Latest / Ridiculous History / The Strange Tale of Charles Entertainment Cheese, Part One: Atari and Pizza

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The Strange Tale of Charles Entertainment Cheese, Part One: Atari and Pizza · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man, the Myth,
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Speaker 1: the Legend. Superproducer, Max Entertainment Williams. Yeah, everyone, if you
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Speaker 1: were wondering what the E stands for, because we've all
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Speaker 1: in the Ridiculous History Lore, We're always going on about
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Speaker 1: Max's mysterious E middle name, because that's definitely a thing,
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Speaker 1: right Max, Yeah, definitely, it's definitely that. Jay, I don't
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Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. Equals Entertainment because Max is
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Speaker 1: nothing if not entertaining. Today's topic, I think is something
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Speaker 1: we've all been looking forward to, in addition to our
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Speaker 1: research associates, the amazing Doctor Z and Doctor Zach, Doctor Z.
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Speaker 1: If you're a Canadian, I think it hits a little
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Speaker 1: different from me and Ben. Max. I think you probably
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Speaker 1: probably grew up going to some iteration of the Chuck
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Speaker 1: E Cheese franchise, you know scenario when you were a kid.
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Speaker 1: But Ben and I or at a certain age, pretty
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Speaker 1: sure we went to the OG or at least what
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Speaker 1: we thought was the O G until we researched the
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Speaker 1: story Showbiz Pizza featuring the terrifying performances of the animatronic
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Speaker 1: Rock a Fire Explosion Band. Yeah, it's aka every child's
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Speaker 1: first introduction to a casino because the idea is like,
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Speaker 1: if you're a kid, this is a miraculous thing, right,
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Speaker 1: you get to show up. They have pizza, which is
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Speaker 1: still very very hot in many demographics, including podcasters and nol.
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Speaker 1: Then you get all the games and the entire time
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Speaker 1: there's this magical animatronic band, and if you're young enough,
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Speaker 1: I think it looks like they're actually playing. That's a
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Speaker 1: question for you when you saw those bands as a
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Speaker 1: wee tyke, were you old enough to realize they were
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Speaker 1: kind of just sort of pretending to play. I don't remember, honestly,
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Speaker 1: Like it does feel sort of the way as a
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Speaker 1: as an idiot child, you might interpret like someone in
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Speaker 1: a suit, you know, like like wearing like a like
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Speaker 1: a mouse suit or like you know, at Disney or whatever,
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Speaker 1: the movements from Mega Uncanny Valley. Looking at them now
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Speaker 1: at pretty much nightmare fuel. But I remember as a
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Speaker 1: kid being really charmed by them and really feeling like
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Speaker 1: they did have like life within them. And that's a
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Speaker 1: testament to the creators and then the whole thinking behind
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Speaker 1: these types of these types of experiences. It really did
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Speaker 1: all start, you know, in a way, I think with
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Speaker 1: Disney and the imagineers. I just was lucky enough to
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Speaker 1: go to Disney World in Florida with my family, and
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Speaker 1: I think my favorite part were some of the older
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Speaker 1: rise that incorporated that early kind of imagineer animatronics, stuff
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Speaker 1: like The Country Bears Jamboree, which I would argue, I
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Speaker 1: don't know the timeline exactly, but pretty sure that this
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Speaker 1: hold Chucky Cheese, rocket fire explosion animatronic band an utter
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Speaker 1: rip off of The Country Bears Jamboree, because that is
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Speaker 1: a stage situation with guests that pop in and you're
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Speaker 1: in a little theater and there's you know, posters on
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Speaker 1: the wall as if the stars of the show are
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Speaker 1: actual real life you know, celebrities and stuff. Pretty sure
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Speaker 1: that's where it came from. I could I could see
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Speaker 1: that too, And you know what, I was abroad most
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Speaker 1: recently in Japan, there are a ton of venues and
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Speaker 1: restaurants that have stuff like this going on. It's just
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Speaker 1: really really cool. And today we're going to talk about
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Speaker 1: what our pal doctors g calls the many lives of
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Speaker 1: Charles Entertainment cheese. I'm with you on the timeline because
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Speaker 1: it might be surprising for a lot of us to
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Speaker 1: know that this story dates back to the nineteen seventies.
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Speaker 1: In May of nineteen seventy seven, San Jose, California, the
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Speaker 1: one of the Atari co founders, Nolan Bushnell, said, Hey,
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Speaker 1: let's let's jus up your average pizza place, you know
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Speaker 1: what I mean. Let's let's make it. Let's make it
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Speaker 1: not just pizza, not just a caricature of an Italian
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Speaker 1: chef on the boxes. Let's get some robots in there.
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Speaker 1: And then you know, we can't really can't really put
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Speaker 1: boundaries on art, right, So these robots are real characters.
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Speaker 1: One of them who might not have aged well is
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Speaker 1: a rat who has a Jersey accent for some reason
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Speaker 1: and is chained smoking yeah, like giant cigars. He's like
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Speaker 1: clearly mob connected. And I just I do just want
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Speaker 1: to add, we don't have to jump back to this,
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Speaker 1: but this is seventy seven. Country Bear Jamboree was debuted
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Speaker 1: in Florida in Orlando in nineteen seventy one um at
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Speaker 1: the at the Magic Kingdom there's a great documentary about
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Speaker 1: this m and again, like in the Rocket Fire Explosion
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Speaker 1: documentary that I think you're referencing, they don't really exactly
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Speaker 1: cop to ripping that off, but it's it's it's eerily simple.
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Speaker 1: It's like if anyone it's pretty much the same. Yeah, man,
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Speaker 1: It's kind of like that behind the music interview with
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Speaker 1: Vanilla Ice about the beat for under d. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 1: So Nolan Bushnell grew up in Utah. He said he
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Speaker 1: had an engineering degree. He had a background and kind
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Speaker 1: of you know in amusement parks and kind of like
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Speaker 1: carnival type atmospheres. He learned that there was a business
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Speaker 1: side to these types of shows and these types of
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Speaker 1: traveling you know, scenarios and um. He started to pay
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Speaker 1: really close attention to consumers and the kinds of things
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Speaker 1: that they liked and their their patterns and their habits,
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Speaker 1: right sort of the way you know, you think about
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Speaker 1: the way like a grocery store is organized in order
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Speaker 1: to kind of capitalize on people's you know, what attracts
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Speaker 1: them and like to put things in a certain order
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Speaker 1: so that they the maximum yield out of your customer.
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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's just part of it. It's
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Speaker 1: all about making money, and that's what he was doing. Um.
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Speaker 1: He graduated the University of Utah, and then he moved
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Speaker 1: to California and he wanted to be an engineer for
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Speaker 1: ding Ding Ding Disney. And they don't call him engineers there,
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Speaker 1: do they They call them imagineers. They do, they do.
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Speaker 1: And this was already he's still he's an early adopter
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Speaker 1: of this kind of stuff. And it's a dream job,
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Speaker 1: right obviously, And in many ways it's still a dream
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Speaker 1: job today. A good friend of ours, friends of the show,
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Speaker 1: Andrew Howard, he might recognize from our sister podcast Saver.
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Speaker 1: He has he has imagineers in his family. So cool, right,
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Speaker 1: so um, so let's go to Ted Dapney. Ted Dapney
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Speaker 1: is a friend of Nolan Bushnell's and together they co
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Speaker 1: found Atari and Ted is always Ted is always very
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Speaker 1: very forthright about this. He says, the idea that became
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Speaker 1: Pizza Time was Nolan Bushnell's dream. It was the beginning
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Speaker 1: of everything. He didn't even think about a video game
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Speaker 1: until later. Apparently, according to Ted, his pal Nolan would
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Speaker 1: take them around to different restaurants and they would go
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Speaker 1: look at the restaurants, and they would say, like, Okay,
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Speaker 1: what's working here? How can we get robots involved? You know,
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Speaker 1: how can we make this a base, Like how can
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Speaker 1: we make this Disneyland at home? I love that this
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Speaker 1: was like this was truly the dream. And then kind of,
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Speaker 1: you know, the video game industry they kind of invented
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Speaker 1: by accident. I mean, that wasn't my accident. You know.
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Speaker 1: It put that whole pizza dream on the back burner
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Speaker 1: because yeah, Dabney and Bushnell started working on something called
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Speaker 1: computer Space, so the world's very first commercial arcade machine
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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy. He never quite let the pizza dream die,
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Speaker 1: you know, he sort of like had it in reserve.
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Speaker 1: But they went on in nineteen seventy two to found
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Speaker 1: a little company he might have heard of, called Atari
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Speaker 1: and created a little game he might have heard of
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Speaker 1: that seems really crazily dated now, but at the time
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Speaker 1: was absolutely just you know, a craze palm woopo, you know,
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Speaker 1: the one the two paddles on each side, and like,
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Speaker 1: you know, you could play against somebody in the same room.
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Speaker 1: I guess if everything was in the same room at
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Speaker 1: the time, because there was no online gaming yet. By
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Speaker 1: the way, all of this stuff makes me think of
8:47
Speaker 1: an incredible show that I've been sleeping on for years,
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Speaker 1: was recommended to me called Halt and Catch Fire. That
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Speaker 1: is about sort of the PC like race of the
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Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and eighties and all of this kind of
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Speaker 1: Atari stuff and all of this sort of like nascent
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Speaker 1: computer tech that again by today's center, when you look
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Speaker 1: at the products, seems so data. It shows you kind
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Speaker 1: of the behind the scenes of how scrappy all these
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Speaker 1: folks were and how forward thinking. Highly recommend Halt and
9:13
Speaker 1: Catch Fire and that as an amazing like post punk
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Speaker 1: kind of soundtrack. Yeah, and there's there's a lot of
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Speaker 1: good or fantastic documentary work about the early days of
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Speaker 1: video games. I used to write a series many years
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Speaker 1: ago now called Stuff of Genius, which I mentioned before. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: when we talk about we talk about Bushnell, we also
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Speaker 1: talk about the success of early Atari and Pong. It's
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Speaker 1: it's pretty crazy, right, because you never know what the
9:45
Speaker 1: lightning in the bottle will be. That's why for almost
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Speaker 1: every story of an inventor or a great luminary, you
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Speaker 1: will see that they had a cavalcade of other stuff
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Speaker 1: that they were interested in you know what I mean,
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Speaker 1: Like Newton is really into alchemy. He was hoping it'd
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Speaker 1: be pizza, but it just so happened that it was
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Speaker 1: video game, so pizza had to kind of take a
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Speaker 1: back seat, right right, But David Busters figured out yes, yes,
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Speaker 1: just so David Busters picked up the mantel there, I
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Speaker 1: would argue, right, well, I don't know exactly We're not
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Speaker 1: here to talk about the history of David but we
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Speaker 1: will leave that for another day. Again, Palm Massive credited
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Speaker 1: as being the first like commercial, huge blockbuster success, So
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Speaker 1: when you go back and look at it now or
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Speaker 1: any of the games from that era, it's like, what
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Speaker 1: is that? And the thing about Palm though, was that
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Speaker 1: it was fast, like the feedback you know of moving
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Speaker 1: those paddles like you, it felt fair. There was a
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Speaker 1: certain amount of skill that was involved, unlike games like
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Speaker 1: et most of which ended up in a landfill. That's
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Speaker 1: also a story for another day. Story. It is a
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Speaker 1: very true story. But the industry that essentially Bushnell and
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Speaker 1: Dabney founded is today worth you know, close to one
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Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars and just more advanced than any of
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Speaker 1: these folks at the time. Never could have dreamed of. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and they said, look, the profits that Attari are magnificent.
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Speaker 1: We're doing gangbusters. We're doing we're doing busters numbers here,
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Speaker 1: and there's not really a way for us to stay
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Speaker 1: competitive because so many other forces are entering this market
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Speaker 1: and innovating in their own way. So eventually Nolan sells
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Speaker 1: Atari to Warner Communications in nineteen seventy six for twenty
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Speaker 1: eight million dollars. And what do you say, guys? Should
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Speaker 1: we do an inflation calculation? There? Can we have a
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Speaker 1: boot candidate and a booth and a boo what do
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Speaker 1: we got? What do we got? What do we got?
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Speaker 1: And we're talking twenty eight million dollars in nineteen seventy
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Speaker 1: six dollars today would be a whopping a boob. Oh,
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Speaker 1: we have to skip it. It It won't let us do ten.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, here's how we'll do it. Yeah. I
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Speaker 1: don't know how much of this we want to leave in.
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Speaker 1: Uh spoiler alert. Folks were not great at math. Apparently
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Speaker 1: neither is the internet. So this is so much money
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Speaker 1: that hang on. Okay, oh wow, just this alone is
12:37
Speaker 1: making this a two part episode. Okay, this is so
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Speaker 1: much money that we had to go to our trusty
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Speaker 1: inflation calculator and put it in in a couple of
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Speaker 1: different blocks. So twenty eight million dollars nineteen seventy six,
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Speaker 1: like you said, Noel today, that is one hundred and
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Speaker 1: fifty one million dollars, one hundred fifty one million, five
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Speaker 1: hundred two thousand, one hundred and fifty eight dollars and
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Speaker 1: twenty eight cents. That's crazy, that's crazy. What we're saying
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Speaker 1: is he didn't need the money after that. He didn't.
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Speaker 1: He didn't need the money obviously. But you know what,
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Speaker 1: a lot of times these types of creators, the true creators,
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Speaker 1: they're not the business guys. And again you'll see that
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Speaker 1: if you watch Hold and Catch Fire. They really do
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Speaker 1: a good job of showing those types and like the
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Speaker 1: true creative innovators versus like the ones that are just
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Speaker 1: in it to make to turn a profit. So yeah,
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Speaker 1: he also though, did, in order to get that payout,
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Speaker 1: have to sign a five year non compete agreement, which
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Speaker 1: is the killer of creatives, right if you're if you
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Speaker 1: can't compete in that space anymore. He did remain on
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Speaker 1: as head of Atari, but because of now being part
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Speaker 1: of this giant corporate structure, he wasn't able to innovate
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Speaker 1: like he used to be able to. That's another price
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Speaker 1: of you know, I wouldn't call this seven. I don't
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Speaker 1: know selling out at such a loaded term, but that
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Speaker 1: is one of the prices of of you know, selling
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Speaker 1: your company as you unless you have it very specifically
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Speaker 1: outline in the terms, you know, you're gonna have a
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Speaker 1: new corporate overlord. But there was one project that he
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Speaker 1: got the green light on and it involved yea of
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Speaker 1: all his ideas, these suits are saying, well, like of
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Speaker 1: all his ideas, the suits are saying, go back, Nolan,
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Speaker 1: and go back to that restaurant thing you had my
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Speaker 1: attention and now you have my interest. You know, only
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Speaker 1: at this stage it was called Coyote Pizza Um and
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Speaker 1: he I guess he talks about an amusing anecdote of
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Speaker 1: kind of selling the story, you know, selling the branding
14:47
Speaker 1: behind it. He ordered what he thought was a full
14:50
Speaker 1: sized coyote costume, and instead of a coyote, they screwed
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Speaker 1: up or he maybe miss you know, identified it in
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Speaker 1: the catalog. It was a giant gray rat. The rat
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Speaker 1: costume you have became very popular around the Atari HQ.
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Speaker 1: So so there you might have clocked at the beginning
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Speaker 1: of the show, folks where we said that there was
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Speaker 1: this mascot that was a chain smoking rat with a
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Speaker 1: Jersey accent. That was their Bob Ross happy accident of
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Speaker 1: Coyote pizza. They said, Okay, for a while, Rick Rat
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Speaker 1: was so popular around the office that he became the
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Speaker 1: unofficial mascot for Atari. Basically, I mean, you know, they're
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Speaker 1: similar enough. They're both scavengers, you know, they're both have
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Speaker 1: kind of matted fur and eat carry on and smoke
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Speaker 1: cigars and were bowler hats. You know, what you can
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Speaker 1: do with the coyote, you can also do with the rat.
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Speaker 1: So the suits at now Atari Corporate or like go
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Speaker 1: with God, and they essentially they gave him, didn't they
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Speaker 1: give him someone to help him out, the Gene Landrum
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Speaker 1: I believe his name. Yeah, yeah, So okay, here's here's
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Speaker 1: their idea. And we've got quotes from Gene on this.
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Speaker 1: So Coyote Pizza is taken off. People love Rick Rat,
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Speaker 1: and Jean says I did the complete business plan for
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Speaker 1: the rollout of the Atari twenty six hundred. It was
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Speaker 1: going to take him another year to get it designed
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Speaker 1: and put in at emotion, and Nolan said, hey, Geen,
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Speaker 1: you got all this time, go go to a business
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Speaker 1: plan just like you did before. I loved it, but
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Speaker 1: go do it for this uh family entertainment concept. And
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Speaker 1: then Gene takes to it like a fish to water
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Speaker 1: or a rat to smoke in cigars. Apparently, he says,
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Speaker 1: he comes up with all the ideas and you know,
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Speaker 1: and Nolan, one thing that's really stand up about Nolan
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Speaker 1: Bushnell is that he gives credit where he's where it's duing.
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Speaker 1: He says, in a real way to him, Gene is
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Speaker 1: the founder of Chuck E Cheese because Jean took this
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Speaker 1: idea and made it reality, like renting the facility, hiring people,
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Speaker 1: getting recipes, everything right. Jeene was on the ground floor
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Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, exactly, And I mean it really was
17:15
Speaker 1: a concept that outside of like you know, the Country
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Speaker 1: Bears Jamboree, which doesn't a restaurant experience, it's just you know,
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Speaker 1: a old honkytoonk kind of show, wasn't really out there.
17:25
Speaker 1: So that even this was in the same way that
17:27
Speaker 1: Atari was really the first you know, home console to market,
17:31
Speaker 1: it didn't ultimately end up being the one that was
17:33
Speaker 1: the most impactful that would have been the nes you know,
17:36
Speaker 1: that came a little later because the twenty six hundred
17:39
Speaker 1: that we were talking about too, was plagued with all
17:41
Speaker 1: kinds of problems, or they like pored it over things
17:43
Speaker 1: like pac Man and made all these investments in you know,
17:46
Speaker 1: high level intellectual property like et. But the ports didn't
17:50
Speaker 1: look very good, and then some of those bets on
17:52
Speaker 1: intellectual property really failed. Like I mentioned at the top
17:55
Speaker 1: of the show, et it was such a poor seller
17:57
Speaker 1: that ended up in a landfill. But this whole rush
18:00
Speaker 1: Shrunk concept thing really seemed to have legs. So they
18:04
Speaker 1: do a little bit of shuffling around. Landrum's kind of
18:08
Speaker 1: he's a bit not in charge. He definitely has a say,
18:12
Speaker 1: and Landrum is developing this idea Rick Rats Pizza up
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Speaker 1: starts to transform Rick Rats gotta go, he says, Nolan,
18:20
Speaker 1: we're making this the kids place. We can't have a rat.
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Speaker 1: It's too predatory and too lethal. Now that's interesting because
18:28
Speaker 1: we know kind of where things landed eventually with Charles
18:31
Speaker 1: Entertainment Cheese. Yeah, so they had to they had to compromise.
18:35
Speaker 1: Just like William Faulkner said, kill your darlings, you know,
18:39
Speaker 1: you have to make tough decisions when it comes to
18:41
Speaker 1: effective creativity. And I'm sure they quoted Faulkner a lot
18:44
Speaker 1: in the early days of Chucky Cheese. Sure. So originally
18:50
Speaker 1: what they did is they tried to find something that
18:53
Speaker 1: was less maybe predatory or lethal, because Jean was concerned
18:58
Speaker 1: a rat would be kind of scared. So Rick Rat
19:01
Speaker 1: became Big Cheese. Doesn't sound gangster ish at all, yeah, right,
19:09
Speaker 1: it sounds like he got a promotion in the mob one.
19:13
Speaker 1: He's the Big Cheese now. Yeah, but he This was
19:17
Speaker 1: before the age of widespread internet, right, so they couldn't
19:21
Speaker 1: just google the name, and it took them a second
19:25
Speaker 1: to learn that the name had already been taken somebody,
19:28
Speaker 1: some other company had trademarked Big Cheese. So they went
19:31
Speaker 1: to the next best thing, Chuck E Cheese, which Nolan
19:36
Speaker 1: called a three smile name. That's really cute and as
19:41
Speaker 1: we mentioned before, just like coincidentally with Max's mysterious e
19:45
Speaker 1: middle name, the eastood for entertainment. But an important part again,
19:50
Speaker 1: they don't speak about, you know, we know how litigious
19:53
Speaker 1: the mouse is, so you don't see a lot of
19:55
Speaker 1: people saying, you know, how long. Yeah, that's definitely where
19:57
Speaker 1: we got are what we were trying to do. But
19:59
Speaker 1: chuck each cheese does that ring a bell? Mick e mouse?
20:02
Speaker 1: Chuck e cheese? I mean, you know, I guess when
20:06
Speaker 1: you steal, you steal from the best. We are going
20:09
Speaker 1: to get into a bit of how some of these
20:12
Speaker 1: things were lifted from the imagineers in just a second. Yeah, yeah,
20:16
Speaker 1: because there is definitely there's definitely a vanilla ice, you know,
20:22
Speaker 1: queen situation going on here. So Landrum, despite his initial reservations,
20:28
Speaker 1: he actually was in the boardroom when after he had
20:31
Speaker 1: made this first pitch, everybody went nuts. They loved it,
20:34
Speaker 1: and he said, I wouldn't hire me. Jean said, don't,
20:37
Speaker 1: I wouldn't hire me. I'm an electronics guy. But he
20:40
Speaker 1: got really into this and he started thinking about it
20:44
Speaker 1: very seriously, and he said, look, we want a family
20:47
Speaker 1: friendly atmosphere. We don't want any of those rowdy hooligans
20:51
Speaker 1: that you see at other pizza places. So our solution
20:56
Speaker 1: is that all miners will have to be accompanied by adults.
21:03
Speaker 1: And this is something that occurs today right like it Also,
21:08
Speaker 1: if you think about it, and they don't say this,
21:10
Speaker 1: but if you think about it, it's a great way
21:13
Speaker 1: to make sure that every table has more customers. Yeah,
21:17
Speaker 1: not to mention that they also sell beer to this day.
21:20
Speaker 1: That's you know, for the adults. And my kid is
21:23
Speaker 1: not a chucky cheese birthday party age anymore. But when
21:26
Speaker 1: she was a little younger, I remember taking her to
21:28
Speaker 1: the one and I've obviously not been as a parent
21:31
Speaker 1: ever before, and they do a thing I don't know
21:33
Speaker 1: if they've always done this, where they give you an
21:35
Speaker 1: invisible ink stamp on the back of your hand and
21:39
Speaker 1: on the back of your kid's hand, and they have
21:40
Speaker 1: to match so that when you leave, they shine a
21:44
Speaker 1: line on it and see if they match, to make
21:46
Speaker 1: sure that no one's snatched somebody else's kid, which I mean,
21:51
Speaker 1: it's a good safety measure to agree, you know. Also,
21:55
Speaker 1: here's the thing, why would you have your kid's birthday here? Well,
21:59
Speaker 1: you would have it there because technology comes together in
22:03
Speaker 1: a very cool way that is also a little bit
22:06
Speaker 1: cheaper than Disney just being brass tacks. Here. If you
22:09
Speaker 1: go to this pizza place, then you are guaranteed to
22:13
Speaker 1: see animatronic like live cartoon characters that sing songs and
22:18
Speaker 1: they do comedy bits like vaudeville style every eight minutes
22:22
Speaker 1: on the dot as you and your family and your
22:27
Speaker 1: kids friends eat your pizza. The pizza is just sort
22:31
Speaker 1: of a smaller part of the experience or part of
22:35
Speaker 1: the gestalt here. People aren't going because they're rave Michelin
22:40
Speaker 1: star reviews of the pizza. And I'm bummed that when
22:43
Speaker 1: I was at Disney World, I didn't got to get
22:44
Speaker 1: a chance to go to another one of the inspirations
22:47
Speaker 1: for this outside of pizza, which was the Enchanted teaking Room.
22:51
Speaker 1: And also, by the way, if anyone's interested in Disney
22:54
Speaker 1: history and the history of the imagineers, there's a museum
22:57
Speaker 1: that's not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company. It's called
23:00
Speaker 1: the Walt Disney Family Museum, and it's in the Presidio
23:04
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and they have a lot of the
23:06
Speaker 1: prototypes for those things, and a lot of like the
23:09
Speaker 1: technology that like eye Works invented, you know, who was
23:12
Speaker 1: one of the original kind of right hand tech people
23:15
Speaker 1: at Disney, like the optical printer and the multiplane camera
23:19
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff. And they have like some
23:21
Speaker 1: of the you know, the animatronic prototypes for what would
23:25
Speaker 1: end up being the Tiki Room and the Country Bear Jamboree.
23:28
Speaker 1: But yeah, surprise, the Country Bear Jamboree did predate all
23:32
Speaker 1: of this Pizza time business. So and as we know,
23:36
Speaker 1: Bushnell originally wanted to go to work as an imagineer
23:39
Speaker 1: at Disney, so it makes sense. I would say, probably
23:42
Speaker 1: goes a bit beyond inspiration and a little more straight
23:46
Speaker 1: out theft. I don't know, but I haven't heard anything
23:50
Speaker 1: about a knee lawsuits because we know that Disney is
23:53
Speaker 1: very litigious, and nothing in our research points of any serious,
23:58
Speaker 1: you know, legal cases between the two. Yeah. Yeah, it's
24:01
Speaker 1: a good point. It's a good point. Maybe they gave
24:04
Speaker 1: them a pass because if you think about it, the
24:06
Speaker 1: existence of a Chuck e Cheese at this point in
24:10
Speaker 1: time is also helpful for Disney, right true, so it
24:15
Speaker 1: makes them look good as well. There may have been
24:17
Speaker 1: a calculation there also. I gotta just say, you know,
24:21
Speaker 1: plagiarism aside whether or not we want to consider this stealing,
24:25
Speaker 1: and it does cleave pretty closely to Disney. Just for
24:30
Speaker 1: the record, if you put all that to one side,
24:33
Speaker 1: the technology behind it is so impressive. They automated these
24:38
Speaker 1: with real to real tape. That's how they like program them.
24:43
Speaker 1: That's nuts, I mean. And there's anybody that's you know,
24:46
Speaker 1: even a sort of audio nerd out there, understands that.
24:49
Speaker 1: Like you know, with computers, you have so much precision
24:53
Speaker 1: as to like when audio connects or synchronizes with picture
24:57
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But real to real tape is
24:59
Speaker 1: literally magnet netic tape. You can you can automate a
25:03
Speaker 1: start and stop of something like that, but it has
25:06
Speaker 1: to all be a program that runs in sync with
25:08
Speaker 1: these other devices that you know, the movement of the
25:11
Speaker 1: animatronics and stuff, and then it just stops and it's
25:14
Speaker 1: all kind of sync up together. It's another thing that
25:16
Speaker 1: at the Family Museum you can really see how they
25:19
Speaker 1: did sound sync in the early days of like you know,
25:22
Speaker 1: Fantasia for example, where every little audio queue syncs up
25:26
Speaker 1: with a visual you know, to the on the dime,
25:29
Speaker 1: and it's so difficult to do. We take it for granted,
25:32
Speaker 1: you know how analog and hands on and really just
25:35
Speaker 1: required so much thought, you know, to to do all
25:38
Speaker 1: that stuff. So you're right, even this kind of kind
25:41
Speaker 1: of poor man's version of that still quite impressive, oh
25:44
Speaker 1: very much so. And also if you if you want
25:47
Speaker 1: to get a sense of how impressive it is. Just
25:49
Speaker 1: go over to YouTube and watch watch these lovely characters.
25:53
Speaker 1: When something goes wrong, it's terrifying. Uh, And it's worth
25:58
Speaker 1: it's worth your time if you're like I don't have
26:00
Speaker 1: enough nightmares on a on a daily basis. And it
26:04
Speaker 1: left a mark pop culturally in that respect too, because
26:06
Speaker 1: of things like five Nights at Freddie's, you know, where
26:09
Speaker 1: you have these like animatronic things jump scaring you, you
26:12
Speaker 1: know at all of Yeah, because it is nightmare fuel
26:15
Speaker 1: when the skins are off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so
26:18
Speaker 1: with that, let's give some shout outs some credit where
26:21
Speaker 1: it's due to the other people associated with the design
26:25
Speaker 1: of Chucky Cheese and other characters Bob Flemates or Fleamates,
26:31
Speaker 1: and then engineers like Larry Eamons and Rob Milner, these
26:35
Speaker 1: are all Atari guys. And then Harold gold Branson is
26:40
Speaker 1: the one who said let's put some skin on these,
26:43
Speaker 1: let's make them not look like Westworld minus masks. So
26:49
Speaker 1: Harold Goldbrandson is the reason they look cute rather than sinister. Yeah,
26:53
Speaker 1: if you watch that Rocke Fire explosion documentary, there is
26:58
Speaker 1: a really good point that I think it's bushnell I
27:02
Speaker 1: can't remember one of one of the one of the
27:04
Speaker 1: main players points out is that, you know, this is
27:07
Speaker 1: a combination of many disciplines. It requires computer programming, it
27:11
Speaker 1: requires engineering by building the skeletons, and it requires things
27:14
Speaker 1: like special effects, makeup experience, you know, to make these
27:18
Speaker 1: these stretched kind of you know, posable, articulatable faces. And
27:22
Speaker 1: so it was all kind of coming together in this
27:25
Speaker 1: final presentation that really combined all of these completely you know,
27:29
Speaker 1: different backgrounds one hundred percent. And this is where we
27:33
Speaker 1: shout out the real to real tape wizard Mike Hatcher,
27:37
Speaker 1: who programmed a lot of these movements. So all these
27:47
Speaker 1: folks kind of voltrod up they assemble their avengers as
27:51
Speaker 1: a result. The first Chucky Cheese Pizza Time Theater opens
27:57
Speaker 1: May seventeen, nineteen seventy seven, San Jose, and this was
28:01
Speaker 1: an old brokerage building. It was pretty big, five thousand
28:05
Speaker 1: square feet. They had an indoor arcade. Of course, the
28:09
Speaker 1: marquee event. The big tent here is the animatronics show
28:13
Speaker 1: and Null people really liked it, and they started adding
28:18
Speaker 1: different guest characters too, right yeah, and again started to
28:22
Speaker 1: keep harping on this, but like a the same with
28:23
Speaker 1: the Country Bears Jamboree. They have several different stages and
28:27
Speaker 1: different kind of guest performers pop in. And I also
28:29
Speaker 1: just wanted to point out that originally, I think it
28:32
Speaker 1: was just like animated torsos. They didn't even have like
28:37
Speaker 1: bottom halfs and they just appeared in these kind of
28:39
Speaker 1: fake picture frames a zone call. Yeah, just yeah, just
28:43
Speaker 1: like that. But no, you're right. They definitely started to
28:46
Speaker 1: bring in other characters like Dolly Dimples, who's a piano
28:50
Speaker 1: playing hippo, and the Fantasy Forest Game Preserve, which I
28:56
Speaker 1: guess that's her band, and that was named after gold
29:01
Speaker 1: Brandson had a company called Fantasy Forest, so we named
29:04
Speaker 1: it after that. And then we also had let's see
29:08
Speaker 1: the there was. They made some changes there were there
29:11
Speaker 1: was a group of backup singers called the Warbletts, and
29:15
Speaker 1: they changed them to the Mopsie Sisters. Uh. And then
29:18
Speaker 1: they had a character called Krusty the Cat, which isn't
29:22
Speaker 1: particularly appealing, and they switched that one out for a
29:25
Speaker 1: little purple fella named mister Munch. Yeah, they had a
29:29
Speaker 1: lot of folks in there. It's kind of like how
29:32
Speaker 1: McDonald's had its pantheon, you know, in the seventies and eighties.
29:36
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the Grimace, which Max pointed out to us,
29:39
Speaker 1: is apparently meant to represent a giant taste bud. Is
29:43
Speaker 1: it true, Max? Yeah, according to Wait Wait don't tell me,
29:46
Speaker 1: so you know, yeah, it could be just comedy, but
29:49
Speaker 1: that's what they said on Wait Wait, don't tell me?
29:50
Speaker 1: It's one Oh Max forgot to tell you. This is
29:55
Speaker 1: totally off the rails here too. But we you know,
29:58
Speaker 1: we're huge fans public Radio and Noel and I got
30:03
Speaker 1: to meet and hang out with Ophia Eisenberg from asking
30:06
Speaker 1: me another. You may know her as her Ripe Bagonias
30:09
Speaker 1: if you listen to the show, So we might actually
30:12
Speaker 1: be able to talk a genuine a radio expert onto
30:18
Speaker 1: the show. Maybe, right. I guess we got to do
30:21
Speaker 1: a good job with this episode. We'll do our best, Yes,
30:24
Speaker 1: we'll see. We'll do our best to do our duty
30:26
Speaker 1: to God in our country and Charles Entertainment cheese. Uh
30:29
Speaker 1: so ya. Sari was kind of getting fed up with
30:35
Speaker 1: the whole restaurant idea. It was no longer particularly aligned
30:40
Speaker 1: with their goals because they had, after all, bought a
30:43
Speaker 1: video game company right right, and they like this, So
30:49
Speaker 1: the thing is you can do these fun, experimental projects
30:53
Speaker 1: when times are good, but when when times get a
30:57
Speaker 1: little bit leaner, the fun stuff goes out the window
31:00
Speaker 1: when you got to focus on your core mission. And
31:02
Speaker 1: as har A's having a hard time getting into the
31:04
Speaker 1: home video market and really establishing a good steak, so
31:09
Speaker 1: their parent company, Warner sells the restaurant and concept to
31:13
Speaker 1: Nolan Bushnell. They sell him his own dream back to
31:17
Speaker 1: him in nineteen seventy eight for five hundred thousand dollars.
31:21
Speaker 1: Bushnell doesn't waste any time, he doesn't give up. He
31:24
Speaker 1: incorporates the business. It's gonna be Pizza Time Theater Incorporated.
31:28
Speaker 1: We're going to open more of them. I'm going to
31:30
Speaker 1: appoint myself chairman, and Gene, I need you on this.
31:35
Speaker 1: Forget Atari, forget the suits where Rick rap people through
31:39
Speaker 1: and through. Yeah, and they really start to try to,
31:42
Speaker 1: you know, launch a seriously intense marketing campaign. They need franchisees,
31:50
Speaker 1: you know, they need swag, They need to get people
31:53
Speaker 1: aligned with this brand. And they had like a PR
31:57
Speaker 1: firm that they were working with called Easily Public Relations,
32:01
Speaker 1: and they were making some kind of outlandish claims that
32:06
Speaker 1: also seemed to me that might have attracted some legal proceedings,
32:10
Speaker 1: but I again, we didn't read much about that or anything.
32:13
Speaker 1: But they claimed that the Pizza Time Theater had the
32:18
Speaker 1: only computer controlled three D animation outside Disneyland. A bold claim. Yeah, which,
32:25
Speaker 1: well it's bold because what's interesting about it is that
32:28
Speaker 1: it's not true, right, It's that's the interesting part, that
32:32
Speaker 1: it's very much on purpose wrong. I don't know if
32:35
Speaker 1: we can lay this at the feet of Nolan and
32:37
Speaker 1: Gene because they cracked a deal with a Well, no,
32:43
Speaker 1: they know, you're right, they did. They were the ones
32:46
Speaker 1: who propagated some of the embellished marketing, but they also
32:52
Speaker 1: were successful. Yeah. They got the interest of a guy
32:55
Speaker 1: named Robert L. Brock. Yeah, Bob to his friends, Brock
33:00
Speaker 1: to his friends. Yeah, bah bah bah bah bab Barrock. Yeah,
33:04
Speaker 1: and Bob Bob Brock is the president of TIM. Yeah.
33:10
Speaker 1: That that's that, That Tim, the one you're thinking of. No,
33:13
Speaker 1: not that, not that Tim. That's the Topeka in management,
33:17
Speaker 1: Topeka and his old I'm sorry not to rag on
33:21
Speaker 1: the guy, but his claim to fame was he was
33:23
Speaker 1: incredibly rich because he owned the largest franchise of holiday
33:28
Speaker 1: in hotels, the most innocuous and boring of hotels in
33:32
Speaker 1: all of the world. But they've sure been around for
33:35
Speaker 1: a long time and they did probably, as far as
33:37
Speaker 1: I know, originate the Continental Breakfast, but maybe not. That's
33:40
Speaker 1: just what I associate it with. Well, every every day
33:44
Speaker 1: is a holiday at the end, You're welcome, Bob. Yeah,
33:48
Speaker 1: that hotel Motele holiday. And uh, these guys are trying
33:53
Speaker 1: to get into the tech sector now, Uh, to a
33:56
Speaker 1: to a degree, I think he just something he understood restaurants,
33:59
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, after all, hotel, you know, management
34:03
Speaker 1: is part of the hospitality sector. So this is like,
34:06
Speaker 1: you know, it's a restaurant, I know what that is.
34:08
Speaker 1: The other stuff is a sort of extra, but also
34:10
Speaker 1: seems to be, you know, aligning with kind of cutting
34:13
Speaker 1: as transo Brock invested. In June of nineteen seventy nine,
34:17
Speaker 1: he signed a two hundred million dollar co development deal
34:21
Speaker 1: with Bushnell, which gave Brock exclusive franchising rights to Pizza
34:27
Speaker 1: Time theaters in sixteen states across the southern and Midwestern
34:32
Speaker 1: United States. The contract also included some language around some goals. Right. Yeah,
34:38
Speaker 1: and this is where it gets a little bit tricky.
34:42
Speaker 1: So this is also a turning point, and this is
34:45
Speaker 1: going to be a two part episode of Folks. The
34:47
Speaker 1: contract they sign with the president of TIM is, Yeah,
34:55
Speaker 1: they're going to give them two hundred or two hundred
34:57
Speaker 1: and eighty five stores, that's what they wan want to
35:00
Speaker 1: grow too. And of those two hundred and eighty five,
35:03
Speaker 1: the majority two hundred stores are going to be operated
35:07
Speaker 1: directly by TIM. The other eighty five are going to
35:10
Speaker 1: be kind of sublet subfranchised out. And this turns out
35:15
Speaker 1: to be a bit of a Faustian bargain, I can
35:17
Speaker 1: see that. And then, just so I'm getting the terms straight,
35:19
Speaker 1: would the completely owned and operated ones would those be
35:22
Speaker 1: what you might consider like the flagship stores and then
35:26
Speaker 1: the franchised ones or like maybe in smaller markets or
35:29
Speaker 1: something like that, or I don't know, I'm trying to
35:31
Speaker 1: understand experientially what would be the difference or is it
35:34
Speaker 1: just a logistical thing, like why do it this way? Yeah,
35:39
Speaker 1: well we're going to have to find out in Part
35:42
Speaker 1: two Entertainment. Cheese done. I'm sorry, I didn't mean. I
35:49
Speaker 1: didn't mean to leave it with such a cliffhanger. All
35:51
Speaker 1: let's hang on the cliff together, because we'll be back
35:54
Speaker 1: this Thursday with the rest of the story. But in
35:56
Speaker 1: the meantime too, we want to say thank you to
35:59
Speaker 1: everybody's been tuning in while we are on the road.
36:02
Speaker 1: You might have noticed sometimes our mics sound a little weird.
36:06
Speaker 1: We've been recording in different hotel rooms thanks to Max
36:10
Speaker 1: Ver's patients. Noel, you and I have been playing Russian
36:13
Speaker 1: Roulette basically with Wi Fi connections. I think you had
36:17
Speaker 1: a slow one last time. I get a slow one
36:19
Speaker 1: this time. But we're not gonna let that stop us
36:22
Speaker 1: from telling mister Cheese's story. Nah, we wouldn't. It's just
36:26
Speaker 1: too important. It's just too damn important. You know, you
36:30
Speaker 1: owe it to yourself to a full understanding of the
36:33
Speaker 1: cultural experience that is the United States and Charles's entertainment.
36:36
Speaker 1: Cheese is gonna get you there. And seriously, you might
36:39
Speaker 1: think you've heard the best bits, I assure you there
36:43
Speaker 1: is much more to come. So thanks to our research
36:46
Speaker 1: associate extraordinaire doctor Z for this one and more to
36:50
Speaker 1: come from this incredible story in the next episode. Who
36:54
Speaker 1: else we got to think? There's others. There's others, Oh
36:57
Speaker 1: so many, Chuck e Cheese. Let's think also, of course,
37:01
Speaker 1: our pal mister Matt Frederick, who is hanging out with
37:05
Speaker 1: us here as we were on the road. Let's thank
37:08
Speaker 1: Eve's JEFFU Christopher hastiotis here in spirit. And then, of
37:13
Speaker 1: course the our own field correspondent, let's call him Alex Williams,
37:19
Speaker 1: who composed this track. He showed did. We'll see you
37:22
Speaker 1: next time, folks. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
37:32
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
37:35
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.