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ShowBiz Pizza Place > Training, Updates, & Company Media

Save The Colander Telethon (1983)

The Save The Colander Telethon is a video tape sent to ShowBiz Pizza Place stores in February of 1983 with their Crazy Colander Head Night package. The tape is 01:23:48 long, and mostly contains the telethon segment, while also containing a colander installation tape for the animatronic characters during the event.

Fake Event

Despite the telethon obviously not being live when it was sent as a video tape to ShowBiz Stores, reuploads of the event online decades later without proper context would not give the joke away to viewers, causing them to possibly believe it was live until the very end of the tape where Aaron Fechter spells it out. Without prior knowledge of the event, the only way to guess before the end that the telethon wasn't live is realizing the scripted final segment of missing one store from the pledges.

Summary

The Save The Colander Telethon is a simulated telethon that pretends to be gathering pledges from ShowBiz Pizza Place stores across the country live for their support to make the Crazy Colander Head Night event a reality. In actuality, the event was already confirmed to be happening, and stores that received this tape also received all promo items needed for the event. The tape's true purpose is to hype up stores for the event by showcasing the Colander-head movement, alongside demonstrations of the upcoming Crazy Colander Head Night showtape songs, and demonstrations of the Colander History and Indoctrination that employees will perform with guests. The event would physically take place in Creative Engineering, with the audience comprising entirely of Creative Engineering employees. All of them would receive a signed character photo after the event.

Contents Summary

The tape opens with the event's main song, 'Strain Your Brain'. This is then followed up by an introduction to a fake celebrity guest, being Lawrence Welk- actually played by Fatz's voice actor Burt Wilson. Lawrence Welk was an obsession of Burt, whom would often reference him in Rock-afire Explosion showtapes when writing them.(1) The tape then shows various departments and behind the scenes looks at Creative Engineering. Notably the 2nd Generation Beach Bear Prototype (Animatronic)|2nd Generation Beach Bear Prototype can be seen during this segment. Next the first fake total pledge count is revealed to be 3, and Aaron Fechter goes into explaining the telethon to viewers. After this, a tape of the 'History of the Colander' segment is shown with Aaron as the demonstrative employee stand-in. After this the second restaurant total is brought up to 89. For the majority of the rest of the tape, the hosts go around the room introducing various Creative Engineering employees alongside doing skits and gags. One employee pretends that Pizza Time Theatre calls and claims they will be running a parallel event- except with patrons trying refrigerators to their backs. In the middle of introductions a video showing Dave Thomas working on a new Beach Bear mask sculpt is shown. This new sculpt would never make it into stores. After another employee introduction, another video is shown showing off 2nd Generation Mitzi Mozzarella (Animatronic)|2nd Generation Mitzi Mozzarella and Uncle Klunk. Then introductions turn to the voice actors and musicians for the Rock-afire Explosion. 'Lawrence Welk' goes up to Rick Bailey mistakenly introducing him as Mitzi, to which he proceeds to kick him out of the room. This allows Burt to change back into a new set of clothes to come back on stage as himself. After the rest of the VAs are introduced, the band plays a medley of songs, being 'Fire', 'On the Road Again', 'Gloria', 'Secret Agent Man', 'Framed', and 'My Gal is Red Hot'. Next the audience takes the Colander-head oath, a demonstration for when employees will supervise the oath in-store. After three cheers, a final restaurant pledge total is revealed at 148- one short of the needed 100% total. Aaron reveals that 'Gordon Prince's' store Nashville, TN (1370 Murfreesboro Pike) hasn't called in yet. The audience then begins shouting Gordon Prince's name until they finally call in, having the entire crowd erupt in cheers. Aaron then goes on to break the fourth wall and discuss the telethon and the ShowBiz event, encouraging stores to still call in to pledge their support. It is unknown what would be said over the phone upon stores calling in. Lastly is the colander installation portion of the tape. This section shows what tools will be needed, installation of Billy Bob's colander, and proper measurements for the rest of the characters.

Contents

References

  1. http://www.showbizpizza.com/rae/characters/fatz.html
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