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Episode: Chuck E Cheese vs ShowBiz Pizza | Where a Kid Can be a Kid | 3
Author: Wondery
Duration: 00:36:29
Episode Shownotes
Is nostalgia alone enough to keep Chuck E. Cheese afloat in 2025? As the chain continues to crawl its way out of bankruptcy, they’ll need to win over the next generation of kids — or perhaps, their parents — to keep the arcade lights on. Ben Coley of the trade
publication QSR Magazine joins David to discuss how Chuck E. Cheese is making money these days, and whether they’ll be able to stick it out for another 50 years. Later, Ross Brakman of the American Treasure Tour Museum shares the origins of the animatronic bands that came to define Chuck E. Cheese and ShowBiz Pizza Place all those years ago — and the love that adults and kids across the world still have for these characters.Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterListen to Business Wars on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season. Unlock exclusive early access by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple Podcasts. Start your free trial today by visiting wondery.com/links/business-wars/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Full Transcript
00:00:00 Speaker_10
Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Business Wars Disney Under Siege early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. I'm David Brown and this is Business Wars.
00:00:40 Speaker_10
For nearly 50 years, Chuck E. Cheese, short for Charles Entertainment Cheese, has been entertaining families with arcade games, prizes, gooey cheese pizza, and of course, an animatronic house band.
00:00:52 Speaker_10
Chuck E. Cheese brought the concept of eatertainment to the masses. No longer did you need a ticket to Disneyland for your kids to enjoy the musical stylings of a giant mouse while you ate your dinner.
00:01:02 Speaker_04
Ladies and gentlemen, we proudly present an exciting new musical review with your merrymaking master of ceremonies, Chuck E. Cheese!
00:01:11 Speaker_11
That's me, Chuck E. Cheese! Ha ha! Your host with the most!
00:01:16 Speaker_10
Later on, rivaled Showbiz Pizza Place would introduce a similar format, introducing the Rockafire Explosion as their house band. Its star was a one-toothed bear named Billy Bob, who Julia Roberts even dressed up as while working at Showbiz as a teen.
00:01:32 Speaker_10
Here she is telling the story on The Ellen Show several years back.
00:01:35 Speaker_01
Ultimately, the two companies would merge, and Chuck would come to rule the school. But by the mid-2000s, the hype for these kinds of places had died down, and Chuck E. Cheese struggled to get customers in the door.
00:01:55 Speaker_10
The 2010s saw buyout, rebrands, and pricing shifts as an attempt to revive the struggling pizza arcade. And when the pandemic hit in 2020, well, the chain officially filed for bankruptcy. Fast forward to now.
00:02:08 Speaker_10
There's been a growing shift in the public's appetite for Chuck E. Cheese.
00:02:12 Speaker_10
Video games like the uber-popular Five Nights at Freddy's, which was adapted into a movie last year, were introducing the younger generation to the wonder and terror of the animatronic bands of the 1980s.
00:02:24 Speaker_10
Meanwhile, millennials who grew up going to the chain are rediscovering their love for it, especially as they start bringing their own kids.
00:02:30 Speaker_10
The nostalgia wave is so powerful, in fact, that when Chuck E. Cheese announced earlier this year it would retire the animatronic band at all but two locations, there was so much outcry online that the company decided to keep the band in five locations instead.
00:02:45 Speaker_10
But is nostalgia alone enough to keep this chain afloat? Here to help us understand what's next for Chuck E. Cheese is Ben Coley, senior editor at QSR Magazine, a trade publication specializing in quick service restaurants.
00:02:58 Speaker_10
Later on, we'll be peeking into Chuck E. Cheese's past with Ross Brackman, director of the American Treasure Tour Museum in Oaks, Pennsylvania.
00:03:06 Speaker_10
Ross is walking us through the history of animatronics and how they became so synonymous with places like Chuck E. Cheese. Show's about to begin, so stick around.
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00:04:56 Speaker_10
Tell us more about what you cover at QSR Magazine, and how does Chuck E. Cheese factor into the publication's repertoire?
00:05:04 Speaker_05
So QSR stands for, of course, Quick Service Restaurant. So we primarily cover fast food and fast casual chains across America.
00:05:12 Speaker_05
Chuck E. Cheese is not your typical quick service concept, but historically our publication has covered their growth and their expansion and their changes in operation.
00:05:21 Speaker_05
They fit more into what we would call the entertainment segment, which is a mixture of gaming and food and cuisine and beverage. And over the years, we've covered them pretty extensively.
00:05:31 Speaker_05
And it seems like they got a lot of exciting things on tap for the kids and the parents. How long have you been working in this field, covering the quick service industry? I've been in the field four and a half years.
00:05:42 Speaker_05
I actually joined QSR Magazine in January of 2020, which was just a couple of months before everything went kind of crazy across the country.
00:05:51 Speaker_05
And especially for restaurants, it was really a good fire hose to the mouth moment when trying to absorb all the information. It really kind of caught me up to speed really quickly on all these restaurants.
00:06:02 Speaker_10
I can only imagine. But at the same time, you say you've been doing this for about four years, and I'm thinking surely you must have known a thing or two about Chuck E. Cheese.
00:06:10 Speaker_10
I mean, growing up in America, did you get to go to Chuck E. Cheese as a kid?
00:06:14 Speaker_05
Of course, yeah. It'd be hard to find a kid who didn't have that memory growing up. Yeah, I specifically remember when the one opened up by where I was. I think it might have been 2003 or so.
00:06:27 Speaker_05
I knew it was in the early 2000s, but it opened up in a strip center, and I know my family was so excited to go. We would go there for birthday parties and other things.
00:06:36 Speaker_05
And I just remember, you know, all the games and getting the tickets, you know, coming out of the machines and, you know, going up to the prize wall. But I remember trying to get those good prizes and everything and seeing that the high price items.
00:06:47 Speaker_05
I wonder, like, if I would ever be able to save up enough to get those things. But, yeah, a lot of cherished memories going to Chuck E. Cheese's.
00:06:53 Speaker_10
Yeah, it used to really frustrate me when I'd go in and you'd see these kids walking around with just armfuls of tickets, right?
00:07:00 Speaker_05
How long have they had to be in there to do that? I don't know.
00:07:03 Speaker_10
Yeah, exactly. What am I doing wrong here? I've got five and I think I'm a champion, you know? And there are these guys walking around. And you'll never get the Xbox. You'll never get the fun thing that's behind the glass.
00:07:15 Speaker_10
But it almost seems to me like, you know, you think about the trajectory of Chuck E. Cheese. They went public in the 1980s. And they rebranded to Chuck E. Cheese, as we come to know it, in the 90s. And it seemed to be really on a climb.
00:07:29 Speaker_10
And then right around the turn of the millennium, it seemed like things started to go downhill.
00:07:33 Speaker_05
I wonder why that was. I really think it attributed to maybe the rise in technology.
00:07:39 Speaker_05
I think that when people got more hooked on devices, the appeal of going in and having a birthday party inside Chuck E. Cheese was a little bit lost there on the younger generation when they're more hooked on like YouTube and like social media and seeing videos and content through
00:07:58 Speaker_10
Yeah, hand-me-down iPads and stuff like that.
00:08:00 Speaker_05
Right, right. You saw that, you know, increase significantly toward the late 2000s. That's when, you know, Facebook to Twitter, YouTube started kind of coming up. And you got Apple, you know, coming up with the iPhone in the late 2000s.
00:08:11 Speaker_05
And then, of course, you had the recession. So there was an economic event there where, you know, people just had less money to go out and do things.
00:08:18 Speaker_05
So I think it was a kind of a mixture, you know, economic cycle and also just kind of rising technology and kind of people.
00:08:23 Speaker_05
and younger generation kind of being disconnected with being eager to kind of like, you know, play those games kind of like in a public setting.
00:08:29 Speaker_10
Yeah. Well, now the company was acquired by a private equity firm in 2014, and I think the price tag was something around $1 billion. Right. Yeah. What was the grand plan there?
00:08:39 Speaker_10
How did they hope to revive a chain that was by that point nearly 40 years old?
00:08:43 Speaker_05
I think it's what most private equity companies try to do when they take over a restaurant. You want to improve operations. You want to remodel the restaurants. I believe Apollo was the name of the private equity firm that took over operations in 2014.
00:08:59 Speaker_05
Some of the things that they were doing trying to introduce Cars as opposed to ticket system.
00:09:04 Speaker_05
So you just kind of put up a car to the game as opposed to the paper tickets more neutral tones in the restaurants and Trying to create a vibe that could appeal to both parents as well as kids. They also, you know more open kitchen so
00:09:21 Speaker_05
People can see the food prepared, kind of make it a more sort of experiential environment. New dance floors with a lot more lights, you know, new seating.
00:09:29 Speaker_05
I think they introduced, you know, an all-you-can-play program where you could spend a certain amount, you can play as much as you want.
00:09:36 Speaker_05
So a lot of different things they tried to do over, I guess, however long they had them, maybe about six years or so. to try to kind of switch around their business.
00:09:45 Speaker_10
Well, by 2020, Chuck E. Cheese was definitely in a rough spot. What happened to their business during the COVID-19 pandemic?
00:09:51 Speaker_05
Yeah, you know, they were in a very, very tough spot because when COVID happened, government mandates came in and that closed all the dining rooms, closed restaurants. They didn't have the foot traffic.
00:10:03 Speaker_05
So that forced them to really go into what we call off-premises, which means, you know, takeout and delivery and trying to send out their food through those means.
00:10:15 Speaker_05
One of the things, you know, was the Pasquale's Pizza and Wings brand that they came out with.
00:10:20 Speaker_05
I think it was pretty much a way to separate itself from the Chuck E. Cheese name, because the tough thing is that Chuck E. Cheese really isn't known for their food products.
00:10:30 Speaker_05
They're more known for their games and stuff, but I think they improved the ingredients with the pizza on that menu. It was a way for them to revamp it and try to rely on their food menu. serve as a bridge during the early days in the pandemic.
00:10:47 Speaker_05
So that was the other tough thing, like, you know, with sales being down and inability to pay rent and inability to pay vendors and all these other costs, it forced them into bankruptcy. Yeah, that was June of 2020, I believe it was. Right.
00:10:59 Speaker_05
So they went into a bankruptcy with a lot of debt, like a lot, a lot of debt. And a lot of the debt was from that acquisition back in 2014. It was what you call a leveraged buyout, which involves like just kind of like a lot of debt being exchanged.
00:11:13 Speaker_05
But when it comes to that family entertainment space, like they're one of the biggest names out there. I mean, it's pretty much them and David Busters are the two big ones.
00:11:22 Speaker_05
You figure that they had enough backing and financing, enough people involved that we're going to push for it to to get through this. And sure enough, they did.
00:11:30 Speaker_10
And survive, they did, yeah. But how are they faring nowadays? Because it seemed like they weren't just reaching out for the kids now.
00:11:38 Speaker_10
In fact, I think the chain introduced a new membership model to help get more parents in the door, you know, especially with high inflation, economic uncertainty, you've got this membership that can save you money, at least in theory.
00:11:50 Speaker_10
So how do you think this factors into Chuck E. Cheese's strategy overall?
00:11:54 Speaker_05
Right, you know, they're just doing what every other brand out there is doing right now. The story of the 2024 is about, you know, what can you do to put value in front of the consumers?
00:12:03 Speaker_05
Like you said, they came up with that membership tier to where you could pay a certain amount. And it's actually flexible, like there's like different tiers. And then if you pay more per month, You're allowed to play more games.
00:12:16 Speaker_05
So it was just a way for people to associate Chuck E. Cheese with being a valuable place to go in times where money is tight.
00:12:25 Speaker_10
You know, you put all this together, who's Chuck E. Cheese's demographic these days? I mean, you think once upon a time, it was the kids who would drag the parents in. And then you saw what happened after the pandemic and that appeal to parents.
00:12:37 Speaker_10
Who are they appealing to? I almost wonder if it's not to millennial parents who grew up going to the arcade.
00:12:44 Speaker_05
That's exactly what they're trying to do. They're trying to appeal to both sides. They want to make sure that they're up to date and they still can have a spot with those younger guests, which is their bread and butter.
00:12:55 Speaker_05
But they also know that they're old enough that the people who are parents now, who were going to Chuck E. Cheese when they were little, are now in a parental position. And they remember their own memories with playing the games.
00:13:08 Speaker_05
And they want to bring that nostalgia factor with them.
00:13:12 Speaker_05
But, you know, it is kind of a push and pull there because some of the advancements do come at a risk of, you know, cutting out some of the things that people loved the most when they were younger.
00:13:21 Speaker_05
But it definitely is a matter of trying to do things to appeal to parents as well.
00:13:28 Speaker_05
They came out with a grown-up menu with wings and salads and sandwiches and trying to create a menu specifically for older people to kind of get them in there and, I guess, make it a more pleasant experience for them.
00:13:40 Speaker_10
Yeah, a few years after going private, the company tried to return to the New York Stock Exchange, but the deal ultimately fell through.
00:13:48 Speaker_10
Well, now that you've, you know, you've seen the company have to weather a lot of storms, things seem to have calmed down just a bit.
00:13:55 Speaker_10
I think there were some reports that Chunky Cheese may be back on the market, maybe looking for a buyer to take them public again. You heard any whispers about that? Any potential offers, perhaps?
00:14:05 Speaker_05
We did hear reports of Chuck E. Cheese possibly being up for sale. I think it was about a year or so ago, but we haven't heard anything since then. It's gone pretty quiet on that front.
00:14:17 Speaker_05
The deal you're referring to back in 2019, it was supposed to be a merger with what you call a special purpose acquisition company. These are SPACs. Yes, SPACs, right, correct. And for whatever reason, it didn't work out.
00:14:30 Speaker_05
The companies didn't give a reason as to why it didn't work at the time. And in the stories we've done about Chuck E. Cheese, they haven't shared anything or any other significant updates about switching ownership or sale or anything like that.
00:14:41 Speaker_10
Some of the stories that have been out there, I think Reuters was reporting that Chuck E. Cheese was expected to generate somewhere close to almost $200 million in earnings before interest taxes, depreciation, amortization, which would put you at a valuation of around $1.4 billion.
00:14:58 Speaker_10
That's a lot of money for Chuck E. Cheese. You think entertainment may be making a comeback?
00:15:03 Speaker_05
Well, it's interesting. During the beginning of the pandemic, entertainment was it was not great and things were not going well. Even Dave and Buster, there were some murmurings about them even possibly going bankrupt, too.
00:15:15 Speaker_05
I mean, but around that twenty one, twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two period. They enjoyed some pretty good sales bumps from some higher traffic from people just eager to get out.
00:15:26 Speaker_05
But we've seen recently that these entertainment brands have had a tougher time attracting people. So these brands are trying to be known for more than just entertainment. So they're trying to build up their food and beverage programs.
00:15:39 Speaker_05
Pinstripes is a smaller one. It's one that's also went public last year. It's like a bowling and boccia concept, but it also has a very strong food and beverage program.
00:15:48 Speaker_05
Actually, they do more in food and beverage sales than they do in amusement, which is interesting.
00:15:54 Speaker_05
A lot of brands are trying to elevate that because when you're just known for the games, it can be harder to get people to come in during these tougher wallet times.
00:16:02 Speaker_05
And I think that these brands felt some sluggish sales after that big boom they felt in 2021, 2022. But there's a lot of brand equity still with Chuck E. Cheese. It's very much still a relevant brand in the psyche of America.
00:16:16 Speaker_05
So they have the tools, they have the cultural, significance and the cultural relevance to continue to build up and go forward. They just have to have the right strategies to be able to market correctly to the consumers.
00:16:29 Speaker_10
Ben Coley is senior editor at QSR Magazine, an industry publication covering quick service restaurants. You can keep up with their reporting at qsrmagazine.com. Ben, thanks so much for joining us on Business Wars. I appreciate it.
00:16:42 Speaker_09
I had a lot of fun. Coming up. Everything about Chuck E. Cheese when it was introduced was special because nothing like it had really been done before.
00:16:49 Speaker_10
Ross Brackman of the American Treasure Tour Museum joins us to take a deeper look at Chuck E. Cheese's house band and the history of the animatronic characters that make it up. Stick around. Audible's best of 2024 picks are here.
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00:19:26 Speaker_10
Chuck E. Cheese is famous for its animatronic band, but these life-size robot puppets hit the scene long before Munch's make-believe band played their first gig.
00:19:35 Speaker_10
Ross Brackman is the director of the American Treasure Tour Museum in Oaks, Pennsylvania, which houses one of the largest animatronics collections in the world.
00:19:45 Speaker_10
He joins us now to talk about the history of these fascinating and sometimes frightening robotic wonders. Ross Brackman, welcome to Business Wars. Thank you so much, David. It's a pleasure being here. Well, it's great to have you.
00:19:56 Speaker_09
Just how far back are we talking about when it comes to animatronics? Well, there is a difference between animatronics and automatons, and I don't want to bore you with too much of the history. automatons date back to basically BC.
00:20:11 Speaker_09
The concept of mechanical machinery that moves on its own is almost as old as written history. And then when electricity came in the 1870s, 1880s, they started using them to draw people to department store windows.
00:20:28 Speaker_10
You know, I know that you mentioned that revolution with electronics and this whole connection with sales. It was interesting.
00:20:37 Speaker_10
I think back in 1939, didn't Westinghouse have a kind of, it wasn't animatronic, but it was a sort of like a robot named Electro who could talk and I think could even smoke. I mean, it was the thirties after all.
00:20:50 Speaker_10
In fact, I think we have a clip from this. Let's listen.
00:20:53 Speaker_03
I am a smart fellow, as I have a very fine brain of 48 electrical relays. It works just like a telephone switchboard. If I get a wrong number, I can always blame the operator. Thank you.
00:21:20 Speaker_10
OK, so we're talking about a human talking to this robot looking thing. Looks like something lifted out of a sci-fi movie. But just a couple of decades later, robots like Electro became used as novelties.
00:21:32 Speaker_10
I mean, there were dancing bunnies and singing mice, sword swallowers. When did robotics start being used for the fun factor, you know, the entertainment factor?
00:21:42 Speaker_09
Well, you know, they don't really talk too much about it, and we're The difference between electro and the animatronics you would find in store windows is much, much different.
00:21:52 Speaker_09
So having them talk and be able to walk on their own, I mean, that's kind of taking it to the next level. But I would argue that they started shortly after electricity became a thing. 1880s, 1890s.
00:22:08 Speaker_09
And again, we're talking hands moving and heads shaking, things like that. So nothing like smoking and walking independently.
00:22:18 Speaker_10
Well, by the 1950s, Walt Disney started dabbling in this space. And in the 60s, work had begun on the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland. And then there was this term that I believe Disney coined, audio animatronics.
00:22:34 Speaker_07
Now, to accomplish this, we created a new type of animation. So new that we had to invent a new name for it.
00:22:42 Speaker_10
Audio animatronics.
00:22:44 Speaker_07
Right. Audio animatronics.
00:22:46 Speaker_10
Classic Disney. So is it safe to say that when we're talking animatronics, it was Disney that originally put that on the map?
00:22:54 Speaker_09
I think so. Yeah. I mean, definitely of that level of sophistication with the Tiki Room was the first I guess, main attraction. And then, of course, he also did Abraham Lincoln and showed us what you could do with the human face.
00:23:09 Speaker_09
Going back real quickly to the 1964 World's Fair, that was the first time Disney ever had the opportunity to share his technology with the East Coast.
00:23:19 Speaker_09
And people associated the East Coast with a sophistication that they did not at the time on the West Coast.
00:23:26 Speaker_09
And so the popularity of the Disney features, the Carousel of Progress, the Tiki Room, and It's a Small World, I mean, that validated for Disney and the country that we want this everywhere.
00:23:39 Speaker_09
And then, of course, jump ahead to Chuck E. Cheese, and now you're having it in towns all across the country.
00:23:45 Speaker_10
Totally. And it seems to me that by putting those animatronics in there, Chuck E. Cheese was trying to bring a little bit of Disney into the local communities in a sense.
00:23:52 Speaker_10
I mean, if you wanted to check out something as cool as an animatronic, you could just find one around the corner at a pizza shop and play some games at the same time.
00:23:59 Speaker_09
I mean, everything about Chuck E. Cheese when it was introduced was special because nothing like it had really been done before. Sure, you had things at the Disney parks, but this was basically a pizza place.
00:24:11 Speaker_09
And of course, Nolan Bushnell, who established and created Chuck E. Cheese, did it kind of as a way to get his Atari video games played. So, I mean, there was a market for video games, but he wanted more.
00:24:26 Speaker_10
Tell us about Chuck E. Cheese's Munch's Make Believe band. What made them so special?
00:24:32 Speaker_09
I mean, you don't hear about it being a hit or a failure necessarily, but it definitely was a draw. I mean, it's a fascination. And there were people just like
00:24:41 Speaker_09
With any kind of technology, there were some people who were enthralled by it and eventually became obsessed by it, and other people who just thought it was creepy and weird.
00:24:55 Speaker_10
beat out the gang at competitor Showbiz Pizza Place. But for those who never got to go, maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that band, The Rockafire Explosion. Do you remember the characters in the band?
00:25:06 Speaker_10
Was Chucky actually one of the players?
00:25:09 Speaker_09
Not in The Rockafire Explosion. That was a whole bunch of different animals. We had Billy Bob. He was a southern bear. We had Bird, who was a loony bird. Rolf the wolf. Duke LaRue and Fats Geronimo.
00:25:24 Speaker_09
Then there was the Mitzi mozzarella, of course, because it's a pizza place, so you have to have somebody representing the cheese of choice.
00:25:32 Speaker_10
Yeah. I guess Chucky didn't make the cut of the band.
00:25:36 Speaker_09
Well, not initially, but that was the Rockafire explosion when we got into the,
00:25:44 Speaker_09
Independent Bushnell had his team which included Chuck, Helen Henney, Mr. Munch, Jasper, Jowles, and Pasquale, and of course, the Warblettes who were the background singers because you needed those as well.
00:25:56 Speaker_09
You had two completely different bands going on at the same time and sometimes across the street from each other. That was Robert Brock who designed the competition and when Brock took over, for Chuck E. Cheese.
00:26:11 Speaker_09
He didn't immediately just cancel one of the bands. I mean, eventually he took over Chuck's characters and retired the Rockafire Explosion. But for a time, he basically ran two different restaurants across the street from each other in certain places.
00:26:28 Speaker_09
What about the poor Rockafire characters? Where'd they end up? They ended up where unwanted animatronics often end up. And there is a story about
00:26:38 Speaker_09
Chuck E. Cheese that continues to this day, where when a Chuck E. Cheese's closes down, they don't want them to survive.
00:26:46 Speaker_09
So they will intentionally destroy the animatronic characters so that they can't be repurposed, which makes them very rare to find today in places outside of Chuck. And of course, Chuck E. Cheese's are
00:27:00 Speaker_09
have been talking about and officially announced that they were going to resign their band, but there was such an uproar that they're changing their policy, but ultimately they are going to reduce their numbers quite a bit.
00:27:11 Speaker_10
Now, tell us about that. What was the reaction like?
00:27:15 Speaker_09
Well, people who grew up at Chuck E. Cheese's, going there as kids, they have, well, some of them, of course, have a massive loyalty to these guys, and they don't want to see them go away. It's kind of like when
00:27:28 Speaker_09
The Tiki Hut and Walt Disney World went under new management and they changed the song and everything. Some people were grateful they didn't have to hear the in the Tiki Tiki Tiki room every time they go in there.
00:27:38 Speaker_09
But then other people is like, that's why they went. So you're going to get different reactions from everybody. That's part of what a passion.
00:27:47 Speaker_10
I guess the only place then people could see the working characters as they were back in the day. Is that one of those few remaining locations or maybe if they're in your neck of the woods, perhaps.
00:28:01 Speaker_09
Absolutely. We don't have the whole Chucky team here, but we do have some of our, the classics. We have Chuck, we have Helen, we have Mr. Munch and two sets of Warblets, but.
00:28:11 Speaker_09
One of the sets of Warblets has been modified so that they don't look like the band, and I don't know honestly how they came to be the way they are, but they're kind of like country-fied Warblets.
00:28:21 Speaker_09
But yeah, you can find them scattered around the country in private collections or in a few museums like ours. But it really is hard to find them, and of course there are the handful of Chuck E. Cheese's where they still play them, but
00:28:37 Speaker_09
What constantly happens is they are so difficult to maintain. It really takes somebody with a passion to do it. And just as an addendum to the concept of animatronics, these guys work off of pneumatics as well. So they're pumped with air.
00:28:52 Speaker_09
You need more technology than just electricity and gears to get them going.
00:28:58 Speaker_10
Yeah. And I would imagine a lot of patience and technical know-how, too, to keep them running.
00:29:03 Speaker_09
It does, but oddly, it doesn't have to be somebody with a lot of experience.
00:29:07 Speaker_09
And our story is a perfect example of that because a young man named Ryan, who visited us when he was eight years old, who had a early interest in Chucky came back eight years later and asked us because at that point, our Chuckies were just on display.
00:29:23 Speaker_09
And he asked us if we would allow him to get them back into running order. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, it, it took a lot of arm twists and we basically said, yes, please. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. Right. And Ryan single-handedly did it.
00:29:37 Speaker_09
I mean, he, he said, okay, I need these parts over here. We ordered them. No problem. Some of them we had to get off of eBay because they were difficult to find elsewhere, but he got them going all by himself. And now he's a senior in high school.
00:29:50 Speaker_09
Great guy. And. Apparently, he has his own Chucky team in his own bedroom, but we're glad to have ours as well.
00:29:58 Speaker_10
Well, it's time for a quick break. Our guest is Ross Brackman. He's director of the American Treasure Tour Museum, housing one of the largest collections of animatronics in the country.
00:30:06 Speaker_10
And when we come back, we're going to talk more about the recent wave of nostalgia, bringing back these charming, albeit sometimes creepy, animatronic bands back into the spotlight. Stay with us.
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00:31:55 Speaker_10
Hey, welcome back to business wars. Ross Brackman is the director of the American treasure tour museum located just outside of Philadelphia. It features toys, animatronics, and knickknacks. It'll make you feel like a kid again.
00:32:07 Speaker_10
Ross, this sounds like so much fun. How did you get into this business?
00:32:10 Speaker_09
Uh, basically by luck and persistence. The first time I came here was as a visitor and I saw all of the
00:32:18 Speaker_09
Nickelodeon's the classic cars the of course the animatronics which are very seductive so be careful when you get here but i just came at a time when they needed people to come in to start giving private tours and i guess they like what i was doing well enough that they kept me coming here so.
00:32:36 Speaker_10
This really speaks to the passion that this stuff incites. I mean, are you more into the nostalgia or more into robotics or what is it that draws you to this?
00:32:45 Speaker_09
Well, I am kind of an addict of popular culture personally. So I also have an obsession with visiting museums all over the place.
00:32:55 Speaker_09
So a museum where you can come in and feel happier leaving is a very rare thing in this world because most of them deal with pretty heavy subjects and That's not what we do here.
00:33:06 Speaker_09
So you come in, you listen to the automatic music machines, the Nickelodeons, the band organs, the carousel music, things like that.
00:33:13 Speaker_09
Then you also take a tram ride around the collection because it's over 100,000 square feet and there's a definite sense of chaos when you come here, which I say that in the best possible way because it is just audio and visual saturation.
00:33:28 Speaker_10
Yeah, that's my favorite kind of place. I love that. I love that. Well, what's the consensus here? Are these things more creepy or is it more endearing or is the nostalgia factor maybe all the above?
00:33:41 Speaker_09
Well, definitely it's all of the above, but what part of the fun of working here is and going around with the folks on the trams is watching their reactions because you can't be creeped out by Sesame Street, in my humble opinion.
00:33:55 Speaker_09
I mean, you see those and they just kind of bring a smile, but you see the little babies that are supposed to be selling soap and they're just kind of creaming their necks and just looking scary. Clowns, it's a 50-50.
00:34:07 Speaker_09
You get people who love clowns and you get people who are just terrified the second they see them.
00:34:12 Speaker_10
That's cool. What kind of visitors are you getting? I mean, I would think that in a way, you'd be getting mostly older folks nostalgic for the sights and sounds and toys of their youth.
00:34:23 Speaker_10
But actually, I hear you get a lot of younger folks in the door, like teens and younger. What do you think is going on there?
00:34:30 Speaker_09
Well everybody can connect to different elements of popular culture and that is part of the fun of this place there was one day there was that we have an expo center right down the street from us.
00:34:41 Speaker_09
And they were doing an oddities and curiosities expo and so we had the folks coming from there to check out our animatronics and. maybe come in with a sense of irony or recapturing their youth.
00:34:54 Speaker_09
So while they were coming in, we had a group of seniors who were leaving having reconnected with their favorite cars from when they were kids, that kind of a thing.
00:35:03 Speaker_09
So one of the fun things that I enjoy is when we get a family of three generations who come in and the grandparents are loving the music.
00:35:11 Speaker_09
And the parents might be enjoying the movie posters from Die Hard or Pulp Fiction or whatever may have been something that they really connected to when they were in their
00:35:20 Speaker_09
teens or 20s, and the little kids might love Chuck E. Cheese or the stuffed animals that we have all over the place, but bottom line, they're just trying to make you happy, whichever they are.
00:35:32 Speaker_10
Well, now, see, personal story here, because I thought that maybe one of the reasons you were getting more younger people was because of something that my own son has gone through. We did the whole Chuck E. Cheese thing.
00:35:45 Speaker_10
And he wasn't really interested in the animatronics. I'll tell you what turned him on the animatronics. This video game. Five Nights at Freddy's, and it exploded online.
00:35:57 Speaker_10
The video game player becomes a security guard at what looks like a kind of Chuck E. Cheese type establishment, where there's an animatronic band that's possessed.
00:36:06 Speaker_10
Everything's dark, and you're trying to make your way through the old pizzeria, and there's this possessed animatronic band trying to kill you. Scary stuff. In fact, I think this was adapted into a film in 2023.
00:36:18 Speaker_08
Mike, this is Bonnie, Foxy, and Chica. Everyone, this is Mike.
00:36:29 Speaker_10
Would you like a pizza with that? How have games like that opened the door for a new generation of appreciation for animatronics? This was extremely popular.
00:36:37 Speaker_09
Oh, and I think it still is. And I know that the movie was hugely successful, like far more than even the companies that produced it expected.
00:36:45 Speaker_09
And I think it's, well, I don't know how much of the backstory behind the making of the video game in the movie you know, but Scott Cawthorn, created video games with a Christian orientation around them.
00:36:57 Speaker_09
One of the games was called Chipper and Son's Lumber. Chipper had this look that reminded people of animatronics, and so Scott got a lot of flack for making a creepy automaton, basically, or animatronic for the game.
00:37:14 Speaker_09
He was like, fine, if that's what you think, I'll give you a real creepy automaton.
00:37:19 Speaker_10
He became a billionaire in the process too.
00:37:21 Speaker_09
Absolutely. I think it's like clowns and everything else. You have fond memories of a clown as a kid or you have fond memories of a video game as a kid. Then as an adult or as you get older, you get to see the sinister side of it.
00:37:36 Speaker_09
You can enjoy the innocence as well as the creepiness. I think automatons, partly because most people don't understand how they work, And I'm certainly part of that. So there's an element of mystery to them. But I think that's definitely alluring.
00:37:51 Speaker_09
And most people who have been to Disney World are impacted, whether it's through It's a Small World or Pirates of the Caribbean, like this magic of these characters that very obviously aren't human, but they're moving like humans.
00:38:06 Speaker_09
There's just a mysticism about it.
00:38:07 Speaker_10
Has this translated to more teens, tweens, and 20-somethings coming to the museum?
00:38:11 Speaker_09
Well, I mean, we understand where it's coming from as far as, you know, the allure.
00:38:17 Speaker_09
But most definitely, we do see people coming in partly to see Chuck E. Cheese as these characters that they remember from their childhood, but also imagining maybe that they have knives in their hands. And they don't. Ours are very friendly.
00:38:30 Speaker_09
They will only sing to you if you're lucky. but you'll never see them try to kill you, I promise.
00:38:35 Speaker_10
Yeah, but these are the OGs. This is what it came from. So, it's something else too. The Rockafire Explosion band from the former Showbiz Pizza also appears to have had a bit of a resurgence.
00:38:48 Speaker_10
There's something called BillyCon, where fans from across the U.S. converge on Billy Bob's Wonderland in West Virginia to celebrate, well, Billy from the Rockafire frontman. Just how deep does this whole animatronic subculture run?
00:39:03 Speaker_09
Well, again, I think most of the animatronic subculture is the same subculture as Halloween.
00:39:09 Speaker_09
I think that is the most straightforward connection because you go to Halloween conventions and things like that, and they're always trying to one-up each other with their sophisticated animatronics.
00:39:21 Speaker_09
And of course, you go to the Home Depot either at Halloween or Christmas time, and they have all of these 10 foot tall skeletons now that move and it's all basic technology compared to what you see at Chuck or Disney World.
00:39:34 Speaker_09
But people just have a genuine fascination with mechanical devices that they don't understand. And I think that goes also to the fact that digital is so powerful now. Like there's no getting a sense of
00:39:47 Speaker_09
how computers work unless you are in that field or you just are obsessed with it. You work with your phone, you know how to use it, but if it breaks, you have to send it to a specialist.
00:39:57 Speaker_09
With mechanical, you can see the gears running, you can see the belt going, and I think that makes it more accessible for people. Now, how can folks visit your museum?
00:40:07 Speaker_09
Well, we are open Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and we are located just about five, maybe 10 minutes from the Valley Forge National Park. So we're really not far at all from Philadelphia.
00:40:19 Speaker_09
Right off the highway, we're actually in an old BF Goodrich tire factory.
00:40:24 Speaker_09
Maybe not too pretty from the outside, but the folks who used to work at the Goodrich plant who have come to see us here say that it's a lot nicer now than it was when they were making tires.
00:40:35 Speaker_10
And I would think a whole lot more fun, too. Ross Brackman, thanks so much for joining us on Business Wars. Well, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
00:40:43 Speaker_10
Ross Brackman is the director of the American Treasure Tour Museum in Oaks, Pennsylvania, just outside Philly. You can pay him a visit or follow him on social media to stay up to date on the latest treasures on display.
00:40:54 Speaker_10
Next time on Business Wars, as an ailing Disney struggles to recover from the COVID pandemic and a run of movie misses, a billionaire activist investor seizes the moment and goes on the attack. You won't want to miss it.
00:41:10 Speaker_10
If you like Business Wars, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.
00:41:22 Speaker_10
Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. From Wondery, this is episode three of Chuck E. Cheese vs. Showbiz Pizza for Business Wars. I'm your host, David Brown. Kelly Kyle produced this episode.
00:41:40 Speaker_10
Peter Arconi is our senior interview producer. Our producers are Emily Frost and Grant Rutter. Our audio engineer is Sergio Enriquez. Our managing producer is Desi Blaylock. Our senior managing producer is Callum Plews.
00:41:52 Speaker_10
Our senior producers are Karen Lowe and Dave Schilling. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louis. For Wondery.
00:42:05 Speaker_11
From Wondery and Dr. Seuss, from high atop Mount Crumpit, tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast.
00:42:12 Speaker_11
Tonight's special guest, he's the big mouth behind Big Mouth, and you can see him in the Christmas blockbuster, Red One, in theaters and available to stream on Prime Video now, funny man, Nick Kroll!
00:42:27 Speaker_02
Hey, Nicky, how you doing? Good, how are you, Grinch? Oh, I'm pretty good. I'm doing pretty good today, buddy. Are you finding everything okay in here?
00:42:36 Speaker_06
Yeah, it's been awesome. Thanks so much.
00:42:38 Speaker_02
This is gonna be fun.
00:42:39 Speaker_06
Yeah, I think we're gonna have fun. I'm really excited. I was a little nervous, because you're quite an intimidating character, but I feel like we've had some good chemistry here in this pre-interview, and I think it'll be fun.
00:42:47 Speaker_12
Whoa, all right, let's save it for the interview. Follow Tiz the Grinch Holiday Podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:42:54 Speaker_12
Unlock weekly Christmas mystery bonus content and listen to every episode ad free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.