Pizza Celebration,

651
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:09,479
Speaker 1: Station fair Play, Pizza Theater, and Razmatazz, all of these

652
00:39:09,520 --> 00:39:13,080
Speaker 1: that have like theater or pizza or celebration in the name.

653
00:39:13,239 --> 00:39:17,480
Speaker 1: And some dude was like, we'll call it Razmatazz. I mean,

654
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 1: that's that's very theatrical. I'm more interested in the fair

655
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 1: Play Pizza theater because I just think about Lee Harvey

656
00:39:22,680 --> 00:39:27,040
Speaker 1: Oswald's fair Player for Cubic Committee, not the reference I

657
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:30,400
Speaker 1: would have gone with. But yes, and of course among

658
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:33,680
Speaker 1: many others. There were many of these um but the

659
00:39:33,920 --> 00:39:39,240
Speaker 1: most famous one is Showbiz Pizza Palace. Show Biz opened

660
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:42,440
Speaker 1: their first location on March third, and they are the

661
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:45,919
Speaker 1: true villain of this story. Remember remember from a few

662
00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:49,480
Speaker 1: paragraphs ago, Bob Brock, the holiday inn magnate who signed

663
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:54,320
Speaker 1: a deal with Bushnelt franchise Chucky Cheeses. Well while visiting

664
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:57,200
Speaker 1: the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Convention in

665
00:39:57,239 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 1: New Orleans in Rock met a guy named Aaron Fect

666
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:07,760
Speaker 1: Factor is the Nicola Tesla, insane misunderstood, got his timing

667
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:12,640
Speaker 1: all wrong, genius of the animatronics industry. And also this story.

668
00:40:12,680 --> 00:40:15,359
Speaker 1: This kid founded a TV repair company at the age

669
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:18,960
Speaker 1: of eleven, which subsequently failed because he couldn't lift the

670
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:22,640
Speaker 1: TVs he was repairing. And then in nineteen seventy three,

671
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:25,520
Speaker 1: at the height of the oil crisis, when he was nineteen,

672
00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:29,160
Speaker 1: had this pie in the sky idea to design a

673
00:40:29,239 --> 00:40:31,920
Speaker 1: car that would get ninety miles to the gallon. He

674
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:35,640
Speaker 1: called it the Jutta, and it was essentially a glorified

675
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:41,000
Speaker 1: golf cart. It had three wheels and it was a ridiculous,

676
00:40:41,120 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 1: ridiculous thing. You have to look up the concept arc

677
00:40:44,239 --> 00:40:47,160
Speaker 1: for the Jutta. But he was also like a very

678
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 1: sweet utopian idealist, and while trying to fund the Jutta uh,

679
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:55,799
Speaker 1: he turned to a variety of ideas to finance this,

680
00:40:56,280 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: one of which led him to discover his true talent,

681
00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:04,600
Speaker 1: which was design and manufacturing of animatronics. Factor also claims

682
00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:07,879
Speaker 1: to have invented the Whack a Mole the arcade game.

683
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:11,320
Speaker 1: His story was that he was at the nineteen six

684
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:14,600
Speaker 1: i A a p A Convention and someone pointed him

685
00:41:14,600 --> 00:41:17,720
Speaker 1: at this Japanese gaming company's booth where they had a

686
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:19,680
Speaker 1: whack a Mole like machine, and they were like, that

687
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:21,640
Speaker 1: thing is a piece of crap. We could make some

688
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:23,719
Speaker 1: real money if we designed a better version of that.

689
00:41:24,200 --> 00:41:28,680
Speaker 1: So Factor builds a better whack a Mole machine using nomadics,

690
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:31,440
Speaker 1: and then claimed that the credit was stolen out from

691
00:41:31,480 --> 00:41:33,400
Speaker 1: under him by the guy who contracted him to do

692
00:41:33,440 --> 00:41:35,839
Speaker 1: that work. But that's kind of contested, and also neither

693
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:40,160
Speaker 1: here nor there um, but yeah, he basically created a

694
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:44,759
Speaker 1: company called Creative Engineering, Inc. Which took off, was doing

695
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:48,239
Speaker 1: millions of dollars of business out of Orlando selling animatronic

696
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:52,719
Speaker 1: characters to theme parks. And he's such a sweet boy.

697
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:55,600
Speaker 1: A bit of an egomaniac, but a sweet boy. There's

698
00:41:56,320 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: two Orlando Sentinel article where he waxed about ending four

699
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:04,719
Speaker 1: were in fuel dependency with solar power, using industrial automation

700
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:07,680
Speaker 1: and robots to create a three day, six hour a

701
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:11,200
Speaker 1: day work week for the working class, and then basically

702
00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:14,200
Speaker 1: pitches the modern Internet as we know it, And this

703
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:17,719
Speaker 1: quote is wild. He said, we would like to pioneer

704
00:42:17,840 --> 00:42:20,520
Speaker 1: and invest in large amounts of money in pioneering a

705
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 1: central organized network in tying home computers together. What we

706
00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 1: want is for you to be able to type in

707
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:29,799
Speaker 1: water heater and get up a list of people who

708
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:32,600
Speaker 1: can sell you one or repair one, along with a

709
00:42:32,640 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 1: better Business Bureau report or consumers report. Then, after he

710
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:40,440
Speaker 1: got out of the pizza animatronics game, he invented a

711
00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:43,880
Speaker 1: secure email device called the Anti Gravity Machine, which is

712
00:42:43,880 --> 00:42:47,920
Speaker 1: basically a way to send a lockdown, ultra scure emails.

713
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:51,040
Speaker 1: The guy was just this kind of like, I said Nicola.

714
00:42:51,080 --> 00:42:54,839
Speaker 1: Tesla like wild eyed tech innovator who just never made

715
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:57,400
Speaker 1: a lot of money. I mean, he did at one point,

716
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:00,400
Speaker 1: but has never really kind of you never got his

717
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:03,640
Speaker 1: Tesla coil is what I'm trying to say here. Anyway,

718
00:43:03,920 --> 00:43:07,680
Speaker 1: at the ninety eight i p A convention, he debuted

719
00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:11,000
Speaker 1: his real triumph, the wolf Pack five, a group of

720
00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:14,560
Speaker 1: animatronics singing animals inspired by the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

721
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 1: I met Bob Brock at the end of nineteen seventy nine,

722
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:18,719
Speaker 1: and at that time he'd already signed a deal with

723
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:21,960
Speaker 1: Nolan Bushnell to build two D and eight Pizza Time theaters.

724
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 1: Factor told mel magazine. I'd previously met Nolan Bushnell in

725
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 1: ninety seven and ninety eight, and he'd wanted to sell

726
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:32,680
Speaker 1: him my animatronics for his Pizza Time theaters, but I

727
00:43:32,719 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: didn't trust him. I figured he'd just buy one character

728
00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:38,960
Speaker 1: from me, get it to California, and then reverse engineered

729
00:43:39,040 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 1: and start copying me, so he'd never buy another character

730
00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:44,560
Speaker 1: from me. So I refused to make a long story short.

731
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 1: Fector says that when Brock saw that there was someone

732
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:51,040
Speaker 1: out there making better singing animatronic animals than Bushnell, he

733
00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:53,400
Speaker 1: decided to back out of his deal with Bushnell and

734
00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:56,600
Speaker 1: joined forces with Fector to launch a Chucky Cheese competitor.

735
00:43:57,080 --> 00:43:59,160
Speaker 1: At the crux of his argument was essentially the fact

736
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:04,960
Speaker 1: that he claimed that Bushnell downplayed Aaron Fector to him.

737
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:06,760
Speaker 1: He said, Hey, I heard about this guy, Aaron Fector,

738
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:10,400
Speaker 1: who builds these animatronics. And Bushnell told Brock that's just

739
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:13,600
Speaker 1: a kid making junk in his garage. And then he

740
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:16,799
Speaker 1: went and saw the wolf Pack five along with the

741
00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:19,680
Speaker 1: other thing that he created, the Hard Luck Bears, which

742
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:21,919
Speaker 1: were indeed a rip off of the Country Bear Jam Bream,

743
00:44:22,600 --> 00:44:25,400
Speaker 1: and saw that they operated more smoothly, had a wider

744
00:44:25,520 --> 00:44:28,200
Speaker 1: range of motion than the existing stuff at the Pizza

745
00:44:28,200 --> 00:44:31,720
Speaker 1: Time Theater chain, and so he decided, I'm going into

746
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:36,200
Speaker 1: business with this kid. And at the crux of this

747
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:40,359
Speaker 1: deal was the Rocket Fire Explosion Band, which is, if

748
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:43,480
Speaker 1: you are of roughly of our demographic age, the band

749
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:46,640
Speaker 1: that you saw at Chucky Cheeses. And that man was

750
00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:50,839
Speaker 1: a combination of the wolf Pack five and the Hard

751
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 1: Luck Bears, featuring the characters Rolf and Earl Duke, LaRue,

752
00:44:55,600 --> 00:45:01,080
Speaker 1: keyboard playing gorilla named Fats Geronimo, Beach Bear, Mitzi, Mozzarella,

753
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 1: Billy Bob Broccoli and the Loony Bird. So that's the combination.

754
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 1: So it's basically like guns and Roses with the two

755
00:45:07,719 --> 00:45:13,480
Speaker 1: bands sell a guns and Yes, okay very much so.

756
00:45:14,719 --> 00:45:18,200
Speaker 1: Aside from the fact that the Rockefeller presentation utilized three stages,

757
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:20,400
Speaker 1: which gave them more flexibility and how they could stage

758
00:45:20,440 --> 00:45:24,680
Speaker 1: these shows, vectors animatronics work was pun intended head and

759
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: shoulders above what existed at the current Pizza Time theaters.

760
00:45:28,920 --> 00:45:32,080
Speaker 1: A Willington's Morning Star article about show biz broke down

761
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:36,120
Speaker 1: the numbers behind the Rock of Fire Explosion from It

762
00:45:36,280 --> 00:45:39,680
Speaker 1: cost two million dollars to develop and it was sold

763
00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:42,440
Speaker 1: to franchise Ease for a hundred and twenty five grand.

764
00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:45,880
Speaker 1: The characters were built in groups of twenty five. It

765
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:47,879
Speaker 1: took a week to build a group of twenty five,

766
00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:49,759
Speaker 1: took a week and a half to build a group

767
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: of twenty five over Orlando. Took twenty four hours to

768
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:55,760
Speaker 1: program all of them to perform one song. Each character

769
00:45:55,840 --> 00:45:58,759
Speaker 1: had sixteen valves as part of its pneumatic system and

770
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:02,000
Speaker 1: about a hundred and fifty gallons of compressed air necessary

771
00:46:02,080 --> 00:46:06,319
Speaker 1: to run it. Wow Factor himself also wrote all of

772
00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:11,200
Speaker 1: the songs for this, which took about three fifty hours

773
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:14,120
Speaker 1: to record and produce the songs that they were playing,

774
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:16,080
Speaker 1: which were all these like fifties and sixties do wop.

775
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:18,480
Speaker 1: They also he did all the voices to not all

776
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:22,240
Speaker 1: some of them, but he wrote these songs. Uh just

777
00:46:22,239 --> 00:46:25,560
Speaker 1: just really as jack of all trades, this guy and

778
00:46:25,560 --> 00:46:28,320
Speaker 1: they would do like beach Boys Medley's and like Beatles Medley's.

779
00:46:28,320 --> 00:46:29,799
Speaker 1: And at one point there was also one of them

780
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:34,399
Speaker 1: doing a There was Michael Katson, who is an animatronic

781
00:46:35,040 --> 00:46:39,239
Speaker 1: large cat who did Michael Jackson songs. Oh that's good.

782
00:46:41,440 --> 00:46:44,320
Speaker 1: It was serious. You've been this whole episode? Oh yeah,

783
00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:48,840
Speaker 1: Michael cats, that's good. Ah with with dollar signs flash

784
00:46:48,880 --> 00:46:52,719
Speaker 1: up in your eyes with a share in the Showbiz

785
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:57,479
Speaker 1: Pizza chain, Brock held the other factor. At long last,

786
00:46:57,480 --> 00:47:00,239
Speaker 1: had the financial and creative freedom to pursue his animal

787
00:47:00,280 --> 00:47:04,520
Speaker 1: animatronic singing Animal Animatronic streams, handed the financial management of

788
00:47:04,560 --> 00:47:08,360
Speaker 1: his company over to his dad to focus on programming, choreographing,

789
00:47:08,360 --> 00:47:11,799
Speaker 1: and voicing these characters. Michael Jackson visited the show Bizz

790
00:47:11,840 --> 00:47:16,160
Speaker 1: Company headquarters between tour stops on the Thriller tour. You

791
00:47:16,160 --> 00:47:19,000
Speaker 1: can see pictures of imposing with these things, and he

792
00:47:19,040 --> 00:47:22,279
Speaker 1: was supposedly, I have been unable to verify this. I

793
00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:26,320
Speaker 1: choose to believe it's true. Was supposedly moved to purchase

794
00:47:26,360 --> 00:47:30,560
Speaker 1: the Beatles catalogs. After seeing the Beatles Medley, the Showbiz

795
00:47:30,719 --> 00:47:35,880
Speaker 1: Pizza Factor told Fortune magazine that Brock is benefiting financially

796
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:38,759
Speaker 1: from this deal. He's making money. But I'm going to

797
00:47:38,880 --> 00:47:43,600
Speaker 1: change the world if I can find it. I want

798
00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:46,200
Speaker 1: to punch in the show is pizza Beatles Medley right here.

799
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 1: I think you should well. I played you the I

800
00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:51,759
Speaker 1: played you, the one that made you so angry eat

801
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:57,840
Speaker 1: a little pizza with some help from our friends, probably

802
00:47:57,880 --> 00:48:00,360
Speaker 1: rendered you speechless. I guess I gotta punch of that

803
00:48:00,440 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 1: is right here. As you meditate on that, We'll be

804
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:16,840
Speaker 1: right back with more too much information. After these messages,

805
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 1: well predictively, Bushnell's Pizza Time and showbizz Pizza immediately took

806
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:35,960
Speaker 1: him at each other in the market and expanded too fast,

807
00:48:36,120 --> 00:48:40,360
Speaker 1: too soon. A Showbiz Pizza super fan named Travis Shaefer

808
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:44,000
Speaker 1: who runs what you describe as an incredible fan site

809
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:47,440
Speaker 1: called showbiz Pizza dot Com. It's insane magazine. It has

810
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:50,160
Speaker 1: all of these scans of these original newspaper articles. This

811
00:48:50,239 --> 00:48:53,160
Speaker 1: man is, he's like he's on our level. Well we

812
00:48:53,160 --> 00:48:55,200
Speaker 1: should have had him on damn it well, he told

813
00:48:55,200 --> 00:48:58,200
Speaker 1: Mail Magazine. Since Brock dropped out, they were hurrying to

814
00:48:58,239 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 1: add franchises all over. They only had a handful by

815
00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:05,160
Speaker 1: about six to ten restaurants, so suddenly expand like that

816
00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:09,479
Speaker 1: was a big undertaking. Original animatronic designer Harold Goldbrandson told

817
00:49:09,520 --> 00:49:11,600
Speaker 1: me that they wouldn't even consider a mom and pop

818
00:49:11,719 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 1: organization that only wanted to open one franchise. They only

819
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:18,160
Speaker 1: wanted big money people who could open several stores. Do

820
00:49:18,200 --> 00:49:21,000
Speaker 1: you know the linear So the Beatles stand there was

821
00:49:21,080 --> 00:49:25,520
Speaker 1: called the Beagles because they were dogs. Only four of

822
00:49:25,560 --> 00:49:31,480
Speaker 1: them are known to um exist, uh fittingly, one is

823
00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 1: in a museum, another is at a museum, is exactly,

824
00:49:35,640 --> 00:49:38,120
Speaker 1: one is at a gas station, and two others have

825
00:49:38,239 --> 00:49:44,040
Speaker 1: been retrofitted into, respectively, The Biscuits, a parody band of

826
00:49:44,360 --> 00:49:49,480
Speaker 1: iconic Glen Danzig starring punk band The Misfits, and then

827
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:55,680
Speaker 1: Yes and then again retrofitted into rough, a dog animatronic

828
00:49:55,760 --> 00:50:00,360
Speaker 1: themed rush parody No No, and the last one is

829
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:03,839
Speaker 1: owned by a collector and YouTuber. When the Beagles were

830
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:07,600
Speaker 1: phased out. They were replaced by the Beach Bowsers, which

831
00:50:07,600 --> 00:50:16,160
Speaker 1: were a Beach Boys parody, Wow and Factor. The animatronics

832
00:50:16,200 --> 00:50:18,959
Speaker 1: design I later told Mel magazine, we had to beat

833
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:21,759
Speaker 1: Chuck E Cheese to the best locations. So the executives

834
00:50:21,760 --> 00:50:24,680
Speaker 1: of Showbiz Pizza, We're growing so fast. Their heads were

835
00:50:24,680 --> 00:50:27,600
Speaker 1: spinning and spending money way too fast. They're out of

836
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:29,919
Speaker 1: money before they even knew it. In by nine three,

837
00:50:30,120 --> 00:50:32,960
Speaker 1: they decided not to build any more restaurants, but it

838
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 1: was already too late. Bush, now obviously infuriated by Brock's betrayal,

839
00:50:38,320 --> 00:50:42,080
Speaker 1: sued Showbi's Pizza pretty much immediately, and uh Brock shot

840
00:50:42,080 --> 00:50:44,439
Speaker 1: back with the countersuit. This battle dragon on the courts

841
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:48,400
Speaker 1: for years, but Showbiz settled in agreeing to pay percentage

842
00:50:48,440 --> 00:50:50,800
Speaker 1: of their profits to Chuck E Cheese for the next

843
00:50:50,920 --> 00:50:57,120
Speaker 1: fourteen years, something like millions of dollars over almost a

844
00:50:57,160 --> 00:50:59,840
Speaker 1: decade and a half. So next time you think you

845
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:03,319
Speaker 1: he was big in a court. But there was an

846
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:06,920
Speaker 1: even bigger problem for both musical animatronic pizza chains. The

847
00:51:06,960 --> 00:51:13,640
Speaker 1: free market became known as the video game crash Spectacular,

848
00:51:13,680 --> 00:51:17,080
Speaker 1: bottoming out for both the home video game market and arcades.

849
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:20,680
Speaker 1: Home consoles like the Atari and personal computers dented the

850
00:51:20,680 --> 00:51:23,719
Speaker 1: appeal of the arcade wall. Once the novelty war off,

851
00:51:23,719 --> 00:51:26,760
Speaker 1: the limited experience of home video games ended up cratering

852
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:31,400
Speaker 1: their profits. This was largely and ironically due to Tutari Games,

853
00:51:31,680 --> 00:51:34,880
Speaker 1: the glitchy buggy version of Pac Man for the home market,

854
00:51:35,440 --> 00:51:40,320
Speaker 1: and its rushed adaptation of et the extraterrestrial legend in

855
00:51:40,440 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 1: video game circles. It's failed so spectacularly that Atari was

856
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:48,440
Speaker 1: famously forced to bury the extra copies in a landfield

857
00:51:48,480 --> 00:51:52,040
Speaker 1: in New Mexico. As a whole documentary about it on Netflix,

858
00:51:52,080 --> 00:51:55,960
Speaker 1: It's Great All told in Night three. The arcade industry's

859
00:51:56,000 --> 00:52:00,840
Speaker 1: profits dropped between September and December. It's the Time lost

860
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:05,520
Speaker 1: over seventy five million dollars and over twelve dollars per share,

861
00:52:06,040 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 1: and Bushnell resigned as CEO and the company filed for

862
00:52:09,160 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 1: bankruptcy in Goodbye Sweet Rats, Yes do not get gentle

863
00:52:17,239 --> 00:52:23,200
Speaker 1: into that good bulpit. Fascinatingly, one of the ways in

864
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:26,200
Speaker 1: which Push Now lost money was experimenting with a company

865
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:30,560
Speaker 1: called Cadabroscope, which sought to reinvent traditional animation by using

866
00:52:30,600 --> 00:52:35,600
Speaker 1: a computer to fill in hand drawn frames of animation

867
00:52:35,719 --> 00:52:39,719
Speaker 1: with computer generated frames. Uh In three he bought a

868
00:52:39,840 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 1: one and a half million dollar computer to aid him

869
00:52:42,440 --> 00:52:44,759
Speaker 1: in this quest, and hired a team headed by a

870
00:52:44,800 --> 00:52:47,960
Speaker 1: renound ex Disney animator named Jack Nichols. The fruits of

871
00:52:47,960 --> 00:52:51,319
Speaker 1: these labors were to be special called The Christmas That

872
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:54,360
Speaker 1: Almost Wasn't starring Charles and the Rest of His Gang,

873
00:52:54,680 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 1: which was supposed to be aired on NBC. It was

874
00:52:57,480 --> 00:53:00,759
Speaker 1: never aired, but does exist online. And here's the crazy part.

875
00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:04,799
Speaker 1: Bushnell sold Cadabroscope, which he had hoped to launch an

876
00:53:04,840 --> 00:53:10,719
Speaker 1: animated Charles media empire. He sold that company to Lucasfilm,

877
00:53:10,800 --> 00:53:15,279
Speaker 1: who would develop that technology into Pixar. So you got

878
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:18,480
Speaker 1: your Atari, you got your Chuck e Cheese, you got

879
00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:21,600
Speaker 1: your Pisar. This guy, there are promotional photos from the

880
00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:24,000
Speaker 1: time of bush now standing next to this bank of

881
00:53:24,040 --> 00:53:27,840
Speaker 1: computers with Bob Pauli, who's the Pixar guy who designed

882
00:53:28,040 --> 00:53:30,640
Speaker 1: buzz Lightyear. He was like the Forrest Gump of Bay

883
00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:33,839
Speaker 1: Area tech stuff. He also employed Steve Jobs at one

884
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:36,480
Speaker 1: point and sadly missed out on the opportunity to get

885
00:53:36,520 --> 00:53:39,240
Speaker 1: on the ground floor of Apple. What is this guy's

886
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:43,200
Speaker 1: net worth? Only fifty mill Well, he fumbled a lot

887
00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:47,799
Speaker 1: of bags. Showbiz Pizza had to do whatever we could

888
00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 1: to say afloat, So we had to bring in money, people, vultures,

889
00:53:51,520 --> 00:53:54,719
Speaker 1: and they wanted to control Showbiz Pizza, control me, and

890
00:53:54,760 --> 00:53:57,560
Speaker 1: control Bob Brock. So I began using my percentage to

891
00:53:57,719 --> 00:54:00,319
Speaker 1: veto bad idea after bad idea, of fact, are told

892
00:54:00,360 --> 00:54:05,600
Speaker 1: Mail Magazine, then they will never control Showbiz Pizza. Yea.

893
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:08,800
Speaker 1: Then they had the worst idea of all to merge

894
00:54:08,800 --> 00:54:11,799
Speaker 1: with Chuck E Cheese. We were fighting Chucky Cheese for

895
00:54:11,880 --> 00:54:13,879
Speaker 1: five years, and we knew we were better than Chuck

896
00:54:13,920 --> 00:54:16,759
Speaker 1: E Cheese. They were crapped and we were great. That's

897
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:19,239
Speaker 1: what we believed. We were rivals. We don't want to

898
00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:21,239
Speaker 1: buy them out. We want to kill them. If they're

899
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:23,000
Speaker 1: going to go out of business, let them go out

900
00:54:23,000 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 1: of business, don't prop them up. Kill the rat. Let

901
00:54:26,120 --> 00:54:29,400
Speaker 1: me plunge the sword through Chucky Cheese his heart. I

902
00:54:29,440 --> 00:54:32,799
Speaker 1: love Aaron Factor. Perhaps because of this stance of his, though,

903
00:54:33,080 --> 00:54:35,719
Speaker 1: the relationship between he and Showbiz sour to the point

904
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:38,319
Speaker 1: where they were only communicating through lawyers. Showbiz one of

905
00:54:38,320 --> 00:54:40,880
Speaker 1: the rights to the Rocket Fire Explosion characters, but fector

906
00:54:40,960 --> 00:54:43,239
Speaker 1: refused to sell, believing that his characters were on the

907
00:54:43,320 --> 00:54:47,600
Speaker 1: verge of making lucrative deals via film and television record

908
00:54:47,640 --> 00:54:53,000
Speaker 1: deals narrator voice. They were not, so he pulled out

909
00:54:53,520 --> 00:54:56,960
Speaker 1: and the companies and and actually Chowbiz made a smart

910
00:54:57,000 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 1: move because they were able to restructure all of their

911
00:54:59,160 --> 00:55:03,000
Speaker 1: debt and this court settlement by buying Chuck E Cheese.

912
00:55:03,360 --> 00:55:08,840
Speaker 1: And then they embarked on something called concept reunification. Sounds

913
00:55:08,840 --> 00:55:11,480
Speaker 1: of the German Mountain. I was gonna say it sounds

914
00:55:11,520 --> 00:55:17,120
Speaker 1: like the great leap forward concept unification where they skinned

915
00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:19,680
Speaker 1: all of the old characters they didn't have the rights

916
00:55:19,719 --> 00:55:22,960
Speaker 1: to anymore and dances something Chairman mount at a time

917
00:55:23,000 --> 00:55:25,440
Speaker 1: and put new fur and clothes on them. And you

918
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:28,200
Speaker 1: can see all of these training videos on YouTube where

919
00:55:28,200 --> 00:55:33,120
Speaker 1: they they're like, first removed Geronimo Guerilla's face, then his clothes.

920
00:55:34,040 --> 00:55:39,000
Speaker 1: It's it's truly incredible. Well, by two thousand five, Chucky

921
00:55:39,080 --> 00:55:42,600
Speaker 1: Cheese had grown to five hundred locations and its design

922
00:55:42,680 --> 00:55:46,200
Speaker 1: had morphed from an adult with a tuxedo and scarred

923
00:55:46,400 --> 00:55:49,359
Speaker 1: game to eighteen with a baseball cap, which is how

924
00:55:49,400 --> 00:55:53,560
Speaker 1: I knew him, and even more towards Moustum when bowling

925
00:55:53,600 --> 00:55:57,400
Speaker 1: for Soups, Jarrett Reddick became the character's new voice. I

926
00:55:57,440 --> 00:56:02,080
Speaker 1: did not know that. In twenty fourteen, Apollo Global Management

927
00:56:02,080 --> 00:56:06,320
Speaker 1: bought the chain's parent company for one point three billion dollars,

928
00:56:07,080 --> 00:56:11,080
Speaker 1: while in June, the chain filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy

929
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:14,640
Speaker 1: protection after it was battered both by competition from other

930
00:56:14,719 --> 00:56:18,719
Speaker 1: quote active play companies like trampoline Parks, Laser Tag Facilities,

931
00:56:18,719 --> 00:56:22,120
Speaker 1: and David Busters, as well as pandemic related store closures.

932
00:56:22,640 --> 00:56:24,600
Speaker 1: But a little over six months later, according to the

933
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:28,520
Speaker 1: nation's restaurant news c e C. Chuck E Cheese Entertainment

934
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:31,440
Speaker 1: announced that it had pulled itself out of bankruptcy. The

935
00:56:31,600 --> 00:56:34,160
Speaker 1: rap Rap truly is a survivor. It's really great that

936
00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:37,120
Speaker 1: was the that was the animal for it pull itself

937
00:56:37,160 --> 00:56:41,680
Speaker 1: out of bankruptcy, newly financially healthy and afloat after a restructure,

938
00:56:41,719 --> 00:56:45,720
Speaker 1: did away with seven hundred five million dollars in debt. Wow.

939
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:49,120
Speaker 1: But when where the rat lost the financial war, he

940
00:56:49,200 --> 00:56:53,320
Speaker 1: won the hearts and minds of the world. For example,

941
00:56:53,719 --> 00:56:56,480
Speaker 1: Dave Ferguson, a showbiz pizza enthusiasts who grew up to

942
00:56:56,520 --> 00:56:59,759
Speaker 1: be a defense Contractor teamed up with Chris Thrash, a

943
00:57:00,040 --> 00:57:05,480
Speaker 1: roller rink DJ and Alabama. Sounds like a romantic comedy.

944
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:10,640
Speaker 1: He's a defense contractor, she's a roller rink DJ and Alabama. Together,

945
00:57:11,560 --> 00:57:16,560
Speaker 1: they're just saving animatonic rap together. They're rinking around. I

946
00:57:16,560 --> 00:57:19,480
Speaker 1: don't know that's there's no bad ideas in bransforming um.

947
00:57:19,520 --> 00:57:23,720
Speaker 1: The two of them purchased a number of decommissioned Rockefire

948
00:57:23,760 --> 00:57:28,800
Speaker 1: animatronics and using software that Ferguson developed to program all

949
00:57:28,840 --> 00:57:32,280
Speaker 1: of them, began uploading videos to YouTube of these zombie

950
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:37,680
Speaker 1: Rockefire bands performing contemporary songs, among them Bubba Sparks Is

951
00:57:37,840 --> 00:57:40,920
Speaker 1: Miss New Booty and I Think Usher's Love in the Club.

952
00:57:41,560 --> 00:57:45,880
Speaker 1: Amassing thousands of hits, viral hits. Um and this increased

953
00:57:46,040 --> 00:57:50,720
Speaker 1: visibility actually had material rewards for Factor. Thrash opened his

954
00:57:50,760 --> 00:57:54,120
Speaker 1: own restaurant in Alabama with all of these characters that

955
00:57:54,160 --> 00:57:58,720
Speaker 1: he bought. Celo Green booked the Rockefier explosion to back

956
00:57:58,800 --> 00:58:01,760
Speaker 1: him in a Vegas performance. Ryan Gosling put them in

957
00:58:01,920 --> 00:58:06,440
Speaker 1: his directorial debut, Lost River, but Fector was horrified. She

958
00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:09,640
Speaker 1: told Popular Mechanics inten I hated it. That was my

959
00:58:09,680 --> 00:58:13,680
Speaker 1: first reaction absolutely hated it. Those were adult songs. That's

960
00:58:13,720 --> 00:58:17,120
Speaker 1: not the rock a Fire audience. He sued Ferguson, saying,

961
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:19,840
Speaker 1: David's my whack a mole. If he pops up again,

962
00:58:19,960 --> 00:58:23,360
Speaker 1: I'm going to bring that hammer down. The trash talk

963
00:58:23,400 --> 00:58:27,040
Speaker 1: between these guys, it's really great. Well funnily enough, Chucky

964
00:58:27,120 --> 00:58:30,400
Speaker 1: Cheese had an actual corporate policy in place of discourage

965
00:58:30,440 --> 00:58:35,440
Speaker 1: an aftermarket industry. Employees were told to either destroy old costumes,

966
00:58:35,480 --> 00:58:37,400
Speaker 1: as seen in two thousand and seventeen them in a

967
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:41,440
Speaker 1: video surface of some employees that recently shutted Illinois locations

968
00:58:41,480 --> 00:58:45,520
Speaker 1: smashing a costume head with a sledge hammer, or to

969
00:58:45,520 --> 00:58:48,000
Speaker 1: break them down into their constituent parts and ship them

970
00:58:48,040 --> 00:58:51,440
Speaker 1: back to a hub for repurposing. I believe his actual

971
00:58:51,520 --> 00:58:54,040
Speaker 1: verbiage that he used was even if the head has

972
00:58:54,080 --> 00:58:56,800
Speaker 1: past its useful life, our practice is to take all

973
00:58:56,840 --> 00:58:59,080
Speaker 1: of the parts off the head, so we salvaged the

974
00:58:59,080 --> 00:59:01,439
Speaker 1: nose and ears and some of the other parts, much

975
00:59:01,480 --> 00:59:05,680
Speaker 1: like Jeffrey Dahmer um ed geen, I don't know punch

976
00:59:05,680 --> 00:59:09,800
Speaker 1: of better serial killer reference into that. Meanwhile, in the

977
00:59:09,840 --> 00:59:13,280
Speaker 1: animatronic Pizza animal industry was dealt another blow by Five

978
00:59:13,400 --> 00:59:17,000
Speaker 1: Nights at Freddie's, a massively popular horror survival video game

979
00:59:17,080 --> 00:59:19,480
Speaker 1: series in which players attempted to live through the overnight

980
00:59:19,560 --> 00:59:23,200
Speaker 1: shift at a Chucky Cheese esque children's pizza parlor, battling

981
00:59:23,200 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 1: off evil animatronic characters. While online chatter said that the

982
00:59:27,040 --> 00:59:31,080
Speaker 1: game was supposedly inspired by a real life shooting at

983
00:59:31,120 --> 00:59:35,080
Speaker 1: an Aurora, Colorado Chucky Cheeses, the creator said it was

984
00:59:35,120 --> 00:59:38,760
Speaker 1: actually just the poor reaction to his previous game that

985
00:59:38,800 --> 00:59:41,720
Speaker 1: inspired it. They said his lead character looked like a

986
00:59:41,880 --> 00:59:46,600
Speaker 1: nightmare animatronic character, so he said, I'll show you um Aurora, Colorado,

987
00:59:46,680 --> 00:59:48,680
Speaker 1: of course, being famous less than ten years later for

988
00:59:48,720 --> 00:59:52,600
Speaker 1: another mass shooting. There's also a low budget Nicolas Cage

989
00:59:52,640 --> 00:59:56,880
Speaker 1: horror movie called Willie's Wonderland that came out in which

990
00:59:56,880 --> 01:00:01,520
Speaker 1: features Cage battling in a array of demonically possessed children's animatronics,

991
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:05,160
Speaker 1: and they set up surprisingly similar to Five Nights at Freddy's,

992
01:00:05,280 --> 01:00:08,480
Speaker 1: and Factor capitalized on Five Nights at Freddie's by hosting

993
01:00:08,600 --> 01:00:12,920
Speaker 1: themed birthday parties at the near abandoned Creative Engineering Headquarters

994
01:00:12,920 --> 01:00:16,880
Speaker 1: in Florida, where the rock a fire explosion performs before

995
01:00:16,920 --> 01:00:20,320
Speaker 1: shutting off the lights to emulate the haunted after hours

996
01:00:20,400 --> 01:00:24,080
Speaker 1: feel of the game that sounds horrified. I'm gonna send

997
01:00:24,120 --> 01:00:27,440
Speaker 1: to a non refundable one way ticket to that and

998
01:00:27,520 --> 01:00:29,920
Speaker 1: make them do the all the Beatles songs. Can you

999
01:00:29,960 --> 01:00:34,480
Speaker 1: imagine You're in a dark, abandoned warehouse in Orlando and

1000
01:00:34,560 --> 01:00:39,000
Speaker 1: a bunch of animatronic dogs are singing Beatles songs at you. Oh,

1001
01:00:39,080 --> 01:00:42,040
Speaker 1: I want that for you, I want I want your fear.

1002
01:00:44,640 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 1: You know. Honestly, they don't really need to fictionalize the violence.

1003
01:00:47,480 --> 01:00:50,400
Speaker 1: Uh just google Chuck E Cheese Fight or Chuck E

1004
01:00:50,520 --> 01:00:55,560
Speaker 1: Cheese Violence for an alarming lengthy list of brawls and

1005
01:00:55,720 --> 01:00:59,520
Speaker 1: shootings at the restaurant. The chain has served alcohol at

1006
01:00:59,520 --> 01:01:01,760
Speaker 1: some of its locations for a long time, But I

1007
01:01:02,200 --> 01:01:04,200
Speaker 1: don't think you can really chalk all of it up

1008
01:01:04,240 --> 01:01:08,200
Speaker 1: to it. Uh, just all of that people have speculated this,

1009
01:01:08,320 --> 01:01:10,920
Speaker 1: the fact that it's a bunch of kids having kind

1010
01:01:10,960 --> 01:01:15,520
Speaker 1: of co mingled largely unsupervised birthday parties, and then a

1011
01:01:15,560 --> 01:01:20,000
Speaker 1: bunch of parents drinking and getting territorial in a very

1012
01:01:20,120 --> 01:01:25,040
Speaker 1: high stimulus environment. Um One Chucky Cheeses in Brookfield, Wisconsin

1013
01:01:25,400 --> 01:01:28,560
Speaker 1: triggered more calls to the police in two thousand eight

1014
01:01:28,600 --> 01:01:31,880
Speaker 1: than any other restaurant in the city, including a biker

1015
01:01:31,920 --> 01:01:36,640
Speaker 1: bar down the street, which is just the news story

1016
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:39,680
Speaker 1: I love the most these days. Nolan Bushnell is based

1017
01:01:39,720 --> 01:01:42,200
Speaker 1: in l A, working in a bunch of video game

1018
01:01:42,240 --> 01:01:45,600
Speaker 1: and tex sphere adjacent kind of stuff. Um Aside from

1019
01:01:45,640 --> 01:01:48,240
Speaker 1: the recent fiftieth anniversary of Pong, the last time he

1020
01:01:48,280 --> 01:01:50,000
Speaker 1: was in the news was for releasing an n f

1021
01:01:50,040 --> 01:01:54,360
Speaker 1: T which was bought by Brock Pierce, the Mighty Ducks

1022
01:01:54,400 --> 01:01:59,920
Speaker 1: actor turned crypto evangelist. Factor has continued to invent, including

1023
01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:04,440
Speaker 1: an experimental cooking fuel called carbo hydrillium, which caused an

1024
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:09,080
Speaker 1: explosion at a creative engineering warehouse in Orlando that scattered

1025
01:02:09,120 --> 01:02:13,560
Speaker 1: old rocket fire animatronic parts everywhere, which was a horrifying scene.

1026
01:02:14,600 --> 01:02:17,760
Speaker 1: Thankfully there were no human injuries, but police and fire

1027
01:02:17,800 --> 01:02:19,440
Speaker 1: talked about showing up and seeing all of these old

1028
01:02:19,520 --> 01:02:24,400
Speaker 1: animatronic animal heads scattered everywhere. Chuck E. Cheese sadly began

1029
01:02:24,600 --> 01:02:27,920
Speaker 1: phasing out its animatronics in two thousand seventeen, to the

1030
01:02:27,960 --> 01:02:32,360
Speaker 1: consternation of nineties kids everywhere, but Bushnell was sanguine about it.

1031
01:02:32,480 --> 01:02:36,840
Speaker 1: He told Gizmoto animatronics were cutting it. When Chucky Cheese started.

1032
01:02:37,440 --> 01:02:39,040
Speaker 1: I try very hard not to live my life in

1033
01:02:39,080 --> 01:02:42,480
Speaker 1: the review beer. I like change, I like progress, and

1034
01:02:42,520 --> 01:02:45,240
Speaker 1: I like new things, and I like pizza and I

1035
01:02:45,320 --> 01:02:49,439
Speaker 1: like rats. Sorry, what were we talking about? Yeah? What

1036
01:02:51,320 --> 01:02:54,360
Speaker 1: he just stared off into. It's like those those click

1037
01:02:54,400 --> 01:03:00,600
Speaker 1: hold quotes. I like rats, Nolan Bushnell, unprompted, one of

1038
01:03:00,600 --> 01:03:03,560
Speaker 1: the voices of Chucky Cheese, Duncan Brandon told Mel Magazine

1039
01:03:03,800 --> 01:03:06,840
Speaker 1: Olan Bushnell, those guys back then, it was just genius,

1040
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:10,520
Speaker 1: pure genius. It was so cool because we had watched

1041
01:03:10,560 --> 01:03:13,080
Speaker 1: cartoons for years. But to be able to go somewhere,

1042
01:03:13,200 --> 01:03:15,439
Speaker 1: sit down and have a meal and a game room

1043
01:03:15,480 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 1: over there, that already was cool, but then you could

1044
01:03:18,120 --> 01:03:20,280
Speaker 1: go over here and watch these robots to a show.

1045
01:03:20,800 --> 01:03:23,920
Speaker 1: It was outrageous and it's created such a magical experience

1046
01:03:23,920 --> 01:03:27,280
Speaker 1: for so many families. I have nothing else to add

1047
01:03:27,320 --> 01:03:32,840
Speaker 1: to that. Uh. May all of you have both the

1048
01:03:32,920 --> 01:03:37,680
Speaker 1: joy and the tear that only a giant pizza rat

1049
01:03:38,080 --> 01:03:41,760
Speaker 1: can impart in life. You can't have the pizza without

1050
01:03:41,760 --> 01:03:47,040
Speaker 1: the rat. That's the kicker. Folks. Thank you for taking

1051
01:03:47,040 --> 01:03:51,200
Speaker 1: this journey down memory lane with Jordan Charles and I

1052
01:03:51,200 --> 01:03:53,600
Speaker 1: I have Alex Tagel. This has been too Much Information.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, and I'm Jordan run Tog. We'll

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Speaker 1: catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel

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Speaker 1: Brown and Jordan Runtalk. The show's supervising producer is Michael

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Speaker 1: Alder June. The show was researched, written and hosted by

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Speaker 1: Jordan run Talk and Alex Hegel, with original music by

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Speaker 1: Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like

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