For decades, Munch’s Make Believe Band has performed at Chuck E. Cheese at countless birthdays, Little League graduation parties and other celebrations. There was Chuck E. Cheese and Helen Henny on vocals, Mr. Munch on keys, Jasper T. Jowls on guitar and Pasqually on drums.
The group of robot puppets are a mainstay of the colorful pizzeria-arcade chain, where kids run amok between bites of pizza and play games for prizes.
Your final curtain call is coming soon.
By the end of 2024, the animatronic performances — endearing and nostalgic, if perhaps a little scary for audiences — will be discontinued at all but two of the chain’s more than 400 locations in the United States: one in Los Angeles and another in Nanuet, NY The band’s departure comes as Chuck E. Cheese undergoes what its general manager David McKillips recently described as its biggest and “most aggressive transformation.”
Out: Animatronic bands.
In: More screens, digital dance floors and trampoline halls.
The coronavirus pandemic forced many Chuck E. Cheese locations to temporarily close, and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the summer of 2020. Since then, its executives have tried to adapt Chuck E. Cheese to a modern age — and children who might be more excited by screens than by an old animatronic tape with limited mobility and fleeting eyes.
“Kids consume entertainment differently than they did 10 or 20 years ago,” said Mr. McKillips, sitting in a booth at the Chuck E. Cheese in Hicksville, N.Y., on Long Island. “Children, actually of all ages, consume their entertainment on a screen.”
At the moment, Munch’s Make Believe Band still performs every day at the Hicksville location, which sometimes hosts up to 20 birthday parties on a weekend day, starting as early as 8 a.m., the last show there.
Then the band will be removed and replaced with a jumbotron-sized television, more seating and a digital dance floor. (Chuck E. Cheese declined to say what will happen to the animatronic figures after they are removed from hundreds of locations across the country.)
“The band is in perfect condition.”
Not everyone wants more screens, trampolines and new games. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Kendall Maldonado, 12, of Queens, danced alongside the band in his own Chuck E. Cheese costume and attended one of the final performances in Hicksville.
“I grew up with tickets and tokens,” said Kendall, a self-described “superfan” who has visited dozens of Chuck E. Cheese locations in the New York area and one in Puerto Rico.
Kendall’s mother, Jennifer Molina, 43, said she took Kendall to his first Chuck E. Cheese when he was three years old. Like many small children, Kendall was initially slightly afraid of Chuck E., but later became familiar with the giant mouse.
“He’s been a fan ever since,” she said.
Ms. Molina said Kendall wished the bands could stay.
“The band is in perfect condition,” Kendall said. “Sometimes children beat them, which is incredibly disrespectful because they are just doing their job and performing.”
Since Chuck E. Cheese announced in November that it was removing Munch’s Make Believe Band, some parents have scrambled to take their children to its final performances.
Kaitlin Rubenstein, 30, the general manager of the Hicksville location and another location in Hempstead, N.Y., said some recorded videos of the band to preserve the memory.
Ms. Rubinstein said it was “bittersweet” to see the band that had been part of her childhood retire.
“Going to Chuck E. Cheese on a Friday night,” she said, “was a treat.”
First he was a coyote.
Chuck E. Cheese was created by Nolan Bushnell, a co-founder of the pioneering video game company Atari. In an interview with the Smithsonian Institution in 2017, Mr. Bushnell said his experience with arcade games, which sold for about $1,500 to $2,000 per machine, made him want to open a pizzeria with the games , which would each net up to $50,000 in coins over their lifetime.
Mr. Bushnell said he was also inspired by a family trip to Disneyland, particularly the Tiki Room, an attraction with animatronic birds, tiki gods and flowers.
“We can do this,” Mr. Bushnell recalled thinking at the time. “But it would be nice to have a mascot.”
Originally the mascot was going to be a coyote, and Mr. Bushnell wanted to call his new business Coyote Pizza. Mr. Bushnell, who declined an interview, told the Smithsonian that he went out and bought a costume that he said depicted a coyote.
“I took it to my engineers,” Mr. Bushnell said. “I said, ‘Make this guy talk.'”
However, a problem arose: the costume Mr. Bushnell purchased was not a coyote, but a rat with a tail.
“I had never seen it below the waist,” he said.
Mr. Bushnell considered keeping the rat costume and changing the name of his restaurant and arcade to “Rick’s Rat Pizza,” but he was persuaded to avoid the visual reference to “rat” in the name. Mr. Bushnell decided to call the place Chuck E. Cheese. (Charles Entertainment Cheese, according to the company.)
The first Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theater opened on May 17, 1977 in San Jose, California. It was designed as a place “where you could eat and play and spend time with family,” McKillips said.
“The Animatronics,” he added, “were a band that played cover songs and original music.”
The band had various iterations, but Chuck E. Cheese, Helen Henny, Mr. Munch, Jasper T. Jowls and Pasqually were mainstays. In some places there were versions of the band called Studio C, with only Chuck E. playing solo.
The Chuck E. Cheese in Los Angeles’ Northridge neighborhood retains its five-piece band, while the Nanuet, NY location has a Studio C.
Today, Chuck E. Cheese has more than 600 locations in 16 countries, with more to come. The chain’s popularity spread into pop culture, drawing loose references in video games, films and television shows, including an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in which the gang runs Risk E’s Pizza and Amusement Center. Council attended.
Last year’s horror film Five Nights at Freddy’s is about a night guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza who fights a vengeful group of animatronic characters. The film was released a few weeks before Chuck E. Cheese announced the end of its animatronic bands, leading many to speculate that the horror film had spurred the company’s decision. The company announced at the time that this was not the case.
Screens are “where the future moves.”
For anyone born since about the mid-1970s, visiting a Chuck E. Cheese felt like a part of an American childhood. As the chain modernizes and launches its animatronic band, Kristy Linares, 33, the general manager of Chuck E. Cheese in Paramus, New Jersey, said not much has changed.
The Paramus location no longer has an animatronic band and was recently renovated with more televisions, a digital dance floor and a trampoline gym, but Ms. Linares, who sometimes takes her children there, said children are still eating pizza and playing games as usual . “Chuck E. Cheese is still the same,” she said.
Staff said they had observed children turning their attention to screen games in recent years. Leana Gil, 17, a birthday party coordinator at the Paramus location, said she has noticed children “are drawn to things of their time,” citing a popular Paw Patrol game as an example.
Ms. Rubenstein, Hempstead’s executive director, said interactive screen games have been a hit.
“That’s where the future is headed,” she said.
In another adaptation for the digital age, the chain is eliminating numbered hand stamps for visitors who are checked at the exit to prevent children from wandering off or leaving with someone they didn’t arrive with. Instead, a family selfie is taken at the entrance and checked at the exit.
On a Wednesday, Maricel de los Reyes took her son Sam to Chuck E. Cheese in Paramus. It was their first visit there since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and the first without a band.
Did you miss it?
“No, I don’t think it was a big deal for us,” she said as Sam went off to play a game. “It was more the games, the food and just hanging out here.”
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2024-05-13 01:06:14
www.nytimes.com
