0:00
Today, we're talking about the weird history of Chuck E. Cheese
0:05
As creepy as the image of a dead-eyed mouse plunking out jamboree tunes may be
0:10
the real-life story of Chuckie Cheese is far more sad than scary
0:14
To tell the story of Chuck E. Cheese, whose canonical full name is Charles Entertainment Cheese
0:19
we have to travel all the way back to the year 1977. When Atari founder Nolan Bushnell woke up from a fever dream and decided to make it into a reality
0:29
He wanted to combine family-friendly dining entertainment, the nascent video game industry, and theme park attractions
0:36
The first Chucky Cheese opened on May 17, 1977 in San Jose, California
0:42
Guests flock to the location's mullet-like main attractions, the arcade in front and the showroom in back
0:49
where food was served, and every eight minutes the curtains would rise on Chuck and his animatronic friends
0:54
playing a set with their backup singers, the Warblets. By 1995, the financial bloom was off the rose. Revenues declined from 272 million in 1993 to 264 million in 1995
1:08
which if you do the math is about 100 billion tickets being left on the counter. It also didn't help that animatronic robots that once seemed so futuristic were also not aging well
1:18
as the new youth class had no frame of reference for Chuck E Cheese brand of 70 schick So what did appeal to 90s kids Attitude The revamped Chuckie Cheese He just didn give his age exactly but he was clearly a lot younger But who exactly was he
1:33
Where did he come from? Why did he dedicate his life to serving pizza and entertaining children
1:38
Nobody thought too hard about those questions for the next few decades, which is probably the way it should have stayed
1:44
Forward two decades to 2014. That year, the brand's official website released Chuck's memoir, The Story of Chuck E. Cheese
1:52
And as you'd expect from a kid whose middle initial stood for entertainment, Charles was an orphan
1:57
Not the kind who got adopted either. And he loved celebrating children's birthdays because he had never been given one himself
2:04
Nothing makes a pizza taste better than a topping of sadness. As you'd expect from 2014 internet culture, the unexpected grittiness of Chuck's backstory immediately went viral
2:14
Instead of leaning into the dank memes, the biography was removed from the Chuck E. Cheese website
2:19
Most recently, Chuck E. Cheese made headlines when the pandemic, forced restaurants to shutter in early 2020
2:25
After people took notice of a new franchise of pizza and wing restaurants materializing on their food
2:30
delivery apps, it was discovered that Chuck E. Cheese was selling pizza on Grubhub and DoorDash as
2:35
Pasquale's pizza. Shortly after Pasquale's got outed, the ghost kitchen industry got a
2:40
huge investment from Travis Kalanick, the guy who founded Uber. Presumably, a super pumped-style biopic
2:46
series about the founding of Chuck E. Cheese is not far behind. And we already know who we're
2:51
casting as Charles. Timothy Entertainment Shalameh
