Upsetting Day: What Became of Charles Cheese?

Look. I’m lucky enough to get to write a column here twice a month. That’s twenty-four chances a year to connect with another human being on this rock-afire ball of mud, and those opportunities have become precious to me - so something has been pricking at my conscience. Last month, as you may know, I had need of some startling and ripped-from-the-headlines butt surgery.

As such, I was a little salty, and not just because of the medical-grade salt that guy rubbed in my butt wound before I found out he wasn’t a doctor. So I decided to rag on a group of people who are pretty easy to rag on…and I did it magnificently. It was an hilarious dunk-fest of historical import.

But, bagging on a Chuck E. Cheese fansite is arguably punching down for me. Despite my repeated admonitions not to cyberbully the kind proprietors of Showbizpizza.com, the comedy force still cries out for balance. This week, I feel it’s only right to turn the comedy telescope around and punch in the other direction. Enough chucking around - time to autopsy the bloodless corpse of what capitalism has done to a once-proud race of Henson Company rejects and Wiggles wannabes. Chuck E. Cheese is dead…long live Chuckecheese.com, Where A Kid Can Be A Kid Every Game Is Only One Point.

On the last episode of “Michael’s passing interest in Chuck E. Cheese lore,” I mentioned how the horde of interchangeable and faceless corporate vultures currently managing the brand got boned by the COVID pandemic shortly after they inked a deal to have Jarett Reddick of Bowling For Soup voice “new Chuck.” That’s the band that did that song 1985, the video for which looked like this:

Fun fact: he’s looking at Stacy’s Mom in those binoculars. This has all happened before, and this will all happen again. Point is, I also implied that the brand died after that, which it turns out was only wishful thinking on my part. In reality, Jarett is still the voice behind a revamped, rock-and-roll, as-relevant-as-1985 version of Chuck E. still haunting the skeletal remains of your local strip mall. Yes, fuck me, there are still Chuck E. Cheeses. But are there?

Where once the chain was the anchor-point of an evolving arms race striving to build off-brand characters out of carpet and wire and make them shake for the childrens’ enjoyment, now there’s only a rotating crew of tweens paid minimum wage to put on the Chuck E. costume and lead basic happy birthday dances while Jarett’s VO plays on a tape. Here’s a sample birthday show from this year, which they have the giant rat balls to call an “extravaganza.” It features exactly the amount of effort someone making fifteen dollars an hour should be expected to evince, and would depress the hell out of any but the most insensible children.

In stark contrast, here’s a live Chuck E. birthday show from 2009, the end of the golden era.

Hm, that was kind of basically the same. Like, I still hate corporations, but that also sucked quite hard. Also, the new Cheeses have interactive dance floors, ticket-blaster tornado chambers, and indoor trampoline parks, so is there really a problem here? I mean, nothing says fun like a trampoline pass you can pre-buy as a per-child add-on.

There’s even a big giant screen in every store, since kids don’t get enough screentime when they’re cramming in their daily allotment of soda and cheesy cardboard! This all sounds like amazing, amazing stuff.

Yet, even scrolling down to the top YouTube comments on that ad from 2024, you’ll find Showbizpizza-types pining for the days of Chuck E Cheese’s 2013 commercials, when Jarett really got to show off his pipes and blow the company’s budget on very 2013 CG.

And admittedly, that commercial is much more artistically ambitious.

I think that’s what it comes down to, this difference between Showbizpizza.com’s vision of Chuck E. Cheese and the current corporate incarnation that I’m pretending matters for some reason…artistic drive.

Even if it was always mediocre - and it was - the underground marketplace of weird dudes piping their homebrew kidz bopz out of the flapping mouths of gorilla-shaped carseats sat behind drum kits was truly FOR THE CHILDREN. No one started hammering pipes together, cutting yards of fur, and writing pizza-themed parody lyrics to Cars songs purely for the money. That level of dedication takes a pure love of shitty, low-grade childrens’ entertainment. Monetization comes later. First comes the music.

And man, if you liked “Roll the Pizza Dough” sung to the tune of “Let the Good Times Roll” in a broad Italian accent, wait until you hear “Bake on Me,” “You Spin Me Round (Like a Pizza-Shaped Record),” and “Fuck Tha Polizza.”

Sadly, the Chuck E. of 2024 is designed purely for the comfort of shareholders who want to see the brand Weekend at Bernies-ed responsibly, and if some kids get delightfully trampolined as part of that process, great. No one’s disputing that, unless there’s an injury suit. Accordingly, their commercial comes across as a bunch of stock footage cut together, instead of a team of kids fresh from the Art Institute crunching for six weeks to produce a cool CG Chuck and try to get hired by Pixar thereby. I mean, compare what you’ve seen of soulless modern Chuck with the down-home charm of the last remaining original Chuck E. Cheese band, still operating in Los Angeles.

See what I’m saying? They both suck! Current Chuck E. Cheese is depressingly hollow and the original animatronic band was also not good! But one of those experiences sucks in the exact same way every commercialized product sucks, while the other is a testament to mediocre weirdos trying their best, and we as Americans owe it to the world to support the latter. This country was founded by mediocre weirdos trying their best, and look how far it’s taken us! Truly, capitalism ruins everything, even stuff that sucked to begin with. For proof of this art/money dichotomy, look no further than the new Chuck E. Cheese site’s mission statement.

As you might recall, Showbizpizza.com, temple to all that was once Chuck, also has a lengthy mission statement, in which the author and site admin talks about growing up poor and being obsessed with Chuck E. Cheese and all of its associated pizza-and-animatronics mall chains. He calls them “treasured experiences.” Meanwhile, CEC Entertainment, Chuck’s current custodians, take the same page-space to declare themselves “the nationally recognized leader in family entertainment and dining.” Bullshit! That’s Pikachu Café, the restaurant chain I dreamed of, and we all know it. But also, you’re missing the point, along with whatever kernel of joy once seeded this monetize-able thing in the first place.

Perhaps nothing sums up the current-day state of Chuck E. Cheese better than the fact that from their front page, you’re only three clicks away from ordering individual slices of cake and bottled water delivered to you by a pixelated Buddy “Cake Boss” Valastro for a Chuck E. Cheese-approved Romantic Night In.

Handily, the next page offers the Chuck E. Cheese Newly-Divorced “Single Dude” Pizza-and-Cake Subscription Package for a small additional fee - your self-respect. In all, the total sanitisation of the Chuck E. Cheese experience has stolen many things from us, especially those of us who latched onto the brand at the right age by pure chance and made it their weird thing. Because sure, it may have always been a cash grab, but it used to be a cash grab that produced an infinite gallery of the finest cursed photos ever to weigh down the soggier parts of the internet…

…while nowadays, it exclusively spawns glossy headshots carefully approved by corporate, HR, and the entire CEC marketing team.

It’s a slow kind of dying - the death of difference, of imperfection and the odd. It’s an almost abstract loss, a sadness that rhymes with the life I once imagined I’d capture “when I grow up.” Well, I’m all grown up now, and dressing as Dr. Evil for the yearly Halloween Party being held in Party Room B from 2 - 4 pm (unpaid).

Perhaps the only redeeming value of the new system is that they host a bunch of charitable outreach efforts and have Sensory Sensitive Sundays for autistic and neurodivergent kids.

I know, stupid. Where the hell am I supposed to go to get sensory overwhelm now? Or even more importantly, my grainy pics of Chuck overlooking a random ditch in Oklahoma like he’s trying to remember where he buried Grimace’s body?

If you’ve learned nothing else from me on this epic two-part journey, at least try and absorb that simple fact: that capitalism ruins everything, but also makes some things better by standardizing them and raising the floor for those with less access, but ultimately it’s not really possible to parse how much of each of those processes happens directly because of capitalism or in spite of it, so it’s good that people can make websites about how they love old products, because that’s freedom. GET IT? IT’S NOT THAT HARD MAGAT.

See you again in two weeks, dear reader! And assuming my butt continues to heal apace, you can safely expect my next column to return to more familiar territory, like Word Chewing and chronicling which viewing of The Serbian Film messes me up in what ways.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Joseph Searles, who is not legally liable for carrot-based injuries obtained in his knock-off franchise, Chester F. Vegetable's Child Fun Robot Arena.

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