ShowBiz Pizza Place (also known simply as ShowBiz Pizza) was an American animatronic arcade chain that existed from 1980 until 1994. ShowBiz was and still is most known for its Rock-afire Explosion animatronic band, created by Creative Engineering. This was an animatronic band that had 11 different characters featured across three stages. These characters would later be converted into Munch's Make Believe Band during Concept Unification.
History[]
Prologue (1979-1980)[]
The history of ShowBiz Pizza Place begins with Nolan Bushnell (the founder and then head of Pizza Time Theatre) and his attempts of trying to attract franchisees. Nolan's effects would eventually lead to him attracting several clients of which one Robert L. Brock was included. Robert, also known as Bob for short, was the President of Topeka Inn Management and took immediate interest. This eventually led to TIM and PTT Inc. signing a deal to open 285 PTTs by 1984, with 200 being directly operated by TIM, and 85 being sub-franchised.[1] This deal was agreed upon and finalized by December 1979.
But several months later, Brock forfeit his agreement with PTT Inc., instead hiring Creative Engineering to create an animatronic show for a new PTT-inspired pizza arcade chain. This new company was called ShowBiz Pizza Place, with the first chain's location opening in Kansas City, Missouri on March 3rd, 1980.
Pre-Merger (1980-1984)[]
The first ShowBiz location featured the use of one of CEI's other animatronic shows called the Wolf Pack 5. This was due to the Rock-afire Explosion still being in a developmental state at the time of the location's opening. They would be officially introduced with the opening of Jacksonville, Florida in August 1980. Not long after the establishment of ShowBiz, a furious Bushnell sued both ShowBiz and Brock due to a breach of contract, with the case going well into 1982.
Both chains began rapidly expanding across the country offering varieties of entertainment. Creative Engineering created characters such as Uncle Klunk, which would replace stage right. The court case was also eventually settled, leading to ShowBiz agreeing to pay PTT Inc. a portion of their profits for the next 14 years.
Due to to the massive amount of cheaply made and low effort consoles, the video game crash of 1983 occurred. This crash severely affected both PTT and ShowBiz as both companies sales began to rapidly decline, eventually leading to Pizza Time Theatre declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 28th, 1984. ShowBiz decided to buy out their competitor, with the sale being finalized by 1985, leading to the two companies to form ShowBiz Pizza Time, Inc.
ShowBiz Pizza Time, Inc. (1984-1993)[]
The merger ended up marking the beginning of the end of ShowBiz Pizza Place as a brand. Richard M. Frank became the CEO of ShowBiz Pizza Time in 1985, and immediately began costs cutting measures everywhere. Around this time, new rules were placed on Rock-afire Explosion showtapes that the spoken intros could not surpass a minute, and the Country Night II showtape had the band constantly bemoaning this. Then, ShowBiz Pizza Time approached Creative Engineering CEO Aaron Fechter and demanded that he sign over the rights to the Rock-afire Explosion; according to Fechter, he refused because ShowBiz expected him to do so for free, and he also had plans to create an animated series with the characters; he also stated that ShowBiz Pizza Time wanted Creative Engineering to maintain the Pizza Time Theater animatronics, which Fechter also refused to do because he viewed the Cyberamic Animatronics as "crude" compared to his own animatronics, which were much more advanced in comparison. In 1986, ShowBiz Pizza Time completely cut Creative Engineering out of show production, creating a series of showtapes that were programmed and recorded by ShowBiz itself, with subpar programming and characters that sounded off, not to mention a campy, overly-positive tone compared to the Creative showtapes, which had a more realistic feel with adult humor. Many of these tapes were also homogenized, sharing an overall theme with contemporary Pizza Time Player showtapes.
The climax of the "programming wars" was the Happy B-day Liberty showtape, created to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. The showtape included two shows, one by ShowBiz corporate, and one by Creative Engineering. The ShowBiz version was described as "overly campy, super positive, lacking in refinement", and featured traditional patriotic songs, while the Creative version, titled "The Liberty Show", had much higher production values, contemporary pop hits about America, and not a single joke was made during the show (including a moment of silence to reflect upon how lucky they are to be living in the United States).
Later, in December, Creative Engineering sent out an unauthorized Christmas showtape to all locations, who, also suffering under ShowBiz's cuts, gladly played it over the ShowBiz-produced Christmas tape (whose existence has never been confirmed). The tape was twelve minutes long, done in a single take, and completely improvised, and involved the characters sitting around, talking about what the true meaning of Christmas is to them, thanking the store managers (even naming actual stores and their managers), and stating their intent to always stay together. After this, ShowBiz reached a compromise with Creative: while they would continue programming the tapes, Creative would be allowed to do the writing and recording. Some tapes were still homogenous with contemporary Pizza Time Players tapes, but the stories were vastly different, a good example being "The Tune Machine" showtape (in the Pizza Time Players version, the titular Tune Machine is a time machine Chuck E. created, while in the Rock-afire Explosion version, it is Fatz's keyboard that can make any sound in the world). ShowBiz also evidently dropped the "one-minute rule", as the talking segments in the new tapes were much longer than a minute, culminating in the New Years '88 showtape, which was a 54-minute showtape without any breaks or intermissions and recorded live and without any rehearsal, which created the illusion that the show was live and that the Rock-afire Explosion was an actual band.
Now unable to get the rights to the Rock-afire Explosion, ShowBiz Pizza Time instead turned to outright replacing them with licensed characters. Ideas bandied around included Garfield, Spider-Man, and Bumblebee from The Transformers, before ShowBiz managed to license Yogi Bear, and tested the show at three locations.
Ultimately, ShowBiz chose to replace the Rock-afire Explosion with the Pizza Time Players. The first prototype used the home theme that contemporary Pizza Time Player stages utilized, and was tested at the Montford Dr location in Dallas. In a process known as Concept Unification, the decision was ultimately made to pick and choose the best elements of both bands, combining the Pizza Time Players with the look and feel of The Rock-afire Explosion to create Munch's Make Believe Band. The process began in 1990, and by September of that year, Aaron Fechter, in utter disgust, cut all ties with ShowBiz Pizza Time. Despite this, several ShowBiz franchises stayed loyal to Creative Engineering and became independent restaurants with different names, all with full support from Creative. The Concept Unification process was carried out in a piecemeal manner, until the final restaurant was converted in January 1993, at which point the ShowBiz Pizza Place name was retired, though the company was known as ShowBiz Pizza Time until it went public in 1998 and became CEC Entertainment Limited.
In the 2000s and 2010s, ShowBiz Pizza Place has been mentioned in several Munch's Make Believe Band showtapes, but the Rock-afire Explosion cannot be mentioned, as Fechter still owns the characters and still bears a grudge against CEC Entertainment (despite this, he actually set foot in a Chuck E. Cheese's in 2004 during the first CheeseVention fan convention), going as far as to send a cease-and-desist to the company when the characters were prominently featured on a mini-website celebrating the company's 40th anniversary in 2017. Of the former ShowBiz Pizza Place locations, only Charlotte, NC (7701 Pineville-Matthews Rd) still has a 3-Stage, the rest having been converted into Studio C, Circles of Light, or Chuck E. Live Stages, or demolished when the store closed.