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A thing I think about a lot is that in 1980, Chuck E. Cheese sued Showbiz Pizza for ripping off their concept and won, and then in 1984 Chuck E. Cheese went bankrupt so Showbiz Pizza bought the company, and then they turned all the Showbiz Pizzas into Chuck E. Cheeses
Just absolutely pure "Yeah I really like what you guys are doing and I'm gonna do it too" energy, you've gotta respect it
if anyone says Charles Entertainment Cheese in my replies I'm blocking you, we all know that fact
A really excellent less-known fact: there's a legit currency market for out-of-issue Chuck E. Cheese tokens
I once spent months researching a story about Chuck E. Cheese and then we scrapped it because it was basically just A List Of Interesting Facts so here's some more interesting facts:
For two decades the voice of Chuck E. Cheese was a very devout evangelical Christian who, after he was oustered, said that all who heard his voice as Chuck E. over the years were hearing pure love for Jesus. Chuck E.'s current voice is the frontman of the band Bowling for Soup
The original animatronic show for C.E.C. was extremely PG-13 and had kind of a racy bordello theme and featured a hippopotamus who played the piano and was modeled on Pearl Bailey
In 2012 Chuck E. Cheese, who is canonically a rat, officially changed species and became a mouse
I do feel that this didn't get enough attention in the metaphysics community
The founder of Chuck E. Cheese, Nolan Bushnell, also founded Atari, and basically he started CEC on the principle of "So an arcade buys my game for $5k, and then they make $30k on it? Screw that I'm just gonna start my own arcade."
And then: "The reason kids leave the arcade is because they run out of money. If I serve beer, their parents will hang out at the arcade with them, and then when the kids run out of money they can just ask their parents for more."
He's a savvy guy, even if a lot of the reason Chuck E. Cheese went bankrupt in the 80s is because he paid zero attention to the business due to being too busy handling the absolutely unfathomably shitshod disaster of Atari's 1982 E.T. game
I didn't realize there was an episode of @willapaskin's Decoder Ring about all of this but I am REALLY EXCITED to listen to it!!! https://slate.com/culture/2019/06/decoder-ring-explores-the-war-between-chuck-e-cheeses-and-showbiz-pizza-place-and-the-fate-of-their-animatronic-characters-including-the-king.html
Wow, big error that I misremembered: Bushnell was NOT busy with Atari when stuff started going south in 82, he was busy with a startup called Kadabrascope, which he eventually sold off to try to save CEC, and he sold it to George Lucas, and then Kadabrascope became Pixar
Anyway everyone is insane and the world is beautiful, or maybe the other way around
Showbiz Pizza has entered the chat!!! Thank you Showbiz Pizza dot com! https://twitter.com/showbizpizzacom/status/1329560253617287173?s=20
Also worth noting that the reason Showbiz Pizza was so excellent at ripping off Chuck E. Cheese's format was because Showbiz was founded by the major franchise operator of Chuck E. Cheese locations, because he decided he could run Chuck E. Cheese better than Chuck E. Cheese could
(He was, it turns out, correct.)
FYI in my mind the movie version of this whole saga is Halt and Catch Fire but with animatronic rats
Originally Chuck E. Cheese was going to be called Coyote Pizza but the mascot company accidentally shipped Bushnell a dirty rat costume instead (likely designed as a prop for striking unions!) https://twitter.com/hels/status/1329561296061288448?s=21 https://twitter.com/hels/status/1329561296061288448
Honestly the universe’s one true infinitely renewable resource is insane but true Chuck E. Cheese facts
