alt Hacker NewsChuck E. Cheese's animatronics band bows out
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At least in my area, Chuck E Cheese is experiencing stiff competition from places like ClimbZone, a kid-oriented climbing gym and ropes course, and Altitude, a trampoline park for kids. They all have the arcade, albeit in somewhat scaled back form. Their food offerings are vestigial.
I've been to kids' birthday parties at all of these. Chuck E Cheese is the only one that doesn't have our kids asking to go back again on the ride home. They have a good time while they're there, but they don't perceive much "replay value".
In light of that, this seems like a good move on Chuck E Cheese's part. They arguably can't completely get rid of the show component for brand identity reasons, but converting it to screens probably reduces their cost structure enormously. And it could free up some floor space, which would let them shift the focus toward physical play. That is something that has a lot more novelty value for kids nowadays than it did when I was growing up. I think probably because the availability situation has flip-flopped: they live in an ocean of high quality passive entertainment, but opportunities to jump and run with a crowd of other kids are becoming increasingly hard to come by.
I still suspect it's too little too late though? Chuck E Cheese locations are physically too small to accommodate a really good indoor play space. They're typically in strip mall locations that don't offer the kind of floor and overhead space needed to install indoor play equipment that's up to modern standards for novelty.
I’ll take this opportunity to plug the YouTube videos of animatronics super fan Jenny Nicholson. Her videos on the Star Wars hotel: https://youtu.be/T0CpOYZZZW4?si=8bzPpb_9kPaTsTto and the theme park Evermore: https://youtu.be/L9OhTB5eBqQ?si=utwaOeBFRpOQMStx are peak YouTube content.
https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/local/2024/05/28/illinois-ch...
Apparently 5 stores nationwide are being allowed to keep the animatronics.
I would have expected animatronics to become more popular after Five Nights at Freddy's, not less. But I've never seen a store with animatronics in my country, so I don't really know how kids feel about them.
From a 1977 video embedded in the article:
> Dolli Dimples, the singing hippopotamus, is powered by a computer system capable of handling 450 instructions per second.
Easily the worst pizza I’ve ever eaten anywhere, the poorest quality control ever. But the kids had fun.
Anybody vaguely interested in this story would probably enjoy this documentary about the the direct ancestor of this band. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTmhS6hcY-A
Surprised that no one mentioned that Chucky E Cheese also ran from floppy disks.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/01/chuck...
For weeks after my grandmother brought me to a Chuck E. Cheese for the first (only) time, I had recurring nightmares fueled by this band.
“At the time, Atari was selling its arcade games for US $1,500 to $2,000 each, but the real money was in the $50,000 in coins that a game would take in over its lifetime”
Has business changed since then? Surely Nvidia isn’t selling GPUs with such a low fixed up front price only for the hyperscalers to turn around and rent them out for all the profits. Am i missing something?
I guess it's nostalgic for some but even as a kid back when the chain first rolled out I recognized right away that the animatronics were low rent versions of earlier Disney animatronics that were much better (albeit, significantly more complex and thus more expensive).
I guess if you're a toddler it's still a big, colorful, moving stuffed animal that talks, which might seem fascinating. But for an older kid it wasn't entertaining or engaging while the Disney animatronics still were.
Reflecting now on why one worked on me and the other didn't, I think the lack of variable speed motion had a lot to do with it because ease-in/out can add so much life and expression.
As a programmer who refuses to use AI support in development, I feel like an animatronics character being phased out. :(
The world used to love me…
Today you learned his name is “Charles Entertainment Cheese.”
I went with my kids to a Chuck E Cheese party a few years back.
It was the perfect encapsulation of modern American capitalism.
As my kids milled about, suddenly the employees started chanting "Chuck E! Chuck E!" And, encouraging the kids to pump their arms in the air.
My kids did this as I stood there and the horror crept over me.
Then, Chuck E came out. My kids were putty in his hands at that point. He could have said "Now, turn to your dad and murder him. Don't think, just do it." And, they would have done that.
Then, they ate extraordinarily crappy pizza. I did too. It was a coping mechanism for me, I'm not sure why my kids ate it.
After that, they went into the arcade and were encouraged to "earn" tickets. Those tickets could be converted into cheap plastic toys that cost $0.10 to make in China. Earning 100 tickets would cost several dollars on a debit card. And, the conversion rate was 10000 tickets for that cheap plastic shit. It wasn't a good exchange rate. But, man, my kids were sucked in.
It was a gorgeous example of American capitalism. I have to tip my hat to Chuck E. He's a maestro.
I thoroughly enjoyed this article. I had no idea that Nolan Bushnell / Atari was behind the original Chuck E. Cheese, but in retrospect it makes so much sense. What an amazing playfulness and somewhat crazy thing for them to do-- i don't think having the kind of success Atari had was an accident when you read about visionary, long-term stuff like that (even if the venture itself didn't technically work out that well for Atari / Bushnell _this_ time...).
Following Dolli Dimples nightmare decent into booze and drugs and Jasper T. Jowls repeated arrests for excessive drooling, the wheels really came off. Pasqually ended up in an psych ward after an acute psychotic break, Crusty the Cat contracted rabies under mysterious circumstances, and Chuck himself has never been seen after his crypto pump and dump scheme.
The unfortunately defunct podcast The Nonsense Bazaar has a hilarious and wonderful episode on the Chuck E Cheese saga:
Bankrupt - Chuck E Cheese's is a great 30ish min doc I highly recommend, actually everything put out Bright Sun youtube is super good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbI3zOm2BkE
Since the name is/was Chuck E. Cheese's (possessive), should this article title be: "Chuck E. Cheese's's animatronics band bows out"?
Don't worry, if any of these android robotics companies actually succeed, Chuck will be back and livelier than ever.
Good riddance. I was always so creeped out by the band as a kid. Just hustle it up so I can get back to Skee-Ball and Smokin’ Token, sheesh!
I remember when I went as a little kid the animatronics scared me so much I shit myself and I haven't been back since
My question is: Where can I buy the animatronic band members after they are decommissioned?
I'm getting some real country bear jamboree vibes from that bear.
I'm firmly in the "creepy as hell" camp. I only was compelled to attend such a horror-show once or twice, and left early each time.
A call out to Bruce the Moose.
I mean, yeah, the animatronics are weird in today's age, but honestly, the whole premise is what does the chain's image in.
Is it really anything other than chaos and sleaze distilled? You can have stoned 19-year-olds cavorting in the supply closet, drunken parents slugging it out at a birthday party, a man sneezing on a pizza he just baked, and a crying child defecating in the ball pit simultaneously. All against a hypnotic background of flashing lights and arcade sounds.
This is a grotesquery, torn from the pages of Huxley. One can only imagine the Romans had a similar palace of decadence for children shortly before their collapse.
No sane society would allow this to exist, let alone as a profitable enterprise. I know anglophone North America isn't sane, but isn't this a little too far, even for us?
Good, they terrified me as a child. Really uncanny valley territory.
It's not about the stag show anymore, it's about the midway games that spew out tickets. A literal children's casino.
They're now working on Optimus
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Personally, I think this is a dead-end business decision. I've seen this gamebook play out over and over. It rarely ends well.
The problem is that in 2024, kids can play video games and watch stupid videos in the comfort of their own home. Perhaps screens beat animatronics, ball pits, and whatnot, but there's no competitive advantage over superior alternatives in the new space.
Examples:
- Book stores. Cut costs to compete with online sellers. Move more and more digitally. Have no upside over pure online stores. Keel over.
- Radio Shack. Stop selling electronics components, and start targeting to the bigger market of cell phones. Have no competitive advantage over Best Buy or cell phones stores. Keel over.
In those situations, it's better to either:
* Shift business models (e.g. Radio Shack could become a very competitive makerspace, host kid afterschool programs, maker camps, and refocused on Raspberry PI, 3d printers, Micro:bits and similar).
* Shrink the business to follow a declining market without taking on debt (Radio Shack couldn't support the number of stores it had, but it could very much have supported 1/5 of the stores)
Both of those approaches usually require starting to adapt before the sky starts falling.