Remembering the Chuck E. Cheese and ShowBiz Pizza Robot Wars of the 1980s

Pizza has always been an intensely competitive industry: family-run pizza places compete against chains, while local chefs battle each other, trying to out-cook their competitors, and undercut each other’s prices. All across America in the 1980s, one of the greatest pizza wars in history took place, not between feuding chefs, but between a video game developer, an inventor, and a hotel chain manager. Also embroiled in the conflict were a dog, a cat, a pack of wolves, a handful of bears, and the world’s most famous animatronic rat: Chuck E. Cheese. 

A Piece of the Pie

The battle hinged not on pizza, but on robotics. The first Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre opened in San Jose, California, in 1977. In addition to pizza and arcade-style video games, it featured a live show starring a cast of animatronic performers, led by their namesake Chuck, a robotic “New Joisey Rat” with an attitude, and who sometimes sported a cigar.

The combination restaurant and entertainment center was the pet project of Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari and inventor of Pong. At the time, Bushnell was selling Atari consoles to arcades: though he made between $1500 to $2000 for each console sold, arcades were reaping in profits in the tens of thousands. Bushnell started thinking of ways to get into the arcade game, and came up with the idea for the Pizza Time Theatre.

“The reason for doing the animals, believe it or not,” he explained, in a 2013 interview with The Atlantic, “was not for the kids. It was meant to be a head fake for the parents.” Predicting parents would be reluctant to bring their children to an arcade, Bushnell devised a novel—and importantly, free—form of entertainment to draw families to his restaurant: animatronic performers.

In addition to the eponymous rat, the act consisted of multiple characters, including Jasper T. Jowls (a hound dog); Crusty (a cat); Madame Oink (a pig); the Warblettes (three magpies); Pasqually (a pizza chef, and the only “human” cast member); and Mr. Munch (a purple monster described as a “purple pizza eater”). The robots hung in giant picture frames on the walls of the first Pizza Time Theatre, performing pop songs and cracking surprisingly risqué jokes. According to Bushnell, “If you listened to the dialogue, it was fun, edgy stuff, kinda like Toy Story, written as much for the parents as the kids.”

Bushnell had his robots, but he needed investors. For the first year of its operation, the restaurant was actually a division of Atari Inc., but in June 1978, Bushnell purchased all the assets and rights from Atari for $500,000 and formed Pizza Time Theatre as a private corporation, with himself initially acting as president and chairman. He eventually teamed up with Bob Brock, chairman of the Brock Hotel Corporation, one of the largest franchisees of Holiday Inns. Brock promised Bushnell financial support, and Bushnell, in return, promised Brock the best animatronic technology in the world.

Bushnell told Brock that the Chuck E. Cheese “Pizza Time Players” (as the robot group was originally called) were not only the best—they were the only animatronic characters outside of the Disney parks. In fact, Bushnell claimed in a 1979 interview that Pizza Time Theatres were really “Disneyland carried to American families at the local level.”

And that’s precisely when things started to fall apart.

In It for the Dough

In 1979, Brock met a young inventor named Aaron Fechter. At 28, Fechter had a string of unsuccessful inventions under his belt, including a fuel-efficient car that looked like a golf cart, and a pool-cleaning machine that he’d attempted to sell door to door. Fechter had also created and lost the rights to Whac-A-Mole before diving into animatronics. 

When Brock met him, Fechter had just finished building an animatronic musical act called “The Wolf-Pack Five.” Brock instantly realized Fechter’s animatronics were more advanced than Bushnell’s. Their movements were more subtle, their facial expressions changed, their lupine drummer could really play the drums. Brock cancelled his deal with Bushnell and teamed up with Fechter’s company, Creative Engineering, to start the ShowBiz Pizza franchise.

This “betrayal” launched the war between ShowBiz and Chuck E. Cheese: a war which, incidentally, Fechter and Bushnell would both end up losing.

The first ShowBiz Pizza location opened in Kansas City in 1980—three years and 1800 miles away from the first Chuck E. Cheese location—offering a suspiciously similar combination of pizza, video games, and performing robots. Instead of Chuck E. Cheese and his “Pizza Time Players,” the ShowBiz show featured the Rock-afire Explosion, an animatronic band which included a wise-cracking polar bear, an alcoholic bird, a wolf ventriloquist, and “Billy Bob Brockali,” a good-natured “country bear” named for ShowBiz founder, Bob Brock.

It’s unclear why Brock didn’t alter the restaurant concept more to differentiate it from its progenitor; he could have easily swapped out pizza for any number of casual dining options (why not ShowBiz Burgers?). Maybe he was too far along in his plans to change course, or perhaps he shared Bushnell’s view that pizza just made the most sense “in terms of build schedule.” As Bushnell noted in his Atlantic interview, pizza has “very few components and not too many ways to screw it up. If the dough is good, the cheese is good, and the sauce is good, the pizza is good. I didn’t have any preconceived idea that I knew how to run a restaurant, but I knew simple was better.”

Major Meltdowns

There were, of course, subtle differences between the two restaurants. Among customers, the general consensus was that ShowBiz had better animatronics, and a more “grown-up” act, while Chuck E. Cheese had slightly superior pizza.

One intrepid reporter for San Francisco’s Evening magazine actually reviewed two local ShowBiz and Chuck E. Cheese locations in 1983. After touring each restaurant, he concluded that ShowBiz, with its edgy rock-and-roll bears, seemed geared towards an older audience, while Chuck E. Cheese was more kid-friendly. In terms of food, Chuck E. Cheese was the clear winner: ShowBiz’s pizza was cheaper but “bland,” whereas Chuck E. Cheese delivered tasty pizza, with a thin, matzo-like crust. Though “matzo-like” isn’t traditionally a quality associated with great pizza, the reporter concluded that Chuck E. Cheese pizza was better.

In 1980, with the ShowBiz franchise looming large on the horizon, Bushnell turned to Warner Communications for aid. As he’d recently sold both Chuck E. Cheese and Atari to Warner, he was hoping the company would be interested in helping him turn the place into a franchise. Warner, however, had no interest in funding a weird restaurant full of singing robots. Bushnell continued to run the business himself until other franchisers gradually trickled in. Doubly spurned and angered by the whole ordeal, he began plotting his revenge. His feelings towards Brock could not have been clearer—or more public. In 1982, Bushnell bluntly told Fortune magazine, “Bob Brock is a very greedy guy.” [PDF]

Rock-afire inventor Aaron Fechter, meanwhile, was in heaven. For years, he’d been struggling to get his inventions off the ground, and now, with a 20 percent share in the ShowBiz franchise (Brock held the other 80 percent), he finally had the financial backing and creative freedom he’d dreamed of.

His Rock-afire performances became increasingly complex. He handed the financial management of Creative Engineering over to his father, and focused full time on devising Rock-afire acts, overseeing everything from programming to choreography, and even providing voices for several Rock-afire characters.

The Rock-afire Explosion began churning out covers of hit ‘60s and ‘70s pop songs (legend has it that when Michael Jackson heard the Rock-afire’s Beatles medley, he decided on the spot to purchase the entire Beatles catalogue), as well as original numbers. Programming the choreography was a laborious process. Each eye roll, head bob, and wave of the hand had to be programmed individually, a process that took hours.

For Fechter, the goal was to turn animatronics into a fully realized art form. He dreamed of becoming the next Walt Disney, and even went as far as to call his animatronic characters “the greatest entertainment medium to come out of the 1980s.” In an early ‘80s interview with Fortune magazine, Fechter explained, “Brock’s benefiting financially from the deal—he’s making money—but I’m going to change the world.” But Fechter’s days of unrestrained invention wouldn’t last for long.

Another One Bites the Crust

Over at Chuck E. Cheese, Bushnell was incensed by Brock’s betrayal, and launched a lawsuit against ShowBiz Pizza. It was the first shot fired in a lengthy battle. Brock shot back with a countersuit, citing misrepresentation. After lengthy negotiations, ShowBiz settled in 1982, and agreed to pay an estimated $50 million to Chuck E. Cheese for the next 14 years.

As ShowBiz and Chuck E. Cheese were essentially glorified arcades, the crash had a serious impact on both businesses. Though both were stretched thin by the crash, Chuck E. Cheese was hit harder. Bushnell had racked up somewhere in the realm of $50 million in debt by using Chuck E. Cheese money to fund other start-up ventures, and was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1984. In a staggering move, Bushnell was pushed out and ShowBiz snapped up the failing franchise. It continued to operate both Chuck E. Cheese and ShowBiz locations independently (by that point, it’s likely Chuck E. Cheese was simply too popular a character to kill off) and renamed the company Showbiz Pizza Time.

Brock and Fechter were victorious. But once again, victory was short-lived, only this time for Fechter. ShowBiz was still losing money, and management decided the increasingly elaborate and expensive Rock-afire Explosion acts were in part to blame.

They began phasing Fechter out, using voice impersonators to play his characters. Fechter, growing increasingly disillusioned with ShowBiz, began turning to other projects: In addition to building a series of new animatronics and high-tech Rock-afire toys, he started work on the “Anti-Gravity Machine,” a predecessor to email, which could send messages over telephone lines. Finally, in 1990, Fechter’s company, Creative Engineering, was ousted from ShowBiz completely.

Like Bushnell, Fechter had lost the war. But Fechter didn’t leave empty-handed: He took the Rock-afire Explosion with him, refusing to sell ShowBiz the character rights.

Just a Slice of History

Convinced the Rock-afire characters had a future independent of ShowBiz—possibly in movies or TV—Fechter decided to keep working on the robots. Without the rights to the Rock-afire Explosion, ShowBiz was forced to convert the remaining Rock-afire robots into Chuck E. Cheese characters, replacing their exteriors, but leaving the original machinery intact [PDF]. The creepy process, called “concept unification,” can be seen here.

In the years since the robot pizza wars rocked America, Chuck E. Cheese has continued to soldier on. In 1998, the company once known as Showbiz Pizza was rebranded simply as CEC Entertainment Inc.; in 2014, it was sold to Apollo Global Management (which owned Claire’s jewelry stores) for $950 million. Then, amid financial troubles brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the restaurant chain filed for bankruptcy again in 2020. (But they later emerged from it.) Though much has changed over the years—Chuck, for instance, has been turned from a rat into a “hipper” CGI-rendered mouse—Chuck E. Cheese remains one of the hottest party spots for the under-10 crowd.

Bushnell, meanwhile, has continued to launch startups and develop video games since losing Chuck E. Cheese in 1984. As of 2013, his projects included a series of “anti-aging” games, as well as BrainRush, a software company that turns educational subjects into video games.

Fechter, too, moved on to other inventions. Unfortunately, one project—an alternative fuel called Carbohydrillium—experienced some major setbacks. In 2013, a high-pressure bottle of Fechter’s Carbohydrillium exploded, nearly demolishing the Creative Engineering warehouse. (He later attributed the blast to “pressure and rust.”) Fortunately, Fechter’s remaining Rock-afire Explosion robots were largely unharmed by the blast.

In fact, after years of obscurity, the robots made something of a comeback in 2008, when ShowBiz super-fan Chris Thrash began filming new Rock-afire productions and uploading them to YouTube. With Fechter’s approval (and occasional assistance), Thrash programmed the Rock-afire Explosion to perform contemporary pop songs (including Usher’s “Love in the Club” and Nine Inch Nails’ “100,000,000”). Furthermore, in 2015, a documentary on the Rock-afire Explosion was released on YouTube, and as of 2023, has over a million views.

In the end, though Fechter and Bushnell have moved on to new endeavors, the pizza wars—and the ultimate loss of their companies—left a bad taste in their mouths. When Bushnell was recently asked about his battle with ShowBiz, he responded, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

He then proceeded to launch into the full story of his battle with Brock and Fechter.

A version of this article originally ran in 2015 and has been updated for 2023.