If you’re a kid like me who grew up in the 1980s, there are certain unique experiences that we share that are difficult/impossible to explain to anyone who grew up in a different era. It was a decade packed with a very unique style of music, movies and fashion trends that had never occurred before and might never occur again. Much of it seems regrettable in retrospect, but for those of us of a certain age, that decade is so intertwined with good times and nostalgia that it’s impossible to look back on it with any negative feelings.
One of those unique experiences is the ShowBiz Pizza/Chuck E. Cheese birthday party. If you weren’t there, you really just can’t understand how bad food, creepy animatronics and the smell of kids’ feet can combine into a dreamlike party scenario. The two photos below were taken at my Chuck E. Cheese birthday party in 1983. Smiling, pizza grease-smeared faces hopped up on cola made with real sugar.

While at lunch with a friend last week, he asked me if I’d seen the YouTube videos of Showbiz Pizza’s animatronic band, Rock-afire Explosion, programmed to perform current pop songs. The answer was no, but I was pretty excited to get home and check it out. Now I’ll share it with you.

Here are a few things I learned while writing this post:

1. Showbiz Pizza was founded in 1980 in Kansas City, KS by Robert L. Brock, an owner of a chain of Holiday Inns.

2. 20% of the company was owned by Creative Engineering, Inc. who was tasked with creating the animatronic band, Rock-afire Explosion.

3. Creative Engineering, Inc. was founded by Aaron Fechter who is also the inventor of Whac-A-Mole. Unfortunatley, Fechter did not obtain a patent on his prototype and had it sold out from under him. In an ironic twist, ShowBiz Pizza ended up being one of the largest buyers of Whac-A-Mole games in the 80s, the profits on which Fechter did not receive a dime. Here’s Aaron Fechter telling his story on the DVD bonus material of The Rock-afire Explosion documentary.

4. That’s right, there’s a Rock-afire Explosion documentary.

5. In 1984, the ShowBiz Pizza parent company acquired Chuck E. Cheese’s after they’d filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and continued to operate the restaurants under separate names until 1990 when all ShowBiz Pizza Places were converted into Chuck E. Cheese’s, along with the animatronic Rock-afire Explosion band.

6. According to Wikipedia, the classic Rock-afire Explosion band only survives in one U.S. establishment…Billy Bob’s Wonderland in Barboursville, WV. (For those that don’t remember, Billy Bob is the hillbilly, banjo-playing, overall-clad bear that fronts the band)

Ok…I swung off on a bit of a tangent there, but back to Rock-afire Explosion playing the hits. So this small town DJ from Alabama, Chris Thrash, sought out Fechter with his dream to purchase a Rock-afire Explosion band of his own. The documentary chronicles the history of ShowBiz Pizza and Rock-afire Explosion, Chris’s story and how he reprogrammed the band to reach a new generation of fans through YouTube. Here’s a trailer for the film:

I haven’t seen the documentary yet, but it looks really interesting. You can easily find Rock-afire Explosion playing numerous tunes on YouTube, but here are the ones I feel have the best production value:

Arcade Fire – Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)

MGMT – Electric Feel

Usher – Love in This Club

Lil Wayne – Lollipop

If you retain any doubt of the 1980s cultural significance of Rock-afire Explosion, perhaps this image will erase it:

Michael Jackson with Rock-afire Explosion