Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

Chuck E. Cheese gets a crappy makeover

Xeni Jardin at 6:39 pm Tue, Jul 3, 2012

— FEATURED —

Science

Making sense of the confusing Supreme Court DNA patent ruling

Book Review

The 'Geisters: spooky, scary novel

Science

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

Feature

The Snowden Principle

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle

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.

 
  • Chuck E. Cheese Rock-afire robots in MGMT music video –
  • Chuck E Cheese bots modded to play hiphop
  • Visit to '80s animatronic rock band warehouse
  • Video: documentary on Showbiz animatronic band
  • Defunct pizza parlor robot band repurposed for fan music-vids ...

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

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

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.