[HN Gopher] Chuck E. Cheese's 1982 Annual Report For Kids [pdf]
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Chuck E. Cheese's 1982 Annual Report For Kids [pdf]
Author : striking
Score : 89 points
Date : 2023-07-15 19:01 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.showbizpizza.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.showbizpizza.com)
| bilsbie wrote:
| A more innocent and optimistic time for sure.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Does anyone know what the name of that purple character with the
| yellow hair and patch on its belly is? one of the puppets in that
| unfunny hack jeff dunham's collection looks like a direct ripoff
| of that character
| ben1040 wrote:
| Mr. Munch.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| One of my earliest memories is of Showbiz Pizza (when the name
| was changed a few years later after the merger, we continued to
| call it Showbiz because none of us knew it was the knock-off) and
| I had a Billy Bob doll (one of the ones here I'm assuming from
| the 1984-1990 era unless mine actually came from an older cousin
| or my sister who is 8 years older than me
| https://www.showbizpizza.com/sppcollect/dolls/dolls_billy.ht...)
| that I kept in my room alongside some tokens that I stored in my
| jewelry box (because if you are two years old, you keep your
| tokens in a jewelry box).
|
| I was born after the "collapse" of the Chuck E. Cheese business
| and the late 70s/early 80s home video game era as a whole (but
| just in time for the NES to take over the world and reignite the
| industry), so I don't have the same memories of these as places
| to play video games (I don't think I ever really interacted with
| an arcade cabinet until Mortal Kombat in 1992 or 1993, and even
| that was almost certainly after the home versions were out out)
| because we had a Nintendo and that was video games to me, but I
| remember it for skee-ball and the animatronic shows. I loved the
| shows. Watching the history of this stuff and the stuff on
| Showbiz on Last Week Tonight and other channels is wild to me
| that this was something that actually existed in our world in the
| last 35 years.
|
| After our Showbiz/Chuck E. Cheese closed (another one still
| existed but it was further away), the big thing was "Discovery
| Zone" - which tried to do the same thing except it had lots of
| indoor playground equipment. But I always just strapped into the
| shooting or basketball games that would reward those with good
| hand-eye coordination with tickets and stuff. And I went to my
| first Dave & Busters in third grade and then I discovered what a
| Chuck E. Cheese for adults looked like and that my friends, THAT
| was the dream for many many years.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| I got my first bike at a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese in San
| Jose on a Sunday in March 1983. (The location still exists.) The
| animatronic puppets were large, loud, gracelessly mechanical, and
| creepy to little kids. That aside, it was difficult to argue with
| ever sort of arcade game, skeeball, whackamole, and basketball
| game that spat out the all-important tickets to win carnival
| prizes.
| bluedino wrote:
| Growing up during the arcade/video game boom, Showbiz/Chuck E
| Cheese was an amazing place (ours converted over some point I'm
| not sure if they all did or what)
|
| It's kind of weird how in the last ten or so years it devolved
| into a place more famous for fights and shootings between drunken
| parents, than pizza and video games.
| tempest_ wrote:
| Alcohol has better margins than pizza so they probably did not
| want to remove it from the menu despite the obvious problems it
| causes.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The history behind ShowBiz is pretty interesting. A prospective
| licensed of Pizzatime Theatre (the company behind Chuck E
| Cheese) bailed on the license agreement, formed a ShowBiz, and
| eventually merged with Pizzatime.
|
| Details: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShowBiz_Pizza_Place
| itsthecourier wrote:
| Looked like a great idea to teach children about business
| tiahura wrote:
| The Federal Reserve used to publish a whole slew of comics and
| books about money, banking, and the economy. The best part was
| that they were free - including shipping.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I didn't realize the guy that founded Chuck E Cheese was also the
| creator of Pong.
| wglass wrote:
| And Atari!
| danvoell wrote:
| This is awesome. Was there a separate report for adults?
| mathgeek wrote:
| Yes. They were a public company at the time.
| wincy wrote:
| As someone from Missouri it was very jarring that the map of all
| their restaurants is shown on a US map, except for some reason
| the states of Iowa and Missouri are conjoined.
|
| I wonder if this was just a mistake? Or perhaps Mr. Cheese was
| well known for his radical Missouri-Iowa annexation stance in the
| early 80s?
| zoky wrote:
| Wait, has it not always been Missouriowa?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Ever since I was a baby zorg. Did something happen to the
| timeline again?
| rmwaite wrote:
| https://youtu.be/ZoWc6WRHKEE
| bombcar wrote:
| It was probably a mistake, but I like the idea of a radical
| Cheese-driven state annexation; I'm sure that Wisconsin was
| somehow involved.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The They Create Worlds podcast (video game history) did a nice
| episode on the history of Chuck E Cheese a few years back:
| http://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-story-of-chuck-e-c...
| efields wrote:
| The artwork in here is _incredible_.
| echelon wrote:
| I went to Chuck E. Cheese as a young kid, but I vastly preferred
| Leaps and Bounds [1].
|
| Leaps and Bounds had gigantic playgrounds. Tunnels, slides,
| gigantic net treehouses and overhangs. They were gargantuan. You
| could take nerf guns and have hours of physical exercise and fun
| with your friends.
|
| Chuck E. Cheese had arcades, which were outclassed by at-home
| video games. I never understood the appeal. I'd rather have
| played Super Mario RPG or Mario 64. Leaps and Bounds locations
| even had a modest arcade.
|
| When Chuck E Cheese took them over, they ripped out the physical
| playgrounds and replaced it all with arcades. Major downgrade.
|
| I'd much rather go to an 80's themed neon and blacklight arcade.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaps_and_Bounds_(playplace)
| showerst wrote:
| You're probably just a little too young. By the time Mario 64
| and RPG came out in the mid 90s, Chuck E. Cheese was a shadow
| of it's former glory.
| ru552 wrote:
| Mid 80s Chuck e Cheese was peak birthday fun. I would be
| totally spent by the time we made it to the ticket counter.
| celtoid wrote:
| Chuck E. Cheese's chairman was Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari
| and creator of Pong. Woz and Jobs used to work for him and
| offered him a third of Apple for $50k in the 1970s.
|
| "I was so smart, I said no. It's kind of fun to think about that,
| when I'm not crying." -Nolan Bushnell
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Cannot see CEC/SBP without linking John Oliver's excellent
| segment.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lj1ixNIf1dA "Last Squeak Tonight
| Presents: A History of Chuck E. Cheese"
|
| Minor spoiler: Chuck E. Cheese and his friends are pedophiles.
|
| Or as John Oliver puts it,
|
| >> _" When we started writing something about Chuck E. Cheese for
| you, we were thinking 'This will be 5, 6 minutes, tops.' But the
| more we looked into it, the more fascinated we got, and this
| officially got out of hand. So, I'm going to be talking about
| Chuck E. Cheese for... and I'm not kidding about this... the next
| 25 minutes."_
|
| Technically, it was the "alternate" segment to an episode on HOAs
| and posted at lastsqueaktonight.com, which seems to be empty now.
| But in my head, it was the original segment and didn't get
| approved.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Looks like someone just saw the latest Brightsun Films video.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbI3zOm2BkE
| seo-speedwagon wrote:
| Full name is Charles Entertainment Cheese
| eddieroger wrote:
| Hello, brother.
| NotOscarWilde wrote:
| Quickly skimming it, I found no evidence of what the future
| actually held, from Wikipedia [1]:
|
| > In 1981, Pizza Time Theatre went public; they lost $15 million
| in 1983. By early 1984, Bushnell's debts were insurmountable,
| resulting in the filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy for Pizza Time
| Theatre Inc. on March 28, 1984.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_E._Cheese
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Rapid expansion seemed to serve the owners goals (from Nolan
| Bushnell's Wikipedia page. He also started Atari.)
|
| > It had been created by Bushnell, originally as a place where
| kids could go and eat pizza and play video games, which would
| therefore function as a distribution channel for Atari games.
| chris_wot wrote:
| I rather like that in Australia they couldn't call it Chuck E.
| Cheese because that meant vomiting.
| [deleted]
| Uehreka wrote:
| I guess that explains why their sports arena "The
| Chunderdome" didn't take off either.
| qingcharles wrote:
| My name is Charles. I moved to the USA and everyone tries to
| call me "Chuck", which to my British psyche is horrible for
| the same linguistic reason.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| Look on the bright side: At least your name isn't
| 'Richard'.
| kristopolous wrote:
| As an aside, people often misattribute where that word
| comes from. It's from dicker - squandering time by
| squabbling over petty things
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dicker
|
| It's certainly not polite but people claiming it's lewd
| have about as much ground to stand on as they do with the
| word "pussycat"
| akiselev wrote:
| Hey man, don't be a Dick.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I am currently wearing a "don't be a Richard" shirt which
| is one of my home improvement shirts. 2 different
| checkout folks at 2 different hardware stores were
| calling over coworkers because they both apparently had
| managers off today named Richard who were in fact
| "Richards".
| bombcar wrote:
| The doubling of restaurants in 1982 is a pretty good indicator
| that it was going to explode. That kind of growth is often
| unsustainable.
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(page generated 2023-07-15 23:00 UTC)