Rock-a-fire Explosion

Welcome to Showbiz Pizza

Ahhh, Showbiz Pizza. That's nostalgic... way back when Saturday Morning Cartoons were good and Pizza was riding the wave of popularity brought on by highly trained amphibians with Renaissance Fair Flair, there was Showtime Pizza. Later bought out by the soulless Chuck E. Cheese (just look at the name for God's sake! He sounds Wall street already!) Showbiz Pizza was the original pizza place with arcade and robotic slave band. There was Billy Bob Brockali, Fatz Geronimo, Mitzi Mozzerella, Dook Larue, and Beach Bear, along with a whole bunch of 'gag' characters.

The "Faith" Show

There were also various performance reels that the restaurant could buy, each containing different 'sets' and programmed movements for the 'cast'. Unfortunately Showbiz seemed to lose the arms race against Chuck E. Cheese, eventually leading to all my Showbiz points becoming null and void.

Creative Engineering INC. made all of the robotics for Showbiz/Chuck E. Cheese. But they also made individual robots, including several various ape characters. A robot ape who speaks Shakespeare? Sounds like genius to this humble writer! But could the talking robotic monkey fetish be the beginning of the end?

Will the GoWilla

By the time the Myrtle Beach Showbiz converted into a Chuck E. Cheese's, I began to lose the faith. Sure, the temptation of using my good grades to receive tokens was still there (I remember a kid wanted to borrow my report card to score some tokens), but why spend my time in a place that smelled more and more like urine as the years piled on? Plus eventually, there weren't even any robots! The Cyberstar show came along, and all the action was being televised, I guess while the real band went on tour.

Cyberstar Fractured Rock

But was this all elaborate fantasy? Is the past always better than the here and now? For more answers, we need to take a look at the people behind the scenes. What about the character actors who had to live under the shadow of the robot talent?

Walkabout Training Video