I used to work in an arcade. People would come in and ask "how to you put up with all these kids all day every day?" I would answer "Are you kidding? The kids are great, it's the adults that make this job stressful."
Kids go to arcades to have fun, so all you ever have to do to fix a problem is to gently redirect kids back towards the fun. The adults have no d**n clue why they are there, and are angry about it, possibly from alcohol.
I am a retired children's librarian and I totally agree. I loved working with the kids. They were fun to be with. It was the parents who caused all the problems.
This is something I discussed with my mom about becoming a bus driver. I would prefer being a school bus driver than a public bus driver, because I can understand kids. Adults are worse. And then she mentioned that I had to deal with parents, and they are the worst. Which says a lot considering she is one.
I was Chuck E Cheese in high school. I danced in front of the mechanical band. I always picked Walkin' on Sunshine or What I like About You for the songs. I liked Jasper the Dog's costume better, more comfortable. Everything I've gotten in my life since then has been because I include it on my resume. One time one of the "cooks" dropped a bag of weed out in the restaurant and I picked it up with my big floppy Chuck E. gloves. Then a mom stopped me for a pic with their kid, a polaroid. They gave it me. I still have the pic of chuck e cheese holding a bag of weed. A friend I met as an adult also worked at a different Chuck E Cheese where an old man died up in the plastic tube playground. Amazing!!!
@@luvmibrattTotally [rather, marginally] irrelevant note. Danger Man "Drake, John Drake" was the intro line of a British TV series that Ian Fleming helped develop. Released two years before Dr Nose, 'Bond, James Bond." Drake was in secret service for the UN. "Danger Man" was "Secret Agent" in the US
Right ?! I'm in Canada and wasn't going to watch it but did as I knew it would be really good. I've watched it twice as it's one of THE funniest episodes imo apart from the dark stuff of course. LOVE ME SOME JOHN because he reports on things no one else will as he's not held back by sponsors; People can go ahead and change the channel if they don't like what he's saying, he doesn't give two fks. 😅❤
HOAs being evil is old news at this point. I'm just surprised that he didn't find a way of working in some rat erotica when the founder was talking about the weird stuff that folks do in the costumes.
While I worked there as teen in the '80's for a couple o' months, we actually had a bomb threat called in (but at least I only had to wear the suit once - that was more than enough) - it was also wicked easy to steal pizzas from the place - ah, memories 😂
@@SmallSpoonBrigade this Chuck E Cheese video is old news too. Its a web exclusive they deleted and re-uploaded instead of making new content to promote the new season, its lazy and tbh they should be better than that.
Rereleasing a hilarious video (that I do not recall them posting before) before starting the new season is lazy? The new season will promote itself... it's fucking John Oliver, mate; HE NEEDS NO PROMOTION! Cheers.@@kultur-vultur
@@RamblinBob I don’t disagree, but at the same time it feels like that’s just inviting disaster to happen because you know some psychopath is going to try to re-create the games. Which if I recall correctly is the exact reason Scott gave for not wanting to open a franchise, despite being approached about the idea before.
@@RamblinBob Zoomers aren't kids though they're teens and in their early twenties. Adults and teens actually can't go to Chucky cheese alone. You have to have a child with you.
Robots playing instruments on a stage could only be confused with a Video Game on a monitor by someone who has no life outside of the basement VR headset.
This is my late father's legacy. David Thomas, you can look him up. He worked for Aaron Fechter at CEI and did a lot of the design and technical work for the Rockafire Explosion, then was paid after the acquisition and rebranding to do the retrofit of the animatronics at some of the stores. I grew up with the empty skins of these characters strewn across the back bedroom of my house, and often saw their naked metal skeletons when I went with my dad to his workshop. Probably why FNAF has never been scary at all to me, I already lived that nightmare as a kid.
Dude. You know, then. They missed the real weird side story that is mad scientist / Florida man Aaron Fechter. Whoever commented that ChuckECheez is a little slice of Florida is spot-on. Google “Fechter Orlando” for funzies. Rockafire wasn’t his only explosion. 💥
I'm somewhat of a FNAF fan who also likes CEC, showbiz pizza and anything related and they somewhat didn't scare me as much but it's actually sad to see pieces of history get destroyed all in the name of a dancefloor/tv screen
I had no idea what "The Hbomberguy Effect" was, so I Googled it. Ended up going down a weird (but very informative & entertaining!) rabbit hole where I watched hbomberguy's almost 4-hour video on "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" (ruclips.net/video/yDp3cB5fHXQ/видео.html)! :-O :-D
Reminds me of an old stand-up joke, "My fiancee and I asked married friends of ours what the best birth control was. They told us, 'Try spending an hour inside a Chuck E. Cheese's. After that, if you still want to have kids, no birth control is gonna stop you!'"
The last time I went to Chuck E Cheese was when I was 22 and a friend from Norway wanted to have and "American birthday party" when she turned 34. At one point, one of the people we went with who was, I'm gonna say, 45 at the time, and brought his kid, grabbed mee by the sleeve and said _"ALWAYS_ use condoms!"
John Oliver didnt need to make this, yet him an his team still produced this extra content. To me it not only shows the commitment to journalism he has, but just how much him and his team enjoy exploring rabbit holes.
One of my son's friend's mom was a manager at the Chuck. She informed us not only was this all true, it was actually even worse. She refused to elaborate.
I worked at a Chuck E Cheese for less than a week, and they made us share the Chuck E. costume and only sprayed it down with Fabreeze between uses. So bashing that Chuck E. head must have been cathartic xD
I’ve been waiting for this to get uploaded to RUclips for months, by far one of the best web exclusives John and the writing team have ever come up with!
I worked at Chuck E. Cheese and you would be shocked how many drunk parents would get into fights all the time. This is no joke. I was 16 at the time and had to break up at least 7 fights in 2 years (the cops were called at least 5 out of the 7 times). To put that in perspective I worked at Arby's for 6 years and did not have to break up a single fight the whole time I worked there. Most fights had to do with kids who were being bullied (supposedly) by other kids so the parent/parents would go talk to the other parent/parents and an argument would ensue (90% of the time both parties were drunk). Thankfully they got rid of alcohol which helped the situation immensely.
How about we talk about something you are probably sick of, it's about when Austrians and Germans colluded in the most disgusting act of the 20th century which had world wide implications. When the West Germans and Austrians rigged a game of Football so they could both go ahead in the world cup ousting the much better African team.
@@timothysmith6647 fooled me. I thought you meant starting WWI gotta adjust my sense of proportion to wade in the brave(?) new(?) world(?) of perpetually infinite irony
I must have asked myself "what the fuck am I watching?!" at least 25 times. Thank you for this amazing piece of hard-hitting investigative journalism😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I recently had my kid’s 10th birthday party at Chuck e Cheese. It’s where he wanted to go. I was expecting a run down craphole with terrible food. The place was nice and clean. There were plenty of games for the kids to play, the pizza was surprisingly good and the service was great. The host of my kid’s party really went above and beyond. I felt I got way more than my money’s worth.
@@DigitalWolverineit definitely is (EDIT: was uploaded April 8, 2023). guessing the original was taken down for some reason, as I can't find record of it anywhere. I'm not crazy; I watched this on yt when they originally uploaded it, like a year ago, maybe?
@DigitalWolverine Yeah, it was put up as a replacement story for younger people to watch the same night as a story about HOAs or something, since most Millenials and Zoomers won't ever own the type of properties that would cause them to have to deal with them. It was definitely still online as of like a month or two ago, though, because I posted it on someone's timeline who hadn't seen it.
I used to work at a Chuck E Cheese as a teenager, and there were indeed lots of fights. But the real reason for this is because of the frequent interactions between divorcees (and their new partners) at their child’s birthday. Often there were two “sides” of the family, which is why fights turned into full-on royal rumbles.
John Oliver is like that one uncle at Thanksgiving who always has something very interesting to say about topics that most people would ordinarly not think about too often.
As a theater maker for kids (and a former kid who sought out the abandoned areas of Las Vegas hotels while there for dance competitions), I can attest to the fact that kids crave darkness contained within safe spaces. Youse totally right, John
Children are curious about the unknown. It's a natural instinct to want to explore, but children don't want to discover monsters. Don't be a monster. Don't be a pedophile. Children DO NOT crave darkness. Seek help if you are confused about that. Seek help now, or be in prison soon.
@@WiseAcres-iz1mu FNAF was completely based on that macabre world. The kids didn't want that. But when you have run-down animatronics on run-down figures you get something macabre. The disturbing distortion is the person who thinks the kids wanted it that way. No. The kids were told this was something they would enjoy. They were expected to like it. But it was frightening for some. FNAF gave kids the ability to deal with the fear in a game they could turn off.
I'm from and live in South Africa. I've never been to the US. Inexplicably, I'm sitting through this half hour piece on the history of a weird American franchise I've never been to and likely never will.
It’s better that way. I’m watching this and trying in vain not to estimate how much time I spent inside these at parties as a kid. Nostalgia but nightmare version. Don’t come here it’s bad
Nah he set up a whole website to show this😂 😅 I remember that episode because I literally didn’t believe it was a real link with a whole different episode 😂but he’s a mad lad so we definitely got a 2 for 1 that week
I knew I couldn't have been the only one who noticed, I checked the Rock afire explosion video and there are comments from nine months ago about the same video
This video documentary? Great. But as a 29 year old late-stage millenial man with no hope of home owning in sight, you made me cry 30 seconds in. Thanks John.
I mean, I came out of the hood of Chicago and had to work my ass off and get through grad school and law school and even I am struggling to find a house that isn't in some rural hell hole of a red state. I feel this.
This actually answered a burning question from my childhood. I never understood why my beloved Showbiz Pizza turned into a Chuck E Cheez. Now I finally understand.
Same here. Showbiz Pizza was awesome. My parents probably still have some of the tokens. It is a Chuck E. Cheese 🧀 now that is still surprisingly busy.
The “In this Club” segment honestly made me understand the appeal of these kinds of things…like if they updated the style and music then these could be a hit with adults…it’s kind of magical.
Ya I think Dave and busters is the adult equivalent besides just going to a casino lmao altho all arcades are pretty much made for adult to take children too - a lot of the games are for adults as well, there’s a few adult arcades kinda everywhere in the United States mostly for date nights. I know that like AMC movie theaters sometimes work in conjunction with Arcades in major cities (depends on the city size/amc size but there’s options) but it makes for fun dates go to the movies go to a lil arcade and sometimes even indoor bowling/indoor mini golf - some places have a lot of large areas or multiple floors so there’s different thing in different cities or buildings. (The ones I’m specifically thinking of are in Chicago but ik in New York there’s other ones too) Of course some other countries have specifically found and made adult arcades (Japan for example has a ton of arcades and various games all of which are for teens to adults- of course it’s more of the major city districts that will have game options/nightlife/leisure activities) Bonus is you usually can get drinks outside of the arcades take a 2 second-2 minute walk and get to an arcade and have some fun, get some prizes etc (more modern ones usually have a plastic looking credit card which you put money on and can swipe for games etc - instead of needing to transfer cash to coins you just keep the card and any balances and can take multiple trips to an arcade without needing to bring like a bag of arcade coins or loosing tickets etc.) some arcades allow for drinks inside but usually it’s not done because of state laws etc or property managers wanting to avoid spills onto the electronics)
1. Pretty sure we didn't have these in Canada. 2. The Simpsons did a good parody of it. 3. I think the concept has the possibility of actually scaring children.
"I've been talking about Chucky Cheese for longer than anyone thought possible" Allow me to introduce you to my Autistic kiddo. It's been 3 months of Chucky Cheese talk and random requests to go to Chucky Cheese or anywhere with animatronics. He even made protest signs to demand they return the animatronics.
DUDE, my first legal (not under the table) job was at Chuck E's in Chico, CA when I was 15 1/2 in the summer of '82. I had to dress up like Jasper and Chuck and get tackled by tiny, snotty children while their moms sucked down box wine and it was HELL. I finally got fired and was that ever a relief
I worked in a highly sensitive facility and sat behind a navy intelligence associate who I befriended. As you get to know people I asked about his past. Apparently he dressed as the Rat in the restaurant. I decided to distance myself from him once I learned that after retirement; he would go back to being the rat.
hahaha i used to live in Chico... i worked at a restaurant called The HAtchcover on Esplanade.. Man i miss that college party town.. I miss floating down the sacramento river in a tire tube attatched to a keg and getting out at wash out,and faling over on the beach lol .. going up to Paradise.. this was back in the 90's... I want to move back one day..
Bro... same... how many times did you get punched in the nuts by those little bastards??? I HATED that damned suit. I worked at Showbiz in 86, but it's the same thing. The only thing that kept me going was free pizza, free video games, and being able to sneak the occasional beer. 😂 When they showed that lady smashing the Chuck E Cheese head on the side walk, I was like, YES!!! SMASH IT! DO IT FOR ALL OF US!!! 😂😂😂😂😂 (Edit: just noticed you're probably a woman... still, the suit sucked a$$ 😅🤣 )
While I was working there, the management ended up removing Chuck E's tail because the kids kept trying to rip it off. Those little bastards were unreal!
We made a friend have her 18th b-day at chuck e cheese. The staff really liked us because we didn't touch the alcohol (we were all college students but I think most of us have more dignity than to get day drunk as chuck e cheese), weren't overstimulated little kids, and we weren't stressed out adults trying to make sure are the little kids were in line.
Seeing the instructions on how to refit the animatronics, I now understand where Five Nights at Freddy’s really got its inspiration from. But adults fighting at Chuck E Cheese in real life is far scarier than any of the games.
As an autistic person who grew up during the peak of five nights at Freddy's hearing the statement Gen. Z is not interested in animatronics has to be the funniest part of this episode
but not entirely untrue! I'm almost 30 and (as a kid) I always thought they were cheap and boring, but since FNAF came out, there's definitely been a nostalgic love for those washboard playing robots!
As a member of gen Z from Canada, I didn’t learn if the existence of Chuck E Cheese until some time after FNAF came out. I remember hearing that FNAF was the sole reason for eliminating the anamatronics, with the bit about kids not being interested as a cheap excuse.
Clowns make good characters for horror movies like IT, but millennials don't like clowns. 30 year olds aren't out there hiring clowns for their birthday parties.
Okay but the "Are you not entertained?" as upfront as the question is, made me laugh considering we're discussing the Gladiator Breads and Circus next to the ball pit
7:38 -- It reminds me of Mitch Hedberg's joke about Pringles' original intention being to make tennis balls, but on the day the rubber was supposed to arrive, they just got a truckload of potatoes. "Pringles is a laidback company; they just said, 'Fuck it, cut 'em up!'" 😂
I practically grew up at Chuck E. Cheese. My father worked for the company at a fairly high level back in the mid-to-late 80’s, so we would go there… a lot. We didn’t go there on just occasions for birthdays. No no, we went there just for the fun of it. At least that’s what my 5 year old self thought. In retrospect it was probably because we got to eat free and got free tokens, or at least a discount or something. It was always dark in Chuck E. Cheese back then. Not like modern Chuck E. Cheese’s where it’s flooded with natural light. No, back in the 80’s it was more like a dive bar or that strip club on the crappy side of town. You basically were in a cramped place with black carpet, long picnic-style tables covered with black pleather table cloths. The carpets weren’t even that stereotypical black carpet with the stars and comets on them that glowed under a black light. It was just like black/grey mud carpet throughout. You couldn’t actually tell what color anything was because it was so dark. Everything was all cast in a dim, orange glow from the ceiling lights. They usually had very dim yellow or warm lightbulbs. many of the lights hung from the ceiling by chains, and had these red stained glass fixtures around them, making the already dim bulbs even less effective. Clearly they were trying to go for that intimate Italian restaurant feel, but it never came across. To top it all off, it always smelled dingy, and like a little bit like grandma and grandpa’s house… so like cigarettes. But that made me feel comfortable because I loved by grandparents. Going to Chuck E. Cheese was sort of like going to grandma and grandpa’s house. It activated the same areas of delight in my little brain. These places were always cramped too. Right when you entered, it wasn’t like today where you’re in a giant room. No, you walked down a narrow hallway that was maybe 20-30 feet long and it opened into the seating and eating area. There wasn’t exactly a ton of room to run around. When you saw Chuck E. Cheese walking around, you had to kind of squeeze in to get to him between the tables and the poorly laid out corridors. The only place you could run around was the arcade section. It was usually laid out in like a big room. Most cabinets were just along the walls, with a handful in the middle of the room. The light was a little better because sometimes they used fluorescent lighting in the arcade and video game areas. And also there would be a door to the outside that would open and flood the place with daylight momentarily. I’m not sure who opened those doors. Probably employees. If I was about 5 years older I probably would have hated it every time the door opened. Also, maybe it was after the acquisition, but they all had these wall art things that were like hand and arms playing random instruments like cymbals and banjos and such. They’d kind of randomly start playing. It honestly felt like some haunted horror art from hell to my 5 year old self. The dark, dingy light didn’t help. And the people in the costumes, they never spoke. Except when they did. They weren’t supposed to talk, my mother always told me. But they did sometimes. When they did, it was just a disembodied, muffled voice. Oh, it was unsettling to a small child. 15:30 ish What you’re missing when you play these clips is the piss poor audio quality that came from these animatronics. Part of the nightmare was the sound they made you know. Those slightly off-kilter, staticky sounds. They sounded so loud, yet also distant and soulless. Maybe it was just the building acoustics though. But on the plus side we always got to play a lot of video games and skeeball. Although half the time the skeeball machines didn’t have numbers on the circles. The balls were red, and they kind of looked like hearts or some other internal organ. The balls had 3 grooves/ridges through the center of them. I don’t know why I remember that detail. Anyway we went there almost every weekend or so and I turned out fine, aside from the crippling anxiety.
I paused the video to read this and about 30 seconds in my brain was reading it in Ray Liottas voice over voice in that restaurant scene in Goodfellas. Good job. I’m in Ireland so I have no perception of these restaurants at all.
As someone who watch Chuck E Cheese in the Galaxy 5000 live with Saberspark at a con last year, I am OVERJOYED you brought it up. I still get the songs stuck in my head, not gonna lie.
My sister and I were OBSESSED with Showbiz Pizza Place and the Rockafire Explosion in the 80s. We drove our parents nuts, because we wanted to watch every single animatronic show by Rockafire Explosion. This deep dive into the history of Chuck E. Cheese and Showbiz Pizza was awesome. I'm recommending it to all my friends!!
Stood by your sentiments. Never thought would stay by the end of it but I also knew that if John Oliver had done something with it, he must have thought about it.
We took my son there years ago for his birthday. Between the screaming children and bad food it’s still memorable. My ears felt the same after seeing Zeppelin in concert.
The guy recreating the animontronics and playing the usher song is quite possibly the best video I've seen in a long time, aside form this one of course lol.
My mom took my brother and I to ChuckECheese in 1995 to make us happy before bringing us home and telling us about my parents' divorce haha. So, fond memories!
My parents gave me my graduation present before my 9 grade graduation (Denmark) and then told me it before the ceremony...... Everything fell apart from there
Who gives 2 shits about chucky cheese right now, considering what's going on in the world. He could be using his platform for something far more important
John: "You're never going to afford a house, so here's a special episode we made for you!" Me, a 26 year old eating McDonald's in my mother's basement because not even renting is affordable in my area: *laughs, followed by a sigh of dispair*
Can confirm - as a child going to Chuck E Cheese in the 90s when they still had the animatronic band, we could SENSE the darkness, or even the ghost of it, and it did make us like it more.
A funny coincidence for you: I was using this video to test the sound on my computer b/c after a Windows update my speakers went away entirely. This is what we heard after having asked the computer for over an hour, "Please will the speakers work again?" : "Never. Absolutely never, it will not happen."
I remembered that I went to the website it was created to show this video. Happy to see it on the main channel before the new season hits us with the usual pain and suffering from this world. GL to all the ones that are behind us.
I remember once i was in the little jungle gym setup at Chuck e Cheese when i was a toddler. Crawling around and having fun. I got to the part of the jungle gym that had a window and you could look out at the while place, and the rat just appears and stares at me through the window. Then i remember my mother carrying me out as i sobbed.
Original Chuck E. was always one line of dialogue away from whispering “pssst, hey kid, wanna see some cool toys that may, or may not, have fallen off the back of a truck?”
"I believe there is a rot at the heart of Chuck E Cheese" I had an eloquent line about the comparison from this restaurant to Five Nights at Freddy's but I'm playing the "it's 4am and I'm currently deliriously watching a British man do a news report on an animatronic mouse" card lol
I grew up in a town (Ogden, Utah) that had the 11th Chuck E Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre ever opened, and only the 2nd outside of California, in 1980. I was 5 at the time and spent many a birthday party at that place. For those used to the Chuck E Cheese of today, that place would absolutely blow your mind. Chuck: The original Jersey-style rat Capacity: 3230 people Smoking: Allowed Windows: Zero Basically a smoky, dark, arcade full of noise, flashing light, shrieking buzzers and stereotyped anamatronics, slightly seedy parents, much seedier adults without kids and hundreds of completely unsupervised children hopped up on soda and pizza, carrying around fistfuls of greasy tickets. Those were the days......
Yup. Last time I took my grandkids to a birthday party, we were photographed, my license was copied, and we got wristbands to match the kids to their adults. When we left security had to verify. So sad.
I had the terrifying experience of Chuck E. Cheese when I was responsible for 15 kids 8 and 9 years old. This was in 1981. The person who was supposed to help found out you could get beer there. I had to call another person to drive the children home. But the noise in that place was beyond loud and chaotic. The lights and bells were worse than a casino. The kids got so overstimulated that gathering them up and taking them back to the parents meet up site. By then the kids were exhausted and crying. Trying to explain this to the parents and not be blamed for being mean to the kids was like a Stasi interrogation. I’d gladly spit on Chuck E. Cheese’s grave.
I worked at the factory in Orlando that made the Show Biz characters. It was such a fun place to work. The characters were built in batches. When the batches were finished, they were QC'd by running the whole batch simultaneously in parallel. It was hilarious to watch. Too bad it was before everybody had video cameras.
Rockafire fandom is wild. Before COVID, I visited an existing Rockafire show at a small regional amusement park in Korea. To this day I still get comments and messages about the footage I took there, which if the fan communities are to be believed is the "only known footage" of that unit😂
I worked at CEC at age 16 in the Summer of '99 and I have so many stories. Sunday mornings were token sorting days, when we would empty all the games' coin boxes into bins so we could pull out all the quarters and rival arcade tokens before recirculating them. On three occasions that summer, I found peepshow tokens with different sex positions on them. I can only imagine these often got missed and dispensed from the change machines the following week.
Hearing him describe the in-depth story of Chuck E Cheese has cemented my resolve that I was right to be terrified of 90s Chuck E Cheese and his nightmare inducing animatronic friends as a child.
According to my Dad, one of my older cousins was so terrified of the costume that she basically developed spider-sense for when he was nearby. She'd just be playing one of the games then immediately bolt it when she was sure he was just around the corner.
@@MetaDragoon I didn't find Chuck E Cheese all that terrifying as a kid. But I can understand how and why Five Nights at Freddy's would be so successful looking back at this game.
19:00 Fun fact about Chuck E. Cheese in the Galaxy 5000: It was actually made and produced by a company famous for another form of media in their fledgling form: Funimation Entertainment (which has now merged with Crunchyroll under Sony Pictures.) Which means you can hear prolific VAs like Sean Schemmel and Chris Sabat, who play Goku and Vegeta in any modern Dragon Ball media, in this video. It's a trip, for sure. EDIT: Apparently, Sabat was the only VA seriously involved in this, but he was not only the voice of Munch: He was also a producer and wrote a good amount of the music. Also, Funimation founder Gen Fukunaga was a dancer.
During the pandemic, I noticed our local Chuck E. Cheese has a sign in the window saying 'Medium pizzas $5'. I just had to try it after having gone to that same location when I was a kid. The pizza tasted the exact same as it had 20 years ago except this time I immediately started feeling ill. God I miss Chuck E. Cheese.
Did you think for half a minute that it was why the pizzas were on sale so cheap?? Maybe they tasted just like they did when you were a child, because they were old inventory from around that time... Oh yeah! They don't recycle pizzas, right? lol
You guys missed this detail, but the person who programmed them to sing “Love in this Club” was Aaron Fechter himself using his own Rock-a-Fire Explosion setup.
John is giving me flashbacks from the 3 summers I spent working at Chuck E. Cheese in my teens in the 90s. I thought I had properly suppressed those memories 😵💫
@@andrewsang4688Why yes I did 😅 It was actually the break room at my CEC, so everybody was always in and out of there and only rarely did anything exciting happen in there aside from bitching about the kids, parents and management.
It was '84 or '85 in West Virginia. I thought I had that giant cup of coins at a Chucky Cheese. No, girl, the best birthday party of my single digits had been at a Showbiz pizza. I remember the freaking band. There was a pressed sugar medallion on top of my cake. I got to eat it myself while watching animatronics for the first time. Queen of the world.
Me too. Southwest PA though, not WV. We only ever had a Chuck E Cheese. But I remember the Showbiz band. I didn't go to a Showbiz until my mid teens. I have no clue how my childhood memories are so mixed up. I render the dog and rat in the picture frames and the band in the corner with full motion (but it was only 4-5 members).
When I just to watch something to make me smile, which I definitely needed today, I watch this episode. It's both historical and funny at the same time.
The largest fight I’ve ever witnessed occurred at a Chuck E Cheese in FL about 15 years ago. A woman was celebrating her baby’s 1st birthday with her friends and family when the baby’s father walked in with the mother of his other daughter who was also there to celebrate her 1st birthday 😳 As soon as their group walked in, words were exchanged . There were about 30 adults fighting in front of 100 kids.
That's what happened at alot of ours here... and then shootings in the parking lot ... multiple times... almost closed the chuck e cheeses down here over it
@@hiya-de5hd Basically they're saying that HBO needs to prepare for another lawsuit, and the other comment is saying that the phrasing used was similar to how a DND party would prepare their equipment for battle.
I used to work in an arcade. People would come in and ask "how to you put up with all these kids all day every day?" I would answer "Are you kidding? The kids are great, it's the adults that make this job stressful."
Kids go to arcades to have fun, so all you ever have to do to fix a problem is to gently redirect kids back towards the fun. The adults have no d**n clue why they are there, and are angry about it, possibly from alcohol.
I am a retired children's librarian and I totally agree. I loved working with the kids. They were fun to be with. It was the parents who caused all the problems.
As a teacher I have to agree, it's adults that create the issues, not the kids.
I'm 37 and what the fuck is a chicky cheese?
This is something I discussed with my mom about becoming a bus driver. I would prefer being a school bus driver than a public bus driver, because I can understand kids. Adults are worse. And then she mentioned that I had to deal with parents, and they are the worst. Which says a lot considering she is one.
“I need a cop, I need an ambulance, I need everything”
Incredible
Poetic, even
“Fk it, send the fire department also”
I need a cop, I need an ambulance, I need everything
@@h0tel1 EEEEEEE-VVERYOOOOOOOONEEE
“Hello, this is the National Guard, you need us at a Chuck E. Cheese?”
The fact y'all even named the webisode "Last Squeak Tonight" is the level of dad joke humor I come for.
@rickowens5310 That's a shame as it's terrible. P.S. stop spamming your stuff on completely unrelated channels. You won't get so much hate then.
The intern finally got one joke across the line.
@@weirdunclebobit's a bot, just report it.
In a previous life, John Oliver claimed to not respect the pun. SMH.
Oh fuck, I hadn't even noticed that!!
I was Chuck E Cheese in high school. I danced in front of the mechanical band. I always picked Walkin' on Sunshine or What I like About You for the songs. I liked Jasper the Dog's costume better, more comfortable. Everything I've gotten in my life since then has been because I include it on my resume. One time one of the "cooks" dropped a bag of weed out in the restaurant and I picked it up with my big floppy Chuck E. gloves. Then a mom stopped me for a pic with their kid, a polaroid. They gave it me. I still have the pic of chuck e cheese holding a bag of weed. A friend I met as an adult also worked at a different Chuck E Cheese where an old man died up in the plastic tube playground. Amazing!!!
That picture sounds amazing and cursed.
You should start a video series on crazy chucky stories. Would like to hear more.
That was a _weird way to end your comment,_ but everything else? Fantastic!!!
Got a picture of Chuck E chugging a beer at a local St Patrics parade.
My ex wife worked there while in high school...yeah the stories she told of employee shenanigans were hilarious and disturbing😂
I'm 72. I'm watching it because I hate to miss anything from this English Toucan. I LOVE you Olivar.
It's Oliver,John Oliver.
@@luvmibrattTotally [rather, marginally] irrelevant note. Danger Man "Drake, John Drake" was the intro line of a British TV series that Ian Fleming helped develop. Released two years before Dr Nose, 'Bond, James Bond." Drake was in secret service for the UN. "Danger Man" was "Secret Agent" in the US
But as enthusiastic for John as a millennial. lol
“English toucan” 😂😂😂😂😂
I'm almost 39, and I too, will never own a home.
Did I want to know this much about Chuck E. Cheese? Never. Did I watch the whole thing? Completely enthralled.
nothing has ever described me better
Right ?! I'm in Canada and wasn't going to watch it but did as I knew it would be really good. I've watched it twice as it's one of THE funniest episodes imo apart from the dark stuff of course. LOVE ME SOME JOHN because he reports on things no one else will as he's not held back by sponsors; People can go ahead and change the channel if they don't like what he's saying, he doesn't give two fks. 😅❤
Could I just mention that this was longer than the main story about HOAs?
I absolutely love this show.
HOAs being evil is old news at this point. I'm just surprised that he didn't find a way of working in some rat erotica when the founder was talking about the weird stuff that folks do in the costumes.
Also. More views on this at 11 hours (1.1million)
While I worked there as teen in the '80's for a couple o' months, we actually had a bomb threat called in (but at least I only had to wear the suit once - that was more than enough) - it was also wicked easy to steal pizzas from the place - ah, memories 😂
@@SmallSpoonBrigade this Chuck E Cheese video is old news too. Its a web exclusive they deleted and re-uploaded instead of making new content to promote the new season, its lazy and tbh they should be better than that.
Rereleasing a hilarious video (that I do not recall them posting before) before starting the new season is lazy? The new season will promote itself... it's fucking John Oliver, mate; HE NEEDS NO PROMOTION! Cheers.@@kultur-vultur
I didn't realize this was the unhinged journalism that I was missing in my life. I can't tell you how much I loved this episode.
“Kids these days aren't interested in the animatronics.”
Five Nights at Freddie: *exists*
if they rebranded the bankrupt Chuck E. Cheeses as withered/retro FNaFs there would be zoomers lined up around the block to get in there
@@RamblinBob I don’t disagree, but at the same time it feels like that’s just inviting disaster to happen because you know some psychopath is going to try to re-create the games. Which if I recall correctly is the exact reason Scott gave for not wanting to open a franchise, despite being approached about the idea before.
Video games are different than a robot playing crappy music for you lmao
@@RamblinBob Zoomers aren't kids though they're teens and in their early twenties. Adults and teens actually can't go to Chucky cheese alone. You have to have a child with you.
Robots playing instruments on a stage could only be confused with a Video Game on a monitor by someone who has no life outside of the basement VR headset.
Chuck E. Cheese is like a little slice of Florida scattered all over the country.
This is the most true thing that has been said this year.
Florida Mouse
not sure if that picture is a happy or terrifying one, tbh!
@@mho... It certainly requires some popcorn... And maybe a fourloko
We had them in Canada in the 80”s as well. Rocky n Bullwinkle were the headliner animatronic ‘band’ was that just a Canadian thing?
This is my late father's legacy. David Thomas, you can look him up. He worked for Aaron Fechter at CEI and did a lot of the design and technical work for the Rockafire Explosion, then was paid after the acquisition and rebranding to do the retrofit of the animatronics at some of the stores. I grew up with the empty skins of these characters strewn across the back bedroom of my house, and often saw their naked metal skeletons when I went with my dad to his workshop. Probably why FNAF has never been scary at all to me, I already lived that nightmare as a kid.
Jesus Devante Christ, I'd have a whole different level of ptsd
Dude. You know, then. They missed the real weird side story that is mad scientist / Florida man Aaron Fechter. Whoever commented that ChuckECheez is a little slice of Florida is spot-on. Google “Fechter Orlando” for funzies. Rockafire wasn’t his only explosion. 💥
I'm somewhat of a FNAF fan who also likes CEC, showbiz pizza and anything related and they somewhat didn't scare me as much but it's actually sad to see pieces of history get destroyed all in the name of a dancefloor/tv screen
💀
This, sadly, is a great plot for a good FNAF game
“Illegally Italian” had me rolling 😭
Ceelo Green and his “sexual harassment” had me crying
_"THAT'S A _*_SPICY_*_ HATE-A CRIME!"_ 🤌🤌
I saw stars for a solid 3 minutes I was laughing so hard.
I can’t believe I just spent 20 minutes getting a history lesson on Chuck E. Cheese. What a time to be alive.
It's charles entertainment cheese sir
That’s a pretty crazy story tbh especially coming from the founder of atari
And definitely worth every second of it!!
When at 5 min he said there was another 25 minutes I paused, made popcorn and buckled up
It was better to be alive during the original Showbiz Pizza incarnation.
"we thought we could talk about this for 5 minutes but then it got out of hand" ah yes, The Hbomberguy Effect
I have been binging Hbomb's channel and this is so true I cackled.
Both HBOs have so much in common 😅
British people: I read the wiki article for rope. We're going to be here a while folks
I had no idea what "The Hbomberguy Effect" was, so I Googled it. Ended up going down a weird (but very informative & entertaining!) rabbit hole where I watched hbomberguy's almost 4-hour video on "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" (ruclips.net/video/yDp3cB5fHXQ/видео.html)! :-O :-D
@@Shinmsl HBOmberguy
I did not realize just how much Five Nights At Freddies lore was just the History of Chuck E. Cheese.
Real life makes for great source material. Lol
More like FNAF doesn't even come close to the horror and insanity that comes from working at a day shift for Chuck E. Cheese in 1993.
If you read up on the inspirational behind the games, you'll see that the creator pulled from his childhood at Chuck E Cheese.
The movies coming soon iirc
I can see now, why all those puppets have such very specific backgrounds, what with them having been created in the same age as Fritz The Cat, LOL😂
This is perhaps one of the greatest last week tonight episodes of all time
Reminds me of an old stand-up joke, "My fiancee and I asked married friends of ours what the best birth control was. They told us, 'Try spending an hour inside a Chuck E. Cheese's. After that, if you still want to have kids, no birth control is gonna stop you!'"
😂
Best contraception in the world: Wedding cake!
The last time I went to Chuck E Cheese was when I was 22 and a friend from Norway wanted to have and "American birthday party" when she turned 34. At one point, one of the people we went with who was, I'm gonna say, 45 at the time, and brought his kid, grabbed mee by the sleeve and said _"ALWAYS_ use condoms!"
Vasectomy.
@@clqudy4750don't project your loveless marriage on others
And "That's a-spicy hate-a crime!" gets a smattering of confused and uncomfortable applause. Perfection.
Weirdly enough thats also the title of my favorite book on Italian colonialism in Libya and the horn of Africa.
@@nedisahonkey Ah. No doubt why it's called Ethiopi-ah.
@@Edwrd9294 Yes. We all saw how Mr. Oliver went back in time and personally invaded Africa. The shame of it...
"You're part of the most violent empire, your silence is complicity" Clap...clap...heu cla?
@@porkibtique9333silence?
When he yelled “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!!!” I got so happy
Same. 🤭
YOUNG JEEZY AS A PUPPET
Whenever you get down about things in the USA, just remember Chuck E. Cheese, and feel proud again!
SOY
It’s a line from Gladiator. Maximus kills everyone else in the arena and then yells at the stunned crowd “Are you not entertained?!”.
The Chuck E Cheese band playing Thriller in the 80s for my birthday party was and still ranks as my best birthday party ever!
Chuck E Cheese is a husk of its former glory.
Good❤
Agreed. Too sanitized. Too boring now
So Nice
John Oliver didnt need to make this, yet him an his team still produced this extra content. To me it not only shows the commitment to journalism he has, but just how much him and his team enjoy exploring rabbit holes.
...Or, in this case, rat holes.
One of my son's friend's mom was a manager at the Chuck. She informed us not only was this all true, it was actually even worse. She refused to elaborate.
There was some sick shit that happened there you could tell.
She has PTSD 😂
Understandable
This is my favorite comment ever to a RUclips video
It was always a minimum wage job for all employees, what's the shock?
I worked at a Chuck E Cheese for less than a week, and they made us share the Chuck E. costume and only sprayed it down with Fabreeze between uses. So bashing that Chuck E. head must have been cathartic xD
I’ve been waiting for this to get uploaded to RUclips for months, by far one of the best web exclusives John and the writing team have ever come up with!
wasn't the video uploaded on the website he told to check out? I swear I saw both.
yep i watched it on the website @@makeitrainnaren
is this a repost?
I saw this when it was first made and I watched here. Wtf is happening.
@@thebeebz9511there was a special website they made for it yeah, but it’s the first time they uploaded it here
I worked at Chuck E. Cheese and you would be shocked how many drunk parents would get into fights all the time. This is no joke. I was 16 at the time and had to break up at least 7 fights in 2 years (the cops were called at least 5 out of the 7 times). To put that in perspective I worked at Arby's for 6 years and did not have to break up a single fight the whole time I worked there. Most fights had to do with kids who were being bullied (supposedly) by other kids so the parent/parents would go talk to the other parent/parents and an argument would ensue (90% of the time both parties were drunk). Thankfully they got rid of alcohol which helped the situation immensely.
If this is your first night at Chuck E. Cheese... you have to fight.
Totally rooting for the bullied kids parents to have successfully taught the other parents the lesson.
90% of the time it was women that caused the fights. If Chuck E Cheese had banned women, who were not working there, it would have been fine.
But Cannabis is still federally Schedule I 😒
I'm actually pretty mad that I didn't get to experience drunken pizza parties. Sounds like a helluva time. Rip, Charles Entertainment Cheese.
As a German who never has been within a 10Km radius of a Chuck E. Cheese, i appreciate getting 2 videos I cant relate to. Thx Jholiver!
As an American who has been to the place...
Stay Away. Stay faaaaaaaaaaar away.
How about we talk about something you are probably sick of, it's about when Austrians and Germans colluded in the most disgusting act of the 20th century which had world wide implications. When the West Germans and Austrians rigged a game of Football so they could both go ahead in the world cup ousting the much better African team.
@@timothysmith6647 fooled me.
I thought you meant starting WWI
gotta adjust my sense of proportion to wade in the brave(?) new(?) world(?) of
perpetually infinite irony
As another German, I just felt instantly reminded of Five Nights at Freddy's 😱
what's the second one?
I must have asked myself "what the fuck am I watching?!" at least 25 times. Thank you for this amazing piece of hard-hitting investigative journalism😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I recently had my kid’s 10th birthday party at Chuck e Cheese. It’s where he wanted to go. I was expecting a run down craphole with terrible food. The place was nice and clean. There were plenty of games for the kids to play, the pizza was surprisingly good and the service was great. The host of my kid’s party really went above and beyond. I felt I got way more than my money’s worth.
I have always loved Chuck E. Cheese pizza, that's a hill I will die on.
Thank the management and staff not the chain, Corporate may not care but a good manager and staff will !
Its always a good place to end up for a couple hours. They don't do coins or tickets anymore vut the plastic cards work all the same.
Make sure you leave them a good review
@@Klos1neMNyou mean Pasqually’s pizza? 🤣
I am absolutely convinced they finally put this on RUclips now ONLY because of the ending joke, and I’m here for it.
Is this not a reupload? I swear I saw this ages ago
@@DigitalWolverineit definitely is (EDIT: was uploaded April 8, 2023). guessing the original was taken down for some reason, as I can't find record of it anywhere.
I'm not crazy; I watched this on yt when they originally uploaded it, like a year ago, maybe?
@@DigitalWolverine I saw this on the Last Week Tonight website, so I didn’t know it was on RUclips as well lol
@@DigitalWolverine This was my first thought I felt crazy for a sec
@DigitalWolverine Yeah, it was put up as a replacement story for younger people to watch the same night as a story about HOAs or something, since most Millenials and Zoomers won't ever own the type of properties that would cause them to have to deal with them. It was definitely still online as of like a month or two ago, though, because I posted it on someone's timeline who hadn't seen it.
"Hair? Teased so much its in therapy as we speak" 🤣🤣Im crying!!
As someone who is much younger than 35, I really appreciated this web exclusive. It made me feel so seen. Thank you Mr. Oliver.
If only I'd been born 3 months earlier - I'd be watching the HOA episode instead of this... 🤣
I was older than 35 when this came out and I still feel seen; it'd still be accurate for anyone under 45 or even 55 the way things are right now.
John olivier is the youth Savor. He should replace an episode about marriage with KFC next as let's face it we're not getting married either 😂
'I Have A Cream'...
I’m 21, about to turn 22, and yeah same lol
I used to work at a Chuck E Cheese as a teenager, and there were indeed lots of fights. But the real reason for this is because of the frequent interactions between divorcees (and their new partners) at their child’s birthday. Often there were two “sides” of the family, which is why fights turned into full-on royal rumbles.
I'm pretty sure this exact thing happened in My Name is Earl
John Oliver is like that one uncle at Thanksgiving who always has something very interesting to say about topics that most people would ordinarly not think about too often.
He's the good version of the weird uncle.
@@thomasakagi7545 chaotic good uncle
he's the pedo uncle you avoid
That….. is not a common experience lol. I don’t know anyone with an uncle like that.
John Oliver is like that British uncle down talking America as if they didn't invent imperialism. the sun NEVER sets on the British empire.
I cannot explain how much I F***ING LOVE this segment. I rewatch at least once a week and have shared it all of my friends. It's perfect!
As a theater maker for kids (and a former kid who sought out the abandoned areas of Las Vegas hotels while there for dance competitions), I can attest to the fact that kids crave darkness contained within safe spaces. Youse totally right, John
Children are curious about the unknown. It's a natural instinct to want to explore, but children don't want to discover monsters. Don't be a monster. Don't be a pedophile. Children DO NOT crave darkness. Seek help if you are confused about that. Seek help now, or be in prison soon.
@@WiseAcres-iz1mu FNAF was completely based on that macabre world. The kids didn't want that. But when you have run-down animatronics on run-down figures you get something macabre. The disturbing distortion is the person who thinks the kids wanted it that way. No. The kids were told this was something they would enjoy. They were expected to like it. But it was frightening for some. FNAF gave kids the ability to deal with the fear in a game they could turn off.
You didn't make it one step into speaking for children. Many children crave the light.
@@tabaxikhajit4541 jesus christ bro
I'm from and live in South Africa. I've never been to the US. Inexplicably, I'm sitting through this half hour piece on the history of a weird American franchise I've never been to and likely never will.
It’s better that way. I’m watching this and trying in vain not to estimate how much time I spent inside these at parties as a kid. Nostalgia but nightmare version.
Don’t come here it’s bad
You have not missed out on a thing 😂
You guys still have loadshedding?
If you think this is weird, you won't believe half the shit we got. Buckees exists.
@@chrismanuel9768at least Buccees looks clean, CEC was so dark you couldn’t see if it was clean or not.
This web exclusive was too good to be lost to the annals of time. So glad they put it on RUclips.
Pretty sure it was on here like six months ago
Nah he set up a whole website to show this😂 😅 I remember that episode because I literally didn’t believe it was a real link with a whole different episode 😂but he’s a mad lad so we definitely got a 2 for 1 that week
@@jackl8025okay so I’m not trippin
@jackl8025 Oh it was months ago, I don't know why they reuploaded.
I knew I couldn't have been the only one who noticed, I checked the Rock afire explosion video and there are comments from nine months ago about the same video
Nolan Bushnell: "I'm gonna release nine different versions of the same fucking game"
Todd Howard: "...You son of a bitch. I'm in."
This video documentary? Great. But as a 29 year old late-stage millenial man with no hope of home owning in sight, you made me cry 30 seconds in. Thanks John.
maybe you laughed a bit?
Don't worry, I'm older and will never have a house neither. We need to eat the rich.
I mean, I came out of the hood of Chicago and had to work my ass off and get through grad school and law school and even I am struggling to find a house that isn't in some rural hell hole of a red state. I feel this.
Real estate is cyclical. There are always deals and downturns, you just have to be ready.
@@fieldthrasher I can't tell if you're dumb or a boomer...
This actually answered a burning question from my childhood. I never understood why my beloved Showbiz Pizza turned into a Chuck E Cheez. Now I finally understand.
Exactly! I've been wondering the same for YEARS!
Same here. I felt betrayed. I thought Chuckee was the rip off!
Same here. Showbiz Pizza was awesome. My parents probably still have some of the tokens. It is a Chuck E. Cheese 🧀 now that is still surprisingly busy.
The “In this Club” segment honestly made me understand the appeal of these kinds of things…like if they updated the style and music then these could be a hit with adults…it’s kind of magical.
Ya I think Dave and busters is the adult equivalent besides just going to a casino lmao
altho all arcades are pretty much made for adult to take children too - a lot of the games are for adults as well, there’s a few adult arcades kinda everywhere in the United States mostly for date nights.
I know that like AMC movie theaters sometimes work in conjunction with Arcades in major cities (depends on the city size/amc size but there’s options) but it makes for fun dates go to the movies go to a lil arcade and sometimes even indoor bowling/indoor mini golf - some places have a lot of large areas or multiple floors so there’s different thing in different cities or buildings. (The ones I’m specifically thinking of are in Chicago but ik in New York there’s other ones too)
Of course some other countries have specifically found and made adult arcades (Japan for example has a ton of arcades and various games all of which are for teens to adults- of course it’s more of the major city districts that will have game options/nightlife/leisure activities)
Bonus is you usually can get drinks outside of the arcades take a 2 second-2 minute walk and get to an arcade and have some fun, get some prizes etc (more modern ones usually have a plastic looking credit card which you put money on and can swipe for games etc - instead of needing to transfer cash to coins you just keep the card and any balances and can take multiple trips to an arcade without needing to bring like a bag of arcade coins or loosing tickets etc.) some arcades allow for drinks inside but usually it’s not done because of state laws etc or property managers wanting to avoid spills onto the electronics)
1. Pretty sure we didn't have these in Canada.
2. The Simpsons did a good parody of it.
3. I think the concept has the possibility of actually scaring children.
@@refinedsugarchuck E Cheese has some locations in Canada but back in the 79s to 90s they had more
@@railfandepotproductions Oh ok. There's none in Halifax or Montreal. So you must be talking about Ontario or out west.
@@refinedsugar yeah
"I've been talking about Chucky Cheese for longer than anyone thought possible" Allow me to introduce you to my Autistic kiddo. It's been 3 months of Chucky Cheese talk and random requests to go to Chucky Cheese or anywhere with animatronics. He even made protest signs to demand they return the animatronics.
As an autistic adult I love your child. Please tell him to look up the history of marionettes. He’ll be busy for hours.
@@Underpants678 I will! Thanks 😊
dear god has he discovered the Five Nights?
You have one cool kid.
You can get him a mini robotics kit and let him build his own :D
DUDE, my first legal (not under the table) job was at Chuck E's in Chico, CA when I was 15 1/2 in the summer of '82. I had to dress up like Jasper and Chuck and get tackled by tiny, snotty children while their moms sucked down box wine and it was HELL. I finally got fired and was that ever a relief
I worked in a highly sensitive facility and sat behind a navy intelligence associate who I befriended. As you get to know people I asked about his past. Apparently he dressed as the Rat in the restaurant. I decided to distance myself from him once I learned that after retirement; he would go back to being the rat.
hahaha i used to live in Chico... i worked at a restaurant called The HAtchcover on Esplanade.. Man i miss that college party town.. I miss floating down the sacramento river in a tire tube attatched to a keg and getting out at wash out,and faling over on the beach lol .. going up to Paradise.. this was back in the 90's... I want to move back one day..
Bro... same... how many times did you get punched in the nuts by those little bastards??? I HATED that damned suit. I worked at Showbiz in 86, but it's the same thing. The only thing that kept me going was free pizza, free video games, and being able to sneak the occasional beer. 😂
When they showed that lady smashing the Chuck E Cheese head on the side walk, I was like, YES!!! SMASH IT! DO IT FOR ALL OF US!!! 😂😂😂😂😂
(Edit: just noticed you're probably a woman... still, the suit sucked a$$ 😅🤣 )
While I was working there, the management ended up removing Chuck E's tail because the kids kept trying to rip it off. Those little bastards were unreal!
@@raidermaxx2324When you lived in Chico did you ever go to the DeJa Vu Mining Company restaurant?
That Usher song animatronic performance is perfection and I will not debate it.
Should have had that at the Super Bowl
OMG I was thinking the same thing. They need to create an animatronic show for grown ups with better music.
Absolutely!
rebuttal: i agree actually
We made a friend have her 18th b-day at chuck e cheese. The staff really liked us because we didn't touch the alcohol (we were all college students but I think most of us have more dignity than to get day drunk as chuck e cheese), weren't overstimulated little kids, and we weren't stressed out adults trying to make sure are the little kids were in line.
I was left at a Chuck E. Cheese on my 8th Birthday. I almost lost my life. Boy what I time to be alive, thank you 90's
Dude, you had me rolling. Thanks I needed that. The fucking memories of that place. 90's were fucking nuts now that you're older.
Sorry to hear that… 😢
How did you get found? I'm glad you are live
@@sheldonmarcotte8392employees probably helped him. His folks would've had to have come back after realizing their mistake.
Was it the trampling in the ball pit or the food?
Seeing the instructions on how to refit the animatronics, I now understand where Five Nights at Freddy’s really got its inspiration from. But adults fighting at Chuck E Cheese in real life is far scarier than any of the games.
As an autistic person who grew up during the peak of five nights at Freddy's hearing the statement Gen. Z is not interested in animatronics has to be the funniest part of this episode
I don't understand how you being autistic is relevant here
Indeed!
but not entirely untrue! I'm almost 30 and (as a kid) I always thought they were cheap and boring, but since FNAF came out, there's definitely been a nostalgic love for those washboard playing robots!
As a member of gen Z from Canada, I didn’t learn if the existence of Chuck E Cheese until some time after FNAF came out. I remember hearing that FNAF was the sole reason for eliminating the anamatronics, with the bit about kids not being interested as a cheap excuse.
Clowns make good characters for horror movies like IT, but millennials don't like clowns. 30 year olds aren't out there hiring clowns for their birthday parties.
Never thought that I would make it to the end, here we are! The passion John has regarding describing about the Chuck E is absolutely priceless!
Okay but the "Are you not entertained?" as upfront as the question is, made me laugh considering we're discussing the Gladiator Breads and Circus next to the ball pit
7:38 -- It reminds me of Mitch Hedberg's joke about Pringles' original intention being to make tennis balls, but on the day the rubber was supposed to arrive, they just got a truckload of potatoes. "Pringles is a laidback company; they just said, 'Fuck it, cut 'em up!'" 😂
I practically grew up at Chuck E. Cheese. My father worked for the company at a fairly high level back in the mid-to-late 80’s, so we would go there… a lot. We didn’t go there on just occasions for birthdays. No no, we went there just for the fun of it. At least that’s what my 5 year old self thought. In retrospect it was probably because we got to eat free and got free tokens, or at least a discount or something.
It was always dark in Chuck E. Cheese back then. Not like modern Chuck E. Cheese’s where it’s flooded with natural light. No, back in the 80’s it was more like a dive bar or that strip club on the crappy side of town. You basically were in a cramped place with black carpet, long picnic-style tables covered with black pleather table cloths. The carpets weren’t even that stereotypical black carpet with the stars and comets on them that glowed under a black light. It was just like black/grey mud carpet throughout. You couldn’t actually tell what color anything was because it was so dark. Everything was all cast in a dim, orange glow from the ceiling lights. They usually had very dim yellow or warm lightbulbs. many of the lights hung from the ceiling by chains, and had these red stained glass fixtures around them, making the already dim bulbs even less effective.
Clearly they were trying to go for that intimate Italian restaurant feel, but it never came across.
To top it all off, it always smelled dingy, and like a little bit like grandma and grandpa’s house… so like cigarettes. But that made me feel comfortable because I loved by grandparents. Going to Chuck E. Cheese was sort of like going to grandma and grandpa’s house. It activated the same areas of delight in my little brain.
These places were always cramped too. Right when you entered, it wasn’t like today where you’re in a giant room. No, you walked down a narrow hallway that was maybe 20-30 feet long and it opened into the seating and eating area. There wasn’t exactly a ton of room to run around. When you saw Chuck E. Cheese walking around, you had to kind of squeeze in to get to him between the tables and the poorly laid out corridors.
The only place you could run around was the arcade section. It was usually laid out in like a big room. Most cabinets were just along the walls, with a handful in the middle of the room. The light was a little better because sometimes they used fluorescent lighting in the arcade and video game areas. And also there would be a door to the outside that would open and flood the place with daylight momentarily. I’m not sure who opened those doors. Probably employees. If I was about 5 years older I probably would have hated it every time the door opened.
Also, maybe it was after the acquisition, but they all had these wall art things that were like hand and arms playing random instruments like cymbals and banjos and such. They’d kind of randomly start playing. It honestly felt like some haunted horror art from hell to my 5 year old self. The dark, dingy light didn’t help.
And the people in the costumes, they never spoke. Except when they did. They weren’t supposed to talk, my mother always told me. But they did sometimes. When they did, it was just a disembodied, muffled voice. Oh, it was unsettling to a small child.
15:30 ish
What you’re missing when you play these clips is the piss poor audio quality that came from these animatronics. Part of the nightmare was the sound they made you know. Those slightly off-kilter, staticky sounds. They sounded so loud, yet also distant and soulless. Maybe it was just the building acoustics though.
But on the plus side we always got to play a lot of video games and skeeball. Although half the time the skeeball machines didn’t have numbers on the circles. The balls were red, and they kind of looked like hearts or some other internal organ. The balls had 3 grooves/ridges through the center of them. I don’t know why I remember that detail.
Anyway we went there almost every weekend or so and I turned out fine, aside from the crippling anxiety.
Thx u for sharing
Nice story! What store would you go to the most as a kid? I grew up in Dallas, so I got to always go to the both Montfort stores
Dawg are you ok?
Thanks for sharing 🙏
I paused the video to read this and about 30 seconds in my brain was reading it in Ray Liottas voice over voice in that restaurant scene in Goodfellas. Good job. I’m in Ireland so I have no perception of these restaurants at all.
As someone who watch Chuck E Cheese in the Galaxy 5000 live with Saberspark at a con last year, I am OVERJOYED you brought it up. I still get the songs stuck in my head, not gonna lie.
"It's madness and I love it!"
-John of the Oliver
"I will hold for gasps now."
My sister and I were OBSESSED with Showbiz Pizza Place and the Rockafire Explosion in the 80s. We drove our parents nuts, because we wanted to watch every single animatronic show by Rockafire Explosion. This deep dive into the history of Chuck E. Cheese and Showbiz Pizza was awesome. I'm recommending it to all my friends!!
Had both in watching NJ, what a dream lok
I started this thinking ‘I’ll give it 5 mins just to see where he’s going’ and 16 mins in I’m so hooked on this bizarre story that I gotta finish 😂
Along with the memories I’ve had
Just like the employees inside the suits
Stood by your sentiments. Never thought would stay by the end of it but I also knew that if John Oliver had done something with it, he must have thought about it.
We took my son there years ago for his birthday. Between the screaming children and bad food it’s still memorable. My ears felt the same after seeing Zeppelin in concert.
The guy recreating the animontronics and playing the usher song is quite possibly the best video I've seen in a long time, aside form this one of course lol.
Would be awesome in the super bowl halftime show
Do a search for Rockafire Explosion, they've done several things included a Beatles medely and the MST3K theme, it's fun.
Animatronics
@@HansDelbruck53
Yippee ki-yay, MFer!
@@HansDelbruck53 sure what ever dude
Can't wait for John to return with new episodes on February 18 - he really is the GOAT of comedy satire.
My mom took my brother and I to ChuckECheese in 1995 to make us happy before bringing us home and telling us about my parents' divorce haha. So, fond memories!
Did you at least get something fun with your tickets?
devious breeds divorce
then
divorce breeds devious
The divorce being the fond memory of course, it certainly can't have been ChuckUpCheese.
OMG I guess she was trying
My parents gave me my graduation present before my 9 grade graduation (Denmark) and then told me it before the ceremony...... Everything fell apart from there
11:58 "Dollar store Kung Fu Panda..." Had me fkn rolling!!
And yet, still looks better than Pandory.
*Also, Pizza Planet? ...How have they not gotten sued yet?*
That Rock-Afire Explosion singing "Love In This Club" was hilarious and brilliant. I wish they had performed more songs, and in higher definition.
Seeing that kind of has me wanting to look on Craig's List for a set of retired of mechanical rats. 😂
David Ferguson has a show and programs a lot of the newer songs. You can search up his place "Goofy Gas Fillin Station"
They did a great version of Electric Feel, too! It’s worth looking up
Who gives 2 shits about chucky cheese right now, considering what's going on in the world. He could be using his platform for something far more important
@@zainabemdadian2411 like what?
“Last Squeak Tonight” fucking phenomenal 😭
John: "You're never going to afford a house, so here's a special episode we made for you!"
Me, a 26 year old eating McDonald's in my mother's basement because not even renting is affordable in my area: *laughs, followed by a sigh of dispair*
Aren't you a good momma's boy who votes democrat? Yes you are!
@@syruscoy1244ah yes, it’s definitely only the Democrats that are responsible for the housing crisis. I also have a bridge for sale, cheap for you.
@@syruscoy1244wtf does that have to do with anything?
@@syruscoy1244says the fake profile
@@syruscoy1244 Matey... I don't even vote. Even if I did, I live in a red state.
Can confirm - as a child going to Chuck E Cheese in the 90s when they still had the animatronic band, we could SENSE the darkness, or even the ghost of it, and it did make us like it more.
A funny coincidence for you: I was using this video to test the sound on my computer b/c after a Windows update my speakers went away entirely.
This is what we heard after having asked the computer for over an hour, "Please will the speakers work again?" :
"Never. Absolutely never, it will not happen."
I remembered that I went to the website it was created to show this video. Happy to see it on the main channel before the new season hits us with the usual pain and suffering from this world. GL to all the ones that are behind us.
I remember once i was in the little jungle gym setup at Chuck e Cheese when i was a toddler. Crawling around and having fun. I got to the part of the jungle gym that had a window and you could look out at the while place, and the rat just appears and stares at me through the window. Then i remember my mother carrying me out as i sobbed.
Original Chuck E. was always one line of dialogue away from whispering “pssst, hey kid, wanna see some cool toys that may, or may not, have fallen off the back of a truck?”
😭
Technically every character is one line of dialogue away from saying that.
Is this spam?
@@railfandepotproductions with eggs of course
I was in a series of commercials for them when the merger happened. My mom and I survived on those residuals for a while.
"I believe there is a rot at the heart of Chuck E Cheese" I had an eloquent line about the comparison from this restaurant to Five Nights at Freddy's but I'm playing the "it's 4am and I'm currently deliriously watching a British man do a news report on an animatronic mouse" card lol
It's 11am now, I don't remember watching this (but yeah, that sounds like me)
I grew up in a town (Ogden, Utah) that had the 11th Chuck E Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre ever opened, and only the 2nd outside of California, in 1980. I was 5 at the time and spent many a birthday party at that place.
For those used to the Chuck E Cheese of today, that place would absolutely blow your mind.
Chuck: The original Jersey-style rat
Capacity: 3230 people
Smoking: Allowed
Windows: Zero
Basically a smoky, dark, arcade full of noise, flashing light, shrieking buzzers and stereotyped anamatronics, slightly seedy parents, much seedier adults without kids and hundreds of completely unsupervised children hopped up on soda and pizza, carrying around fistfuls of greasy tickets.
Those were the days......
a lot of the arcades in Utah are windowless and seedy, unfortunately no more jersey rat :(
Yup. Last time I took my grandkids to a birthday party, we were photographed, my license was copied, and we got wristbands to match the kids to their adults. When we left security had to verify. So sad.
@@davechongleno wonder a franchise spawned with that location in mind
Oh man, I remember that one! I was 14-15 and it was so noisy I had to leave!
Ogden! I just took my kiddo to Treehouse Museum a couple years back
There’s nothing I would enjoy more than the Showbiz crew singing Love In This Club. The rap part was done perfectly 😂😂😂
I had the terrifying experience of Chuck E. Cheese when I was responsible for 15 kids 8 and 9 years old. This was in 1981. The person who was supposed to help found out you could get beer there. I had to call another person to drive the children home.
But the noise in that place was beyond loud and chaotic. The lights and bells were worse than a casino. The kids got so overstimulated that gathering them up and taking them back to the parents meet up site.
By then the kids were exhausted and crying. Trying to explain this to the parents and not be blamed for being mean to the kids was like a Stasi interrogation.
I’d gladly spit on Chuck E. Cheese’s grave.
I remember the first time I stepped foot inside a Chuck E Cheese, I asked my dad “can we go somewhere quiet?”
It Was A Living Nightmare 😬
😂😂🤣🤣🤣
Years ago, dozens of people in my town protested a new gentlemen's club that opened nearby. 6-months later it closed and reopened as Chuck E. Cheese.
Who tf was protesting a strip club?!? What’s wrong with them?! Was it conjoined with a church or something?? That’s insane!
damn 😂
A gentleman’s club closes and as John Oliver says a “casino and titty bar for kids” opens up
Whoever came up with the name Munch for that purple guy was a cunning linguist! 🤣
PURPLE GUY!?!?!!
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Likely a master debater as well.
this is too clever.
@michaelmiller9107 send this theory to Matpat
I worked at the factory in Orlando that made the Show Biz characters. It was such a fun place to work. The characters were built in batches. When the batches were finished, they were QC'd by running the whole batch simultaneously in parallel. It was hilarious to watch. Too bad it was before everybody had video cameras.
Alright, “Love in this club” totally HAD me. That was the best anyone could ever do in their mom’s basement.
Rockafire fandom is wild. Before COVID, I visited an existing Rockafire show at a small regional amusement park in Korea. To this day I still get comments and messages about the footage I took there, which if the fan communities are to be believed is the "only known footage" of that unit😂
I have a pin I found in a used shop in the Seattle, it had a dog in a showmans hat, I forget the text. Could it be related?
As a person who uploads footage of these animatronics, I can say, yes the fandom is obsessed beyond belief 🤣
I'm 53 and never been inside a Chuck E. Cheese. Until watching this video, I didn't know just how fortunate I've been all my life. 😂
Oh, you missed out. 🤣🤣
It’s a breeding pool for all viruses known to man. It’s really just a covert CDC sleeper cell. 🤫
Most are run down and always overcrowded. Great for kids parties if you find a nice location, otherwise I'd avoid.
You actually need kids to enter. They don’t let people in without them
They wasn't like that back in the 80's💁♂️
I love a story that makes John's genuine glee emerge.
I worked at CEC at age 16 in the Summer of '99 and I have so many stories. Sunday mornings were token sorting days, when we would empty all the games' coin boxes into bins so we could pull out all the quarters and rival arcade tokens before recirculating them. On three occasions that summer, I found peepshow tokens with different sex positions on them. I can only imagine these often got missed and dispensed from the change machines the following week.
Hearing him describe the in-depth story of Chuck E Cheese has cemented my resolve that I was right to be terrified of 90s Chuck E Cheese and his nightmare inducing animatronic friends as a child.
According to my Dad, one of my older cousins was so terrified of the costume that she basically developed spider-sense for when he was nearby. She'd just be playing one of the games then immediately bolt it when she was sure he was just around the corner.
and now, we are in the world of FNAF animatronics being hot to more than a handful of teen and adults xD
Who tf is finding dead child possesed robots sexy
@@MetaDragoon I didn't find Chuck E Cheese all that terrifying as a kid. But I can understand how and why Five Nights at Freddy's would be so successful looking back at this game.
The animatronics seems alright to me
19:00
Fun fact about Chuck E. Cheese in the Galaxy 5000: It was actually made and produced by a company famous for another form of media in their fledgling form: Funimation Entertainment (which has now merged with Crunchyroll under Sony Pictures.) Which means you can hear prolific VAs like Sean Schemmel and Chris Sabat, who play Goku and Vegeta in any modern Dragon Ball media, in this video. It's a trip, for sure.
EDIT: Apparently, Sabat was the only VA seriously involved in this, but he was not only the voice of Munch: He was also a producer and wrote a good amount of the music. Also, Funimation founder Gen Fukunaga was a dancer.
🤯
Is that who makes Atari? I thought tge owner of chuckies also invented the Atari.
@@pinklemon-m5v No, it's a separate company that wasn't founded until the 90s. They made the video.
So..... chuck e cheese could defeat Goku?
I did not expect a documentary about my guy Charles Entertainment Cheese today. Thank you from a 33 yr old. 😂
Growing up in Jersey, Chuck E. Cheese was the perfect stop after a day of fun and bruises at Action Park.
During the pandemic, I noticed our local Chuck E. Cheese has a sign in the window saying 'Medium pizzas $5'. I just had to try it after having gone to that same location when I was a kid. The pizza tasted the exact same as it had 20 years ago except this time I immediately started feeling ill. God I miss Chuck E. Cheese.
Did you think for half a minute that it was why the pizzas were on sale so cheap?? Maybe they tasted just like they did when you were a child, because they were old inventory from around that time... Oh yeah! They don't recycle pizzas, right? lol
The last 10 min were truly a fever dream that even Nolan Bushnell couldn't have imagined. I loved it
“Looking like he is free basing tryptophan.” Brilliant 😂😂
Laughed*
Lmao 👏 yea, that was a hilarious line! I laughed out loud, so loud, that in the silence of my apartment, I scared myself 🤣😆🤭
fuck e cheese rebrand when?
Did I just see a mother with a child in her arms in the middle of fight throwing punches as well. Impressive. Now that is multitasking.
Strong Southern women.
I think you call that "bringing a shield to a fist fight"
My dad was the project manager for Chuck E Cheese. Built them all over the country. And yes..they were all doing coke back then
isn't the original owner creator the same person that created Atari?
project manager is a different role. Different person, also high up in the company but not the founder.@@Rob-ze1wi
@@Rob-ze1wi yes. Nolan Bushnell
This man has the best timing when he speaks. Everything he says amuses me no matter how boring I think the topic will be.
You guys missed this detail, but the person who programmed them to sing “Love in this Club” was Aaron Fechter himself using his own Rock-a-Fire Explosion setup.
John is giving me flashbacks from the 3 summers I spent working at Chuck E. Cheese in my teens in the 90s. I thought I had properly suppressed those memories 😵💫
Did you spend any time in the changing room closet?😊
@@andrewsang4688Why yes I did 😅
It was actually the break room at my CEC, so everybody was always in and out of there and only rarely did anything exciting happen in there aside from bitching about the kids, parents and management.
It was '84 or '85 in West Virginia. I thought I had that giant cup of coins at a Chucky Cheese. No, girl, the best birthday party of my single digits had been at a Showbiz pizza. I remember the freaking band.
There was a pressed sugar medallion on top of my cake. I got to eat it myself while watching animatronics for the first time. Queen of the world.
Tell me We Were Swingin didn’t come to mind😂
I had my 6th or 7th birthday party at ShowBiz. I still have a picture. I loved ShowBiz!!!!
Me too. Southwest PA though, not WV. We only ever had a Chuck E Cheese. But I remember the Showbiz band. I didn't go to a Showbiz until my mid teens. I have no clue how my childhood memories are so mixed up. I render the dog and rat in the picture frames and the band in the corner with full motion (but it was only 4-5 members).
When I just to watch something to make me smile, which I definitely needed today, I watch this episode. It's both historical and funny at the same time.
The largest fight I’ve ever witnessed occurred at a Chuck E Cheese in FL about 15 years ago. A woman was celebrating her baby’s 1st birthday with her friends and family when the baby’s father walked in with the mother of his other daughter who was also there to celebrate her 1st birthday 😳 As soon as their group walked in, words were exchanged . There were about 30 adults fighting in front of 100 kids.
A classy place for classy people.
Florida is one hell of a drug
Wow 😮. He impregnated both women on the same night.
That's what happened at alot of ours here... and then shootings in the parking lot ... multiple times... almost closed the chuck e cheeses down here over it
wish i coulda been there
I was half-expecting them to have bought a set of the animatronics to play a number at the end.
Now that you mention it…I’m actually surprised they didn’t. Considering they buy just about everything else lol!
26:52 HBO lawyers: *sighs and pulls out a box marked “Litigious Entity Combat Equipment”
As a DND player this made me laugh more than it should’ve
What does it mean? I have not heard such of a phrase @@sonorasgirl
@@hiya-de5hd
Basically they're saying that HBO needs to prepare for another lawsuit, and the other comment is saying that the phrasing used was similar to how a DND party would prepare their equipment for battle.