Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Dreams Die - and, oh, Animatronics



Hat tip to Randy Milholland

6 comments:

Chris Sobieniak said...

Heh, I saw this doc. sometime last year and only wished I had gone to a Showbiz myself, then I could understand.

Chris Sobieniak said...

I never even had a CEC until the mid 90's around my parts. I had to make due with Rock-Afire clones for the most part.

Chris Sobieniak said...

Could've shared that doc. too since I downloaded it someplace. You have to give these guys credit for trying (especially that one guy who tried to set-up his own Showbiz using one of the last working Rock-Afire Explosions he paid big money for.

Anonymous said...

I remember seeing the commercials for Showbiz Pizza, but never went to one. The closest one was probably 2 hours away.

-danno

Unknown said...

You've gotta wonder why nobody's tried to do this again. I mean, look at Chuck E. Cheez, it's doing pretty good. Why not start an animatronic pizzeria in the 21st century? The tech has gotta be better these days, right?

Chris Sobieniak said...

I remember seeing the commercials for Showbiz Pizza, but never went to one. The closest one was probably 2 hours away.
-danno


For me, it was probably less than an hour's drive to one of the Detroit suburbs! Because I mostly watched a Detroit station for cartoons in the afternoons, I would often see a Showbiz ad by default, but in Toledo, the best we had was "Razz-Ma-Taz", which lasted a year or so, and Major Magic's (a Detroit-based operation that managed to get one down here that ended up being the longest-operating store in the now-gone chain (itself closed up shop last year), someone apparently forgot to tell those guys they're closed as their webpage is still up...
http://www.majormagic.com/

You've gotta wonder why nobody's tried to do this again. I mean, look at Chuck E. Cheez, it's doing pretty good. Why not start an animatronic pizzeria in the 21st century? The tech has gotta be better these days, right?

Well, CEC is practically the only one left, though you do wonder why they wouldn't in this day and age, let alone what new technologies could be at use this time around (and whether or not today's audience are still in for bad pizza, loud noises and children hawking skee-ball tickets).