Intro to Lost Media

Welcome to Cheese-E-Pedia! This introduction article will help you get started with the basics to venture into our tons of articles.

The Lost Media of the animatronics community, also referred to as ‘data’ in it, is vast and full of interesting stories. Here is a list of notable things yet to be found.

Pizza Time Theatre

Atari Family Game Center

The Atari Family Game Center was a collection of arcades by Atari between 1974-1975, predating Pizza Time Theatre but playing a role in its creation. No pictures of any of the 6 locations have been found, and any info on them is extremely elusive outside of promotional material and a few newspaper pages.

Rick Rat Manufacturer

The Rick Rat Walkaround was Nolan Bushnell’s historical purchase at the 1974 IAAPA convention that kicked off the ‘Coyote Pizza’ project which later turned into Pizza Time Theatre. Nolan does not seem to know who he bought it from anymore, but many alternative Rick Rat styled costumes from the same makers have appeared across the country. The earliest is seen in February 1975, likely bought from the same event, but some show up as late as 1978 with Busch Garden’s golden, gray, and black mascot costumes. No manufacturer has been tracked down, though also no costumes currently remaining today have had their insides checked for a manufacturer tag or label.

Chuck E.’s First Announcement / Gospel of St. Pong

Just before the opening of the first Pizza Time Theatre location at San Jose, CA (370 S Winchester Blvd), a few months prior in February of 1977, a company-wide announcement made by Chuck E. Cheese would be published urging Atari employees to wait a bit longer for the restaurant to open due to delays with the city of San Jose. This would be the first known instance of anything published by the Pizza Time Theatre team, alongside the first known use of the name ‘Chuck E. Cheese’, which prior in October of 1976 was ‘The Big Cheese’ (Though it is likely this name change was done before the end of that year). [5]

It is highly likely this announcement was through the Gospel of St. Pong newsletter, as in The Gospel of St. Pong Revisited - Vol 4, April 1977 later that year, Chuck E. directly talks to the reader about the upcoming Grand Opening Revue. The St. Pong newsletter is almost entirely lost, with only the first 4 pages of the April 1977 issue being found, and a few copies from 1973 being uploaded. It is possible that The Big Cheese had made an appearance in an even earlier newsletter, or additional notes about Pizza Time Theatre were included until PTT made their own paper with ‘The Pizza Times’ in December 1979.

Early Winchester/Kooser Documents

A compilation of early San Jose, CA (370 S Winchester Blvd) and Kooser documents were found to be owned by Gene Landrum titled the PTT Basic Ordering Agreement. Pictures of 9 of the pages were taken in 2020, providing tons of insight into the development of Pizza Time Theatre, but the entire collection (which as currently known goes at least to 35 pages) was never preserved.

Winchester Special Tracks

While it is believed that most, if not all of the first Pizza Time Theatre Showtape is found and contained within the myriad of tracks on the recovered CDs it was found on, there are certainly special tracks not present on it. The Gospel of St. Pong Revisited - Vol 4, April 1977 notes that Four additonal special tracks could be played, described as ‘special animated noise distracters programmed by the bartender’, presuming that “programmed” implies scheduled, or potentially referring to the fact they would use Pasqually’s announcement speakers to specify the occasion.

None of the audio for these is present on those CDs. Most likely the track ‘Birthday One, Honey Bun’, which was seen partially in the 1979 Winchester footage, is the birthday track, though not fully confirmed.[7] This version is also only sort of complete. The full skit was rereleased with Mr. Munch dubbed over Crusty later on, and most of the Crusty segments are heard in the video outside of the final song at the end. [8] What makes it unclear if the birthday was used for the opening in 1977 is that another birthday song was found for the Madame Oink showtape in 1978, showing new birthdays were already being recorded. [9]

Second Set of Warblettes, or V2 Warblettes

On January 8th, 1978, a newspaper would write about Fantasy Forest and its building at Victorville, CA (15367 Tamarack Unit B). There pictures would show them working on Winchester Madam Oink (Animatronic), set to debut the next month, Kooser Dolli Dimples (Animatronic), set for the Kooser location in Winter of that year, and the newer wide-mouthed walkaround heads.

Specifically mentioned and shown were a second set of Warblettes, unfinished. The molds look similar, and almost exact in beak shape, to ones found already at San Jose, CA (370 S Winchester Blvd). Notably however is the only pictures of the Warblettes prior to this image, taken likely around or on opening day, have them obscured and not entirely visible. Proper shots of the Warblettes come later in 1979. It is possible the Warblettes were recieving a V2 animatronic, just as Chuck and Crusty recieved updates in June of that year. It is known the display the Warblettes sat in had to be redone after the opening of the store in May 1977 due to a malfunction as well.

If the Warblettes were never updated and the V1 Warblettes aren’t lost media, these would likely be made for the Kooser Road location before being scrapped and replaced with the Kooser Mopsey Sisters (Animatronic) before opening. In which case it is unclear why they were scrapped, and where they ended up.

Commercials

In 1979 Pizza Time Theatre would do an ad campaign called the ‘Great All-American Pizza Show’. This included the The Great All-American Pizza Show! (Radio Ad), which has been found, but also the The Great All-American Pizza Show! (Commercial), which has only had storyboards surface.

The Pizza Time Theatre 1979 Spot (Commercial) also premiered that year with lost footage of the Concord, CA (1975 Diamond Blvd) and Citrus Heights, CA (7614 Greenback Lane) locations.

Finally, the Pizza Time Theatre 1979 Animated Spot (Commercial) would have scans of its animation cels leaked online in August of 2022, featuring Chuck E. Cheese, Pasqually, and a kid. It is currently unknown if this commercial is also the prior spot filmed at Concord and Citrus Heights.

Kooser Main Show

The Kooser Main Show & Dolli Showtape is semi-lost showtape, being the debut tape of the second Pizza Time Theatre store, San Jose, CA (1371 Kooser Rd). Its Dolli portion has been widely available, as it was rereleased for Cyberamics in 1979. The main portion however has only had a few snippets of its confirmed 12 segments available. Interestingly, shots of the programming room at Kooser during the supposed run of this tape shows two differently labeled tapes at different times. This suggests that either the main tape was copied due to wear, a revision of the tape was made, or an entirely new tape was created, meaning more lost media.

Pre-SongCode Signals / Software

A collection of the earliest showtapes were produced on the Winchester Hardware Setup at the San Jose, CA (370 S Winchester Blvd) location. While audio from these tapes have surfaced thanks to preservation efforts within Pizza Time Theatre, no trace of the signals or their software have been found. It is unclear how much of the formatting changed from the Winchester setup to the later SongCode programs that lasted from 1978 to 1990.

(Notably, the earliest SongCode signals recovered so far is a rerelease of the Christmas Medley segment, which first appeared in the Sally 1 / Xmas / USA showtape in November of 1979.)

Showboat

Showboat is another lost tape from San Jose, CA (1371 Kooser Rd), this time exlusively played during its debut of Cyberamics in the week of April 21st-27th, 1980. A poster, advertisement, reviews, and a stage photo have been found, yet nothing from the actual tape has surfaced.

Dr. Quack

Dr. Quack (Cyberamic) is a lost Cabaret test character that debuted at the Simi Valley, CA (71 Tierra Rejada Rd) location in 1980. Their showtape is confirmed to have been made up children’s songs and nursery rhymes. Two different designs of the character have also been seen, both at the Sunnyvale, CA offices. The character has often been confused with the name of the Pizza Time Theatre diagnostic showtapes, which are usually labeled “Dr. Dux Diagnostic” or “Dr. Duck’s Diagnostic”.

Electric Pizza

Electric Pizza is an obscure Pizza Time Theatre themed arcade cabinet likely tested at locations in the California area near the company’s headquarters. The arcade was sold on eBay in 2013 from Napa, CA, and listed stating “I think this is one of the early hand-built prototypes”. It is unclear if this was made in-house prior to 1983, or something Sente Technologies prototyped after being bought out by Pizza Time Theatre in ‘83. No direct gameplay is shown outside of screenshots of the cabinet turned on.

Full Speed Ahead Revue Show

Full Speed Ahead Revue Show is a potential lost showtape that was exclusive to the 1982 PTT Convention (Event), which debuted on October 2, 1982 at 8:30am in Hawaii. It is unclear if this was a show performed by the dressed up Chuck E. and Madame Oink costumes confirmed at the event, or a video showtape of Cyberamics (The event features a video of Cyberamics in action later in the day). Cyberamics were present at the event, as the only shot of the revue has Paula Mulcahy singing alongside the Warblettes. The tape may have been a mix of showtape and live performances.

Chuck E. Cheese’s

Strike it Up

Strike It Up is one of the most infamous pieces of lost media in the fandom. It was a live show that lasted only 3 months between August and November of 1996. Only home recordings were available to the community until a stereo version of the audio was uploaded in 2022, revealing the song was originally set to appear in the 1996 Chuck E. Cheese's Awesome Tune Tracks. [1][2]

Despite this, full video and showtape signals for the tape have never surfaced, despite almost every CEC showtape having some sort of rip online. No listings or images of the in-store tape have ever appeared online. Over time enough home videos would surface to be able to view most of the video feed second hand. In December of 2021 a single second of raw footage would be shown after the original Studio C Premiere was found, with the clip appearing in Segment 2.[3]

A CEC corporate employee, Donovan Marcelle, would occasionally do livestreams on Instagram throughout the early 2020’s detailing his progress on programming upcoming showtapes. During one of these livestreams, after constant pressure from the community, he would show the original master tape for the 3-Stage variant of the show. On September 11th, 2022, Donovan would start a stream showing a potential DVD rip of the tape, before cutting the disc up with scissors to mess with his viewers.[4]

Cyberamics Betamax Videos

Cyberamics Betamax was an early form of the Cybervision update to stores that included video with showtapes. Two stores contained this test with exclusive video footage paired alongside its shows from January of 1987 to sometime in 1988 (likely March of 1988).

Some of the footage would be reused with rereleased segments in 1988, which were sent out to all stores. In 1989 more segments were rereleased, but with their video remade in the newer bluescreen style of 1989’s Cyberstar production. Since all of the betamax tapes are lost it is also possible these releases had changes from their rereleased counterparts.

The Final Plastic Mask Retrofit Pages

During the conversion from the latex masks to the plastic masks for the 3-Stage in the early 2000’s, each retrofit would recieve a document going over the retrofitting process. These would include dates on the paper, which was a way to date when each retrofit took place. Most of the documents have been preserved, showing us the following timeline:

Pasqually’s document is completely missing, making it unclear when he was installed (though this is theorized to be 2001 due to a mask being dated March 2001). Helen’s first page for her document is also missing. [10]

CEC Show 1 2020 (Covid Refresh)

Chuck E. Cheese's Show 1 2020 (Covid Refresh) (Also referred to as Show 1.5 2020) is a semi-lost showtape that ran for only two days, June 21st and June 22nd, 2020. While a good majority of Rockstar shows have been archived, especially with tons of eBay listings for Studio C floppies dating between 2019 and 2022, no showtape DVDs or floppy disks have been discovered and backed up for the Covid Refresh show.

(For trying to keep in good graces with CEC Entertainment no Rockstar era showtapes are downloadable or available online.)

ShowBiz Pizza Place

1989 Breakfast Birthday Promo

SPP Faith / Dreams / Kids, a showtape released in August of 1989, was found in a home video to have a lost clip inserted into its first intermission segment, just before the countdown. It says:

‘Something different is happening at ShowBiz on Saturdays. [Rooster crowing, indescernable noise] What’s more fun than Saturday mornings at ShowBiz? A birthday party breakfast at ShowBiz. [Children cheering]’

The home video doesn’t point the camera at any TVs during the segment, keeping the video lost media. Any other promotional material or offers for Saturday breakfasts at ShowBiz are also lost if they exist.

References

  1. https://youtu.be/00jqSXcRsTw
  2. https://youtu.be/AJd7w7HWcH0
  3. https://archive.org/details/studio-c-premiere-show
  4. https://youtu.be/yTMRMxk7SCI
  5. https://archive.org/details/atariincbusiness0000gold/page/216/mode/2up?q=chuck+e
  6. https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/newsletters/st_pong/st_pong.html
  7. https://youtu.be/ucg8MujPDQA
  8. https://youtu.be/O92knC8wPhA?list=RDO92knC8wPhA
  9. https://youtu.be/idJtxyMRlj4
  10. https://forum.cheeseepedia.org/t/helen-latex-to-plastic-retrofit-document-found/39