My date with one of Chuck E. Cheese’s latest animatronic bands
The San Fernando Valley is the kind of place where the air conditioning runs year-round and almost everything is a shade of brownish gray, whether it’s an “upcoming” construction site or ‘an anonymous shopping center, bleached by the sun and covered in a light film of dust.
When people think of Los Angeles traffic, they think of the Valley, where the 101 and 405 slow to a bumper-to-bumper pace; but the relatively affordable housing, pool-to-person ratio, and untouched hiking trails make it a pretty nice place to live.
For a tourist, however, there’s no real reason to sit in a rental car for two hours. Unless you make the pilgrimage to Chuck E. Cheese in Northridge, home of what was supposed to be Mr. Munch’s only Make Believe Band.
When Chuck E. Cheese announced last November that Mr. Munch’s Make Believe would be disbanding after almost 50 years, the company decided to keep the group at a “legacy” location, which turned out to be Northridge. And the result, according to CEC Entertainment PR manager Alejandra Brady, has been a significant increase in adult visitors without children, who explicitly come to see the quintet.
On the heels of this development and an “outcry” among fans, Chuck E. Cheese revealed its decision to keep the animatronics alive at four additional stores in Pineville, North Carolina; Hicksville, New York; and Springfield, IL. Not forgetting the “Studio C” show in Nanuet, New York, where Chuck E. will perform a solo set – hopefully a raw, stripped-down studio version of the iconic song “Birthday Star.” Or, if the company remembers my suggestion, the Johnny Cash version of “Hurt.”
While millennial nostalgia alone can’t revive the animatronics industry or stop a new generation of kids from preferring interactive LED floors, our tendency to idealize a time when life wasn’t just doom and gloom where anxiety was almost constant is a need worth considering. And if there’s one place most millennials associate with childhood, it’s Chuck E. Cheese, whose brand identity is deeply tied to those fuzzy robots.
As I remember Chuck E. Cheese’s, it’s a saccharine vision of bright teal booths, plastic tablecloths, and kitschy decor; flashing lights, the squeak of rubber against linoleum and a pulsating room with a palpable sense of pure joy. There’s the jingle of brass tokens, the sound of machines printing reward tickets, and the rush of excitement that comes with seeing a pile of paper wrapped around your feet. The birthday boy walks past, Dad chases him with a bulky VHS camcorder until he gets tangled in a bunch of plastic balloons, while his mom tries to argue with the kids crawling on stage to sing with Mr. Munch’s Make Believe Band.
However, I was a scaredy-cat baby, the kid who cried during the show before running away from the guy dancing in a Chuck E. costume. “But looking back, it’s actually a nice memory,” I said to my partner upon entering the restaurant chain. These were times when I hid behind my mother’s Laura Ashley dress, which she had probably just washed, knowing her. “But she always let me use it as a handkerchief and always stroked my hair until the end of filming.” My partner jokingly pats my head as we sit at the very end of a long banquet table that says “Happy Birthday, Sandra!” », even though I was born in July.
Happy Birthday to me.
Sandra Song
The curtains are still up on Chuck and his friends’ latest routine, but my old enemies are more fragile than I remember. You can hear the metallic click of their joints, the snap of their eyelids, and the jerky movement, even when they’re not actively playing. They actually look really cool upon closer inspection, I say.
There’s Mr. Munch’s retro-future ’80s synthesizer, Helen Henny’s icy blue ’90s eyeshadow, Jasper T. Jowls’ cowboy chic, and Pasqually the Pizza Chef’s wiggly mustache. But by the time my partner starts complaining about Pasqually’s drumming technique, I’ve moved on and am drinking a White Claw. Apparently Chuck E. Cheese has always drank alcohol, as store manager Bri Traylor, 21, told me. The only catch is that it’s one drink per hour, with a hard cap of two hours. This might have something to do with the fact that they served pitchers of beer during the shows.
As McLeanas explains, animatronics were originally invented by founder Norman Bushnell to entertain adults. As a 31-year-old smoker who got out of breath after a few games of skeeball and injured his back trying to squeeze into a coin-operated ride, I finally understand the appeal of just sitting down with a drink, able to appreciate how mind- this technology must have exploded in 1977.
I hope I’m not the only adult with less physical stamina than a toddler who ate an ice cream cake, as Traylor says, the Northridge location is hosting more and more “parties for the 28 and 30 year olds who I just want to say celebrated at Chuck E. Cheese’s, some even flying across the world to see Mr. Munch’s Make Believe Band.
Northridge mascot Chuck E. Cheese circa 1981.
Handout
“Last week we had someone over from Australia,” Traylor says, before mentioning some Canadians who drove eight hours to see the band, only to learn they were off duty that weekend. Traylor grimaces: “Oh my god, I felt so bad.”
But it was a coincidence, explains Isaiah Nasab, 27, a part-time employee. For the most part, the band is always ready to perform for the stream of childless adults who come to this “mini-tourist attraction” from Texas, Arizona and New Zealand.
“There were even a few that came over…and the guy came up to me and told me his girlfriend loved Chuck E. Cheese and animatronics,” the Chuck E. Cheese superfan recalled. “So he really wanted to propose to her there.”
Nasab, who works in human resources but enjoys working weekends as a game attendant, says his family moved around a lot, meaning Chuck E. Cheese was one of the few constants of his childhood.
As an autistic person, the franchise and his familiarity with the series made it his “comfort zone, where (he) felt safe and relaxed”, adding that “these characters (had) such a huge impact” on him , especially when he was “dealing with the challenges and difficulties of growing up (on the spectrum). »
As McLeanas, vice president of entertainment for CEC Entertainment, says, it was employees like Nasab who made Northridge the ideal location to host such an important part of Chuck E. Cheese’s history, adding, “I don’t I don’t know if I’ve ever worked for a brand that has so much passion.
And it’s a passion that also extends to a fervent community of Chuck E. Cheese fans, as content creator Matt Rivera, 36, explains. A prominent figure among Chuck E. fans, he sits in front of an intricate array of turquoise and purple lights inspired by the store’s old-school look. But in addition to being a great producer, Rivera is also the creator of the “Chuck E. Con” convention, where superfans will gather to mingle, share memories, and watch performances by their favorite mouse. The rest of the time, Rivera says, they’ll hang out on Discord and a private Facebook group for “real” die-hard fans who are “passionate about Chuck E. Cheese nostalgia,” mostly sharing stuff from “the end of the 80s. , early 90s.”
Chuck E. as lively as ever.
Sandra Song
“We really love Chuck E. Cheese’s in-house animatronics from that era, and even into the 2000s as well,” he adds. He then goes on to mention an older encounter called “Cheesevention”, which occurred about a decade before the recent round of remodels that removed these extra animatronics. Featuring a tour bus full of superfans, Cheesevention was an opportunity to visit every store between Los Angeles and the chain’s very first location in San Jose, California. The allure, as Rivera explains, was wandering through different exhibit halls, looking for ancillary animatronics from the Chuck E. Cheese era, including supporting acts that would play in a “showroom.” cabaret” separate and unique works of art with moving figures in a false frame. .
At one point, the band starts playing, comes alive to wish me a very happy birthday. I can’t help but smile, even though I’m a little distracted by the video board displaying a cartoon version of what the group is doing right in front of me.
I admit that looking at it makes me a little sad, much like when I first walked into the building and realized how small everything was. It’s unfair, because I’m comparing it to when I was 10, and it all seemed like a huge, vast jungle of arcade games and skytubes.
When I was a kid, Chuck E. Cheese wanted to step into the future. But as an adult in today’s future, there’s something about the bright lightness of the minimalist white wall remodel and the absence of random knick-knacks cluttering the walls, taken down to make room for LED walls and large screens for intense graphics games.
I understand why, of course, but it’s almost dystopian to see a horde of 7 year old boys using a scannable electronic card instead of a token to start a game. Or the group of parents standing right behind me, who can only watch their toddlers dancing on an interactive dance floor through the lens of an iPhone 15.
The childhood dining room of many millennials.
Handout
But it’s the squeak of Jasper’s swivel head and the awkwardness of Pasqually’s wiggling mustache that takes me back to that comfortable place, when I was a kid whose only fear was those incredibly sweet little robots.
In 1996, I would never have thought that Mr. Munch’s Make Believe Band was anything other than “terrifying,” much less “familiar” and “soothing.” Yet there I was, on my hypocritical “old man shouting at the cloud” shit, despite a sweet image of my dad, recording the show and my little brother dancing with an employee dressed in a Chuck E. Cheese suit.
Suddenly, a door opens to reveal Chuck E. in the flesh, walking towards his animatronic self-performer “The Chuck E. Strut”. He stops in the middle of the interactive dance floor, swinging his arms back and forth and getting a group of fascinated toddlers to dance with him. The smallest one starts to twirl at one point, but her chubby little ankles cause her to trip right as the show ends. Chuck E. catches her and she laughs. I feel a little emotional watching the curtain fall.
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