Chuck E. Cheese gets a crappy makeover

Like his eighties brethren Alvin and The Chipmunks, Chuck E. Cheese has been redesigned in a manner that removes all remaining crumbs of original loveable kitsch. What was once a heart-warming pastiche of "scary clown" meets "stoned furry" is now just another soul-less CGI belch. Is nothing sacred?

Bonus in this AP article: a bungled reference to Nolan Bushnell as the man who "co-founded Atari and Pong." Pong, of course, was an arcade game created by Allan Alcorn and manufactured by Atari, the video game and home computer company Bushnell co-founded.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: 1980s • 80s • chuck e cheese • eighties • Entertainment • Games • nolan bushnell

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The Snowden Principle

http://www.facebook.com/jtorkkola Jennifer Torkkola

On the bright side, he has good taste when it comes to guitars.
- EH
  
  They focus-grouped the shit out of that choice, I’m sure.
Nathan Swick

You’ve heard the expression, “let’s get busy”? Well, this is a mouse who gets “biz-zay!” Consistently and thoroughly.
- Michael Ellis Day
  
  I feel we should Rasta-fy him by ten percent or so.
  - http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland
    
    Give me a nice shmear of surfer.
- http://twitter.com/ethanwc ethanwc
  
  Came here to see this reference, was not let down.
ponzicar

So they updated it to look like something from the 90s?
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  This. There’s no excuse for crummy CG these days, you could buy a better mouse than that from a 3D marketplace for $50. That said the model is fine, it’s the budget rendering that ruins it.
  
  Bleugh.
oldtaku

Kkk-RAD EXTREME 80s VIDEO GAME MASCOT hooks up with Bubsy on his days off to chill with some ‘tude yo.
http://twitter.com/Epers Eddie Perkins

I never imagined the guy in the suit crapping on my pizzas.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Wood/100000023676604 Mark Wood

But is he half Joe Camel and a third Fonzarelli?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  At least he doesn’t have bulging muscles. And nipples.
  - 10xor01
    
    Like Batman?
awjt

If they put a guitar on the pizza, it might get a little better too.
Grey Devil

It’s not a bad redesign to be honest. But i think they fail to take into consideration that ultimately some guy is going to have to wear the suit, which is why the portly lookin mascot works on different levels.
- Josh Barnhill
  
  In this age of Tupac Shakur holograms? I think we’re beyond dudes in suits at this point.
  
  Now we just need to get Chuck and ‘Pac to collab.
Nadreck

Big mistake. They should have stuck with the old plan of going upscale by rebranding as “Charles de Frommage”.
- http://dailygrail.com/ Red Pill Junkie
  
  Merci :)
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  Sounds like a good place. I’d eat there.
http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski

Gnarly!
John Rust

The sound I imagine emanating from his guitar is the death knell of my childhood.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

I’m too old to have any fond memories of Chuck E Cheese. It seemed like a gimmick when I read about it in college, so it’s hard for me to buy the sacred argument.

If the chain wants to really be leading edge, they’ll strap augmented-reality spex on their guests the moment they enter. The kids can run around waving their arms in the air playing in a fantasyscape that only they can see. The parents’ spex, meanwhile, would show a tastefully decorated room with no screaming moppets in it.
jaytkay

Poochie? Is that you?
- robdobbs
  
  lol. I just made the same comparison – but to the original.
  - johnnylloydrollins
    
    well… they did make him cool… but not TOO cool. At least he isn’t folding his arms and giving us the “cocked eyebrow” over the sunglasses look.
Aaaa

silverburst!!
BarBarSeven

Shred the rad, Chuck E. Cheese! You rock!!! To the EXTREME! No WAY!!!
spacemunky

My local Chuck E. Cheese’s used to be a strip club. No lie.

This new mascot looks like he could be from either incarnation of the place.
- http://mjfgates.myopenid.com/ mjfgates
  
  I’ve always wanted a lap dance from… no, wait, I haven’t. Might buy one for a friend, though.
Hanglyman

I’m the perfect age to have Chuck E. Cheese nostalgia, but I’m all for this redesign. The original was ugly as hell and creepy too, with its weird naked reverse-five-o-clock-shadow.
http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog

But the “then” isn’t even that old. I prefer the Brooklyn-ish Chuck E. of my youth, before the merger with Showbiz (which I also remember being better, when it was on its own).

EDIT: see here
- Coderjoe
  
  Indeed, Showbiz’s animatronics were much better than the original CECPTT ones, which were essentially nothing more than the characters’ heads and upper torsos. (Granted, I had never heard of CEC until the local SBP went through concept unification.)
- http://twitter.com/tollkuhn Jekka
  
  Yes, this is the Chuck E. Cheese I remember, and I was born in ’78. Thanks for this!
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  To be fair though that looks more like a rat, not a fantastic connotation with a restaurant (if not honest). Mouse isn’t much better, but I think you have a stronger connection with the cheese side of things.
Ed Ligget. Tuba.

I’m sorry but when I read the headline “Chuck E. Cheese gets a crappy makeover” my immediate reaction was “So…no change then?”
Pickleschlitz

Alvin and the Chipmunks were from the late 50s/early 60s. The 80s Chipmunks were lousy makeovers too.
Kibo

They should just give up and call the restaurant “Noisy Hellhole Casino For Screaming Children Except With Even Worse Food Than Real Casinos.” The mascot should be a wadded-up slice of pizza being rammed down someone’s throat by your elementary school bully. (It would take two people to wear that suit.)

The continued existence of the Chuck E. Cheese franchise is the main reason I decided to never have children.
http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers

There’s something both slightly comforting and disconcerting about the adoption of last generation’s early adolescent “rebellious” iconography as suitable for preteens.
- http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb
  
  That comment is so wrong, it makes me want to hit somebody with my 1976 Fonzie lunchbox.
gnp

Well, if you want a weird game connection, the animatronic version of Chuck E. Cheese was built on top of the pre-existing mechanics from Showbiz Pizza Place’s robot band, The Rock-afire Explosion. (Mitzi Mozzarella’s ears are almost identical to Chuck’s.) And the animatronics were made by a guy named Aaron Fechter, who also invented Whac-A-Mole.
- Josh Barnhill
  
  You sound like you’ve probably already seen this (and I think it was posted here at some point) but it’s too germane not to post:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b90Cf6ARscc#t=00m07s
Jake0748

They took the Cheese out of Chuck E.
someoneElsesUserName

Ah, Chuck E. Cheese. Number 2 in rodent-based entertainment.
- RayCornwall
  
  #2? At least #4 (behind Mickey, Jerry, and Itchy.)
  - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
    
    Two words: Danger Mouse.
    - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
      
      Ooh, and Rasta Mouse.
    - RayCornwall
      
      TV show or Gnarls Barkley half? I also forgot Mighty.
      - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
        
        Both! Which leads me to add Deadmau5, if that counts.
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

On the bright side, this character might serve Ratatouille instead of pizza.
Aaron Borst

The AP did not mess up the reference. The Chuck E Cheeses web site did. It references that
Nolan Bushnell created Atari and Pong right on their history page.
- Mike Harris
  
  Yes, AP DID mess up the reference. They’re not supposed to take corporate material as gospel when composing their stories. Unfortunately, with all the cuts in journalism nowadays, I don’t imagine they have the staff to do the editing and fact-checking that they SHOULD be doing.
http://twitter.com/matcatastrophe mat catastrophe

“Is nothing sacred?”

That’s facetious irony, right?
- Assault_is_eternal
  
  When I was young, the cartoon characters designed to shill products to us were ten times better than then ones they have today. You kids get off my lawn!
Buckles B

They should have gone with one of these designs: http://www.bite.ca/bitedaily/2012/07/alternate-chuck-e-cheese-mascots/
http://twitter.com/voodoochild9 Amanda Hamilton

So at no point did it occur to them to change the purple and green ’90′s color scheme to something less ridiculous?

Ok then. Makes sense.
robdobbs

Chuck E. Cheese was a cut rate character from the begining. He was Poochie from the beginning.

He was always the most lame of any cartoon character. As a child even I assumed they only made him because they couldn’t afford Mickey or any of the actual interesting characters. C.E.C and his animatronic co-horts where pale rip-offs of what disney where doing with the bears and whatnot in their parks. (I always thought the show would be more interesting if the animatronic robots had no skin. Robots that look like robots would have been way more interesting that what they gave us.)And let’s not forget the actual restaurants. Pizza and crap for food hidden among all those crappy version of carny games that spit out ticket stubs that you could use – if you saved several thousand of them – to buy even crappier plastic toys that you would eventually just get for free out of a Cracker Jack Box. They could not make Chuck-E-Cheese any worse than he was so I really don’t see why any one would complain that he has a guitar now.
http://twitter.com/ScissorNightRam Lennoxx Bllaze Wesst

One day his planet will need him.
http://dailygrail.com/ Red Pill Junkie

Chuck X Cheez.

You need the ‘X’ and the ‘Z’ to RADify outdated property —any Disney exec knows that.
Brad Cleveland

Poochy is dead !

Yaaaay !
Bryce Grammer

Actually, the first pong style game was created by Ralph Baer. It was released on the Magnovox Odyssey, the first home video game console. Bushnell saw this at a trade show. When Bushnell started Atari he hired Alcorn to make pong as we know it today. Check source below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkXjpqtZk-g&list=UUGAW_bqcFm33_N2ZmygvQsQ&index=7&feature=plcp
http://twitter.com/FWACATA Juan Navarro

Uhm I think he looks BETTER like this and the old Chuck just made me want to ball up into a fetal position and cry really. He was sort of depressing. They should bring back the whole band though… or have Daniel Clowes do a remake if you want to go creepy
http://twitter.com/FWACATA Juan Navarro

…or better yet R.Crumb
wh0cares

who’s cares, get over it. Chucky was creepy anyways.. creepy ,child molester furry, maniacal serial killer kinda way too .. i think its a good upgrade, i don’t see how it’s a step down.
http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

This is like when they gave Dennis the Menace a walkman and baseball cap.