For decades, Munch’s Make Believe Band at Chuck E. Cheese has performed at countless birthdays, Little League end-of-season parties and other celebrations. Chuck E. Cheese and Helen Henny have been on vocals, Mr. Munch on keyboards, Jasper T. Jowls on guitar and Pasqually on drums.
The band of robot puppets has been a mainstay of the colorful chain of pizzerias and arcades where kids go crazy and play to win prizes between bites of pizza slices.
Its final curtain call will come soon.
By the end of 2024, the endearing and nostalgia-inducing, though perhaps a little creepy to audiences, animatronic performances will be phased out in all but two of the games. The chain’s more than 400 branches in the United States: one in Los Angeles and another in Nanuet, New York. The band’s departure comes as Chuck E. Cheese undergoes what its CEO, David McKillips, recently described as its biggest and “most aggressive transformation.” .”
Outside: Animatronic bands.
In: More screens, digital dance floors and gyms with trampolines.
The coronavirus pandemic forced hundreds of Chuck E. Cheese locations to close, and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the summer of 2020. Since then, its leaders have tried to adapt Chuck E. Cheese to a modern era , and kids who might be more excited about screens than an old animatronic band with limited movements and shifty eyes.
“Kids consume entertainment differently than they did 10 or 20 years ago,” McKillips said while sitting at a booth at Chuck E. Cheese in Hicksville, New York, on Long Island. “Children, really of all ages, consume their entertainment on a screen.”
For now, Munch’s Make Believe Band still performs daily at the Hicksville location, which sometimes hosts up to 20 birthday parties on a weekend day, starting at 8 a.m. But by the end of the summer, the band will have played its last show there.
The band will then 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 dressed in his own Chuck E. Cheese costume, attending one of the final performances in Hicksville.
“I grew up with tickets and tokens,” said Kendall, a self-described “super fan” 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 her first Chuck E. Cheese when she was 3 years old. Like many little kids, Kendall was a little afraid of Chuck E. at first, but then she grew fond of the giant mouse.
“He’s been a fan ever since,” he said.
Molina said Kendall wished the bands could stay.
“The band is in perfect condition,” Kendall said. “Sometimes kids hit them, which is very disrespectful because they’re just doing their job and acting.”
Since Chuck E. Cheese announced in November that it would phase out Munch’s Make Believe Band, some parents have rushed to take their children to the final performances.
Kaitlin Rubenstein, 30, general manager of the Hicksville location and another in Hempstead, New York, said some recorded videos of the band to preserve the memory.
Rubinstein said it was “bittersweet” to see the band that had been a part of his childhood leave.
“Going to Chuck E. Cheese on a Friday night,” he said, “was a pleasure.”
At first it was a coyote.
Chuck E. Cheese was founded by Nolan Bushnell, co-founder of the pioneering video game company Atari. In an interview with the Smithsonian Institute in 2017, Bushnell said his experience with arcade games, which sold between $1,500 and $2,000 per machine, sparked his desire to open a pizzeria with the games, each of which would gross up to $50,000. Dollars. in coins during his lifetime.
Bushnell said he was also inspired by a family trip to Disneyland, and in particular the Tiki Room, an attraction with animatronic birds, tiki gods and flowers.
“We can do that,” Bushnell recalled thinking at the time. “But it would be nice to have a pet.”
At first, the mascot was supposed to be a coyote, and Bushnell was going to call his new business Coyote Pizza. Bushnell, who declined to be interviewed, told the Smithsonian that he went out and bought a costume of what he thought was a coyote.
“I took it to my engineers,” Bushnell said. “I said, ‘Get this guy to talk.’”
But a problem arose: the costume Bushnell bought was not that of a coyote, but that of a rat with a tail.
“I’ve never seen it below the waist,” he said.
Bushnell considered keeping the rat costume and changing the name of his restaurant and gallery to Rick’s Rat Pizza, but was persuaded to avoid the optics of having “rat” in the name. 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 conceived as a place “where you could go to eat, play and spend time with family,” McKillips said.
“The animatronics,” he added, “were a band that played covers and original music.”
The band has had different iterations, but Chuck E. Cheese, Helen Henny, Mr. Munch, Jasper T. Jowls and Pasqually have been mainstays. Some locations have had versions of the band called Studio C, with only Chuck E. playing alone.
The Chuck E. Cheese in the Northridge section of Los Angeles will retain its five-piece band, while the location in Nanuet, New York, has a Studio C.
Today, Chuck E. Cheese has more than 600 locations in 16 countries, with more to come. The chain’s popularity crossed over into pop culture, spawning vague references in video games, movies, and television shows, including an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in which the gang visits Risk E. Rat’s Pizza and Amusement Center.
The horror film “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” released last year, follows a nighttime security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza as he battles 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 prompted the company’s decision. The company said at the time that was not the case.
Screens are “where the future moves.”
For anyone born around the mid-1970s, visiting a Chuck E. Cheese has felt like a part of American childhood. As the chain modernizes and launches its animatronic band, Kristy Linares, 33, 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 gym with trampolines, but Ms. Linares, who sometimes takes her children there, said children still eat pizza and play as always. “Chuck E. Cheese is still the same,” she said.
Employees said they had seen children shift their attention toward screen-based games in recent years. Leana Gil, 17, a birthday party coordinator in Paramus, said she had noticed that children “gravitate toward things of their era,” citing the much-loved game Paw Patrol as an example.
Rubenstein, Hempstead’s general manager, said the interactive screen games were a success.
“That’s where the future moves,” he said.
In another adaptation to the digital age, the chain is eliminating numbered hand stamps for visitors, which are checked at the exit to prevent children from getting lost or leaving with someone they did not arrive with. Instead, a family selfie will be taken at the entrance and checked at the exit.
On a recent Wednesday, Maricel de los Reyes took her son Sam to Chuck E. Cheese in Paramus. It was her first visit there since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and her first without the band.
Did you miss it?
“No, I don’t think that was a big deal for us,” he said, as Sam walked away to play. “It was more about the games, the food and just hanging out here.”