Chuck E. Cheese Pizza War
Decoder Ring
Slate Podcasts
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2019
⏱️ 45 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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The King was an animatronic lounge singer who performed in Chuck E. Cheese locations in the 1980's and early 90's, but then he disappeared. The King was a victim of a conflict known as the pizza wars, when Chuck E. Cheese faced off against its rival, Showbiz Pizza for pizza arcade supremacy. The foot soldiers in the pizza war were the animatronic bands that staffed each location—including The King. This episode is a chronicle of the pizza war, with the founder of Chuck E. Cheese, Nolan Bushnell, it's rival, Showbiz Pizza's Aaron Fechter, the people who designed the characters and animatronics, and the people who continue loving these characters, like Jared Sanchez, who continue to create work with these once discarded creatures.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast contains explicit language. |
| 0:08.3 | For Jared Sanchez's fifth birthday, he got to go to Chuck E. Cheese for the very first time. |
| 0:13.8 | All you could see is neon lights, the lights from the arcade cabinets. That was awesome. |
| 0:19.3 | It was the mid-1980s, and Chuckie Cheese's Pizza Time Theater, as it was then called, |
| 0:23.5 | had three major selling points. Pizza, video games, and an animatronic stage show. |
| 0:29.7 | The first two things are self-explanatory. The animatronics are something else. |
| 0:34.8 | Welcome to my place. I'm Chuckie Cheese. We're going to sing some tunes that are sure to please. So or something else. |
| 0:52.1 | Animatronics are mechanical objects made of pneumatican movements all by themselves. They exist to entertain people. Every |
| 0:55.4 | Chucky Cheese in the country at the time, and there were hundreds of them, was home to |
| 0:59.0 | a bantering, singing, five-piece animatronic set led by Chucky Cheese, a pizza rat. |
| 1:06.6 | There are also characters inside rooms, spaces that could be reserved for birthday parties |
| 1:11.3 | or parents could get away from the hubbub of the arcade. |
| 1:14.6 | It was in one of these rooms that Jared saw the animatronic character that really would change his life. |
| 1:20.0 | I turned the corner and I saw this huge thing. |
| 1:25.2 | It resembled like Elvis Presley in a way. He has a huge head, a jacket that's golden, |
| 1:32.6 | off white, with golden pants, huge paws that are fluffy like a teddy bear. And of course, |
| 1:41.5 | bright blue eyes stares right into your soul. And then, of course, bright blue eyes, stares right into your soul. |
| 1:46.7 | And then, of course, the neon sign that says the king. |
| 1:50.7 | The king is about 10 feet tall, |
| 1:52.3 | and when I first saw him, I thought he looked like a monkey. |
| 1:55.1 | He is, in fact, a lion. |
| 1:57.4 | Naturally, the king performed Elvis songs. |
... |
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