Former Rare Staff
The Pizza Time Players, well-recognized (and slightly creepy) animatronics band at Chuck E. Cheese, are retiring 40 years after they first appeared in the restaurant in 1977.
Videos by Rare
“Kids stopped watching the animatronic shows,” explained Tom Leverton, CEO of the company that owns the restaurant. “What we’ve seen over time with improvements in tech, with screens, and the expectations of kids today, the animatronics aren’t the main draw.”
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The change is not immediate. The Pizza Time Players will slowly disappear from restaurants over the course of the next couple of years.
Musician Father John Misty eulogized the band members, jokingly thanking them for inspiring him to pursue a career in music, writing:
Having been a professional musician for a few years now, I can appreciate firsthand not only the strain of trying to sustain a flow of creativity for so long but the rigorous, pretty unexotic feat of physical endurance just getting through a few hundred shows a year, plus all the travel, is. When I consider that this motherfucker was playing up to 5 sets a night all over the country simultaneously i am reminded that, yes, it can be done, and that just by getting on that stage every night and leaving everything up there, I am part of lineage, of a collective imagination that spans the generations.
Other saddened adults can also remember some of the band’s historical moments:
