Concept Unification

Concept Unification was the process Showbiz Pizza Time, Inc. underwent to replace the Rock-Afire Explosion character's with Chuck E. Cheese's characters as a result of discourse between Creative Engineering and Showbiz Pizza.

History
During the early stage of Showbiz Pizza Place's beginning, Creative Engineering, Inc. would propose that SPP would be required to purchase a certain amount of Rock-afire Explosion shows to maintain licenses to the characters. By 1984, Showbiz Pizza Place and Aaron Fetcher, president of Creative Engineering, were no longer on good speaking terms. Around the same time Showbiz began laying off hundreds of employees as an effect of the Video game crash of 1983 and told CEI that they needed to cease production of shows immediately.

Without Showbiz Pizza buying shows, Creative Engineering would also have to lay off a mass of employees. These strains would eventually lead both companies creating an agreement to allow the purchase of Rock-afire Explosion shows to other customers. Most likely in an attempt to differentiate themselves from possible competitors, Showbiz would attempt to rebrand one of The Rock-afire Explosion shows in November 1985 to "Magic", a retrofit of the Classic Stage that gave the show room a variety show feel. This retrofit would notably not mention the Rock-afire Explosion but would name the character Billy Bob. It is speculated that the supporting characters have been left nameless to rename them at a later date.

The CEI 1986 Liberty Tape Party would only further sour the relationship between Creative Engineering and Showbiz, as it allegedly being one of the main issues that forced Showbiz to leave CEI. In summary, apparently during a party an intoxicated employee would erase the programming for SPP Happy B-day Liberty, the effect being that they'd miss the deadline for the show to ship to locations on time. Showbiz would suspend CEI from the entertainment division for a short amount of time, going as far to provide their own programming and voice acting until 1987.

Chuck E. Cheese's
Because of the recent purchase Pizza Time Theatre, Showbiz presented the possibility of retrofitting the Rock-afire Explosion to the Chuck E. Cheese characters and apparently requesting Aaron Fetcher's company to build and maintain Cyberamic shows on top of the fact of asking for all trademarks and copyrights related to The Rock-afire Explosion.

As early as September 1986 Showbiz would also experiment with replacing the Rock-afire Explosion with four options of shows with completely new characters based off of variety of animals. "We would recommend that instead of just replacing articles of clothing, as you have outlined above is that we design entirely new costumes. For instance the Billy Bob Figure may have both jacket and pants, so it is a complete change."

Gene Bullard As Chuck E. Cheese has been making his appearances in SPP locations and has been proven to be more popular with guests, they'd also begin to rebrand the White Settlement, TX, Citrus Heights, CA, and Milwaukee, WI Showbiz Pizza Place locations' with Chuck E. Cheese characters and also debut newly created concept called "Chuck E.'s House" outside of the Arlington, TX store. "Early signs of the test are quite positive," said Dick Frank, chairman, and chief executive officer. "if this proves to go well, we do see the day when the entire system will be Chuck E. Cheese.

"We're analyzing the markets and we will continue to follow it, and if we have any indication that will have a problem, we will stop it immediately. But at this point the results are favorable." Around this period they would also begin to experiment with retrofitting the Rock-afire Explosion characters with Chuck E. Cheese characters. As a result

A prototype of this show would be created, however were not to the liking of executives. In 1989 the entertainment department reevaluated their plan and gave the CEC characters new personalities, most notably making the Helen Henny character much like Mitzi Mozzarella. This in combination with new set design, would create Munch's Make Believe Band.

By December 1989 the first Munch's Make Believe Band retrofit would debut at the Montfort Dr. Dallas Texas store and would later be mandated for installation at all Showbiz Pizza locations 1990 to 1993.

Aftermath
As early as 1996 Showbiz Pizza announced the Awesome Adventure Machine, an attempt of updating the animatronic shows to the new millennium. As this concept failed, it became a blueprint for Studio C which ended up replacing a majority of 3-Stage animatronic shows.

As of current, the Chuck E. Cheese characters have been re-conceptualized several times after Concept Unification and are still being used plentifully by CEC.