Evolution of Chuck E Cheese! | Chuck E Cheese Character History

Welcome to tpmvids! If you're new to the channel, hit the subscribe button and click the bell icon to get notified when we upload a new video. The face of Chuck E Cheese restaurants is Chuck E Cheese himself, whose full name is actually Charles Entertainment Cheese's. He's been around since the company was founded in 1977 and you could probably consider him, in some ways, an icon of American entertainment. When you visit Chuck E Cheese's, you're sure to see Chuck awake and interacting with everyone in the restaurant. Now, along with animatronics, learning about

chuck

e

cheese

has become one of the staples of restaurant visits.

Now Chuck E Cheese restaurants themselves have a long

history

and with the natural

evolution

of time, the Chuck E Cheese

character

has gone through some changes. Specifically in this video, we will look at the

character

changes through the mascot walk, as well as the appearance used for marketing purposes. So today we're going to talk about the

evolution

of the Chuck E Cheese character! The stages of development So we'll start from the beginning, around 1974. During the development of the restaurant, its founder, Nolan Bushnell, also a co-founder of Atari, was at the IAAPA Expo, which is the international entertainment association. exhibition of parks and attractions.

There he saw what he thought was a generic coyote costume. He commissioned it and began designing the restaurant around this costume, calling it Coyote Pizza. Well, Bushnell was given the mascot character and then realized it had a pink tail and was actually a rat. You can see how the original rat costume Bushnell received had a lot of hair and actually looked like a coyote. So after this discovery, the restaurant would be called Rick Rat's Pizza with Ricky Rat; which could be said to have been Bushnell's nod to Disney's Mickey Mouse. Ricky Rat, Mickey Mouse, both names have the same fluidity, don't you think?

While the costume was in Bushnell's possession during the restaurant's development stages, Rick Rat became Atari's unofficial mascot in the mid-'70s. Well, in the end, the Ricky Rat name didn't end up working because it was deemed it not kid-friendly, but we all know what name they ended up choosing, and here Bushnell describes why they chose the name Chuck E Cheese. Because we wanted the smile. Chuck E. Chuck E Cheese. We wanted the smile. We wanted this name so you couldn't tell he wouldn't smile. And it's true. Right now try saying Chuck E Cheese without smiling…. See, when you say

cheese

it forces you to smile.

That's why we also say cheese when we take pictures! Cheese 1980s When Chuck E Cheese's Pizza Time Theater restaurant first opened, Harold Goldbrandsen is the man responsible for creating and designing the Chuck E Cheese mascot. It was based on the original suit that Bushnell bought at IAAPA Epxo and it still had that long snout and those really big teeth. He looked like a rat, which arguably wasn't the most attractive look. So, to soften the Rat's appearance, he was given a red derby hat, a yellow t-shirt, a cashmere vest and, to top it all off, a bow tie.

This look was used from the opening of the first Pizza Time Theater location in 1977 until around 1980. Now, in the early '80s, the company began to grow and Pizza Time Theater was having trouble keeping the costume design of Chuck due to material availability. So in May 1981, Chuck received a new yellow and red diamond vest that was screen printed to ensure that all vests were exactly the same. Now, this commercial also features the articulated Chuck E Cheese character who could blink and move his mouth. Hang in there, Howie. Through our research it appears that the articulated

chuck

e cheese character was only used for promotional commercials during the 1980s and did not regularly appear in restaurants.

Now, sometime in the early '80s, the Chuck character walking in the restaurant seemed to have been given new facial features, including pinkish red checks and a red lower lip. During the '80s, this seemed to have become the standard facial expression seen in restaurants. But I must say that it looks a bit cheap compared to the previous design. Sometime between 1983 and 1984, Chuck was given a plain red vest which can be seen here in this 1984 commercial. Now, comparing the articulated character to the normal restaurant mascot, Chuck's commercial snout had much more features. soft and less narrow than the character of the resulting ones.

This probably had something to do with the mechanism needed to make the mouth move. It seems that the commercial Chuck is also the only time he appears with mustaches... but here in the restaurant in 1986 you can see how long and pointy Chuck's snout really was. The mid-80s is also the time when Pizza Time Theater went bankrupt and was bought by Showbiz Pizza Place. Although they remained independent restaurants for the first few years, there was some crossover between the Chuck E Cheese characters and the ShowBiz Pizza Place characters. During this time, Chuck continued to sport the red vest and derby hat until the early '90s, when the company began to merge and brand all restaurants as Chuck E Cheese's.

Where a child can be a child! Around 1990, Chuck ditched the red vest and debuted his Tuxedo style that included gold lapels and a red bow tie. They still had the red derby hat which was now paired with the red bow tie to match Chuck's new dapper look. Now it seems like this could perhaps have been done as a response to look more like Mickey Mouse. He also wears a tuxedo and bow tie and has the same red, yellow (or gold), and black color palette used for Tuxedo Chuck. This may have just been a coincidence or maybe it wasn't.

Tuxedo Chuck was only used for a couple of years and during this time, the company realized that the character needed to be more modern. They gave him a yellow t-shirt, but still kept the red derby hat, which seemed like a really strange combination of two looks. It's also safe to say that in the '90s, Chuck's face received a redesign and upgrade that gave the character much softer features that can be seen especially on his cheeks. He was given a checked build and a broader smile, a softer, less pointed muzzle, with elongated eyes and smaller ears.

This new look actually looked more like the articulated animatronic character seen in '80s commercials. Between 1994 and 1995, Chuck E Cheese received a complete overhaul and "Cool Chuck" was the next version to appear in the '90s. The most notable differences from Cool Chuck were the company's decision to ditch the red derby hat in exchange for a baseball cap and the loss of the character's tail. Various colors of hats and styles of shirts were used, but Cool Chuck, now featured in the company logo, was present for advertising purposes from 1994 to 1997. The Avengers era Probably one of the most iconic changes made to Chuck E Cheese was the appearance that became known as "Avenger Chuck." Now, this look debuted in 1997 and the character's physique was the same as Cool Chuck's, but this is where he received the purple and green hat, the purple shirt with the yellow C, and the green shorts.

You can tell the company was really trying to make it look a lot cooler and more relatable to '90s kids with the inclusion of the backwards snapback hat and skater gloves. This look appeared in every advertisement starting in 1997 but this time it was in animated form. It also appears that from the late '90s onwards, mascot characters were removed from commercials and animation was the character's medium of choice. Avenger Chuck was used solely for marketing purposes, while Cool Chuck was still seen as the walking character in restaurants from the mid-90s until around 2001. Cool Chuck also remained on the company logo until 2004, when Avenger Chuck with a thumbs up he took control.

Avenger Chuck began making appearances at the restaurant around 2001 and in 2004 this new appearance was fully implemented across all restaurants as walking characters. Now, although the company stopped using mascot characters in commercials, there was an m ad around 2008 that included the avenger's chuck e cheese ride. It also appears that in the mid to late 2000s the company also attempted to implement a toothless Chuck. I'm not exactly sure how many were made or the magnitude of this change, but it seems like it helped the company decide the direction they wanted to take the character next. Today's Rock Starting in 2012, CEC Entertainment debuted Chuck E Cheese's current look as a response to the company's continued decline in sales.

This more contemporary rock star look was probably the most drastic change ever seen in Chuck's appearance. He practically seems like a completely different character. He received much larger ears, his eyes are now green and spread much further along his head, his nose is larger, his cheeks are much wider and his teeth became smaller. He was also given a slimmer body along with jeans, a shirt similar to what the Avenger Chuck wore, and lost his hat. Honestly, the proportions of his face look a lot like Mickey Mouse's proportions, which I'm sure had some impact on this design.

Since the new design implemented was such a drastic change, there was a mixed response. Some restaurants even refused to use the updated rock star ride character saying that their avenger ride characters are still in good condition and usable. Another notable change to Chuck E Cheese's appearance is its scale. In the '90s commercials, the animated Chuck was the same height as children, but with the introduction of Rocker Chuck, his scale was reduced to the size of a real rat. Over the course of 40 years, it's quite fascinating to see the evolution of the character, going from a pointy-nosed rat to this friendlier Mickey Mouse-type version.

So what's your favorite version of Chuck over the years and what do you think of the complete redesign he received in 2012? Do you think he looks a lot more like Mickey Mouse? Leave a comment below and start a conversation. Thanks for watching! Click the TPM icon on the screen to subscribe to this channel and check out some of these other videos we're sure you'll like.