Friday, December 18, 2009

Electronic Theatre Restaurants Corp.

Chuck E. Cheese is a great concept with varied execution. I remember the rapid movements of the animatronic characters being very nerve-wracking & un-natural, as well as characters receding in & out of the darkness in order to emphasize or de-emphasize their role in the "show" making me feel like i was going to be attacked at any moment. Combine that with the open bench seating, the constant birthday party atmosphere & then the arcade full of screaming games & rides with the volumes cranked up, you've got sensory overload & a generally totally crazed environment. But, it sticks in my head, i only went to Chuck E. Cheese's twice in the 80s & it has been an obsessional figure-head in my archive of cool crap.

The basic concept is to create a mini theme park. Adding all of the characters & songs & crap like that builds up a cultural body for your restaurant or whatever. Why can't bars be like this? (too scary)

When we're hurtling through outer space this kind of stuff will be mandatory! It might take us hundreds of years to get from one planet to another so there better be ways of keeping us busy!

You can easily imagine McDonalds taking up this mode & forcing employees to dress as Ronald & Mayor McCheese & having Fry Guys dancing around. More excitingly this could be extended to things like sushi bars with Ultraman themes. All human organizations need mascots & then real-world costumes of these mascots wandering around.

4 comments:

Jason J. McKay said...

We could learn alot from the Japanese...maybe we DO need somebody to nuke one of our cities and mutate our pop culture!!

SEAN ÄABERG said...

IT would have to be America from the 30s/40s doing it for the experiment to work out.

ruxton said...

It will be like that in bars once we put the polish on our live shows.

SEAN ÄABERG said...

YES!