The famed animatronic performers at kids' party restaurant Chuck E. Cheese are finally being taken out back, victim to changing trends, spiraling maintenance costs and the improved advertising revenues offered by the screens that shall replace them. The New York Times recently said goodbye to the mechanical marvels (archive.org), doomed after the Covid pandemic bankrupted the chain and forced it to rack its slides.
Since Chuck E. Cheese announced in November that it would phase out Munch's Make Believe Band, some parents have scrambled to take their children to the final performances. Kaitlin Rubenstein, 30, the general manager of the Hicksville location and another in Hempstead, N.Y., said that some recorded videos of the band to preserve the memory. Ms. Rubinstein said it was "bittersweet" to watch the band that had been a part of her childhood being retired. "To go to Chuck E. Cheese on a Friday night," she said, "that was a treat."
The reason I'm posting this is because I chanced across Studio C on YouTube, which restores the animatronics. I thought the video below captures the eternal spirit just perfectly.
