musings a go go

Since when did a cigar smoking rat turn into a child-like mouse? When I was little and would visit the Chuck E. Cheese in Monroe, it was a lot different back then. First of all, the main concept was NOT the pizza or the games, but it was all about the audio-animatronic show by Chuck E. and others. This company was founded by the founder of Atari, and focused mainly on robotic stage shows (of which I was frightened--when the lights went off and the music stopped, the robots would still be twitching and seizing--it was horrible for me). Anyway, during the early 80s their competitor was Showbiz Pizza Palace which had the same sort of audio animatronic performances, except this time with a bear and his band (think of Disney's Country Bear Jamboree). These two competitors merged in the late 80s (actually Showbiz bought out Chuck E. Cheese and kept the name because it was more recognizable). Soon after this, though, a business called Discovery Zone was the main competitor (remember the commercials of the kids going down slides into a ball pit "I'm D Z for Discovery Zone", and in the 90's Chuck E. Cheese bought out Discovery Zone and now there is just Chuck E. Cheese. Oh, but this Chuck E. Cheese is different. Skee-Ball and video games are still there along with the pizza, but now there is a salad bar, and all the elaborate audio-animatronics is gone with the wind. Of couse it doesn't matter to the children these days, because it is still fun, but my main memories are of a dog robot dressed like Elvis singing Elvis songs, along with a whole score of musical numbers with twitching robots. The whole restaurant would be dimmed and then the stage would light up and these scary machines would come to life. Click here to see the whole gamut of Chuck E. Cheese robots: http://rock_afire.tripod.com/characters/pttplayers.html