He’s the KC area’s last animatronic Chuck E. Cheese mouse. And his days are numbered

The Kansas City area’s last Chuck E. Cheese mouse doesn’t do much these days.

He slowly turns his animatronic matted, gray head a few times a minute — scanning the empty stage.

His earlier incarnations performed with a band of guitar-plucking, singing animatronic animals. Later, he stood on stage solo and cracked jokes like the lone host of a late night show.

But today, the Chuck E. in Independence silently looks on while children play video games nearby. His unblinking blue eyes stare into the middle distance, his face fixed in a permanent smile as he awaits his fate. Puppet characters dance on TV screens behind him, a stark contrast to the Chuck E. of decades past.

In September, the metro’s only Chuck E. will turn his heavy head one last time. Last year, CEC Entertainment — the Irving, Texas-based parent company — announced it would phase out its animatronic bands at all but one restaurant by the end of 2024. Public outcry spurred the company to keep the bands at five locations.

The Chuck E. at 18701 E. 39th St. S. will be one of dozens of casualties in the sweeping edict. He’s a Studio C model, the most recent version.

Only 66 Studio C stages remain among the roughly 600 Chuck E. Cheese locations worldwide, with 400 in the U.S.

CEC Entertainment said it will preserve animatronic bands in Northridge, California; Nanuet and Hicksville, New York; Springfield, Illinois; and Charlotte, North Carolina.

“As for the animatronics we choose not to preserve, they are returned to our games warehouse where they are properly disassembled for the protection of our IP” — intellectual property — Allison Chouinard, a spokeswoman for Chuck E. Cheese, wrote in a statement.

The announcement came just weeks after the release of horror movie “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” starring Josh Hutcherson. The film was based on a 2014 video game, in which players must survive five nights in a defunct pizza arcade (Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza), where nefarious animatronics come to life after dark.

At the time, CEC Entertainment denied the film had anything to do with the decision to discontinue the robots, according to the New York Times.

In the robots’ place: bigger screens showing singing characters, a dance floor and more seating. In the Kansas City area, the new remodel has already been completed at 10510 Metcalf Lane in Overland Park, 15225 W. 134th Place in Olathe, and 9196 N. Skyview Ave. in the Northland.

The aim is to appeal to children’s changing interests, which the company says include flashing screens — not animatronic animals.

“We believe the (new) show provides the best entertainment value and meets the demands of kids today, who have higher expectations of realism and special effects,” Chouinard said.

‘Taken the soul away’

Garner Holt begs to differ.

As the founder of Garner Holt Productions, Holt has built hundreds of animatronic creatures in his career. His lifelike Grogu, aka Baby Yoda, is on display at Disney100: The Exhibition in Union Station through Nov. 30.

He posed with his robot alien creation for The Star a few weeks ago, and spectators marveled as the creature cooed and pointed.

When someone asks what he does, Holt leads with: “I bet I’ve built something that’s entertained you and your family.”

That’s true if they’ve visited Chuck E. Cheese, the Disney parks or Universal Studios.

Holt, 63, has been making animatronic figures for 46 years. As a child growing up around Redlands, California, he visited Disneyland often. He marveled at the way robotics brought the characters to life and told his family: “That’s what I’m going to do someday.”

So Holt set to work, tinkering with parts in his parents’ garage until he learned how to bring pieces of metal to life.

His first big deal came when he built the Studio C model Chuck E. Cheese, released in 2000.

One might think the model’s demise would be hard for him, especially, but Holt said he’s mostly sorry for the kids.

“I think it’s kind of taken the soul away from it,” Holt said. “That’s what they started with from day one.”

‘Built them to last’

Holt’s right — in 1977, a restaurant called Pizza Time Theater opened in San Jose, California, debuting a band of animatronic characters. The star? A wisecracking, cigar smoking Jersey rat named Chuck E. Cheese.

Other characters included a banjo-playing hound named Jasper T. Jowls and a pizza-loving human chef named Pasqually. (Both of these characters will live on in the recorded on-screen shows, as will purple monster Mr. Munch, Chuck E. and Helen Henny.)

Pizza Time’s earliest theater stages displayed the characters in picture frames or on the porch of a house.

Meanwhile, competitor ShowBiz Pizza Place opened in Kansas City in 1980 and also featured animatronic animals (including a bear named Billy Bob), pizza and arcade games. In 1984, ShowBiz purchased Pizza Time’s assets, but the two concepts ran separately until 1990, when locations began to be rebranded to Chuck E. Cheese. They kept Pizza Time’s beloved characters in favor of ShowBiz’s.

That same year, the Chuck E. stages got a refresh. Locations began to roll out Munch’s Make Believe Band, which featured Munch on keys, Pasqually on drums and Jasper on guitar.

In the late 1990s, the company asked Holt to make a more cartoonish, Disney-like version of Chuck E.

Instead of building stages that had five characters who were capable of a few movements, they wanted him to craft one complex Chuck E. who could perform 32. When the Studio C stages were released in 2000, Chuck E. sat behind a desk and told jokes before turning kids’ attention to the TVs behind him, which broadcast videos of puppet characters singing and dancing.

This Chuck E. moved more fluidly than his predecessors, twitching his ears and flexing his paws.

Holt made over 550 animatronic characters in the time he worked for Chuck E. Cheese. At the time, each machine cost about $45,000 to $50,000, Holt said. Each was made up of 400 to 500 parts and took several months to complete, with Holt’s team building more than 30 at the time.

Maintenance for the machines is fairly minimal, he said.

“We built them to last for a long time,” he said. “They run continuously.”

CEC Entertainment also owns pizza chains Peter Piper Pizzeria and Pasqually’s Pizza and Wings, which offer a more sophisticated experience than the kids’ arcades, CEO David McKillips told The Star last year.

“It’s a much, much different restaurant,” he said. “This is much more of a mature atmosphere, and it has fantastic scratch made pizza.”

Last year, Peter Piper opened locations at 8809 State Line Road in Ward Parkway Shopping Center and 15139 W. 119th St. in Olathe. Its Olathe location closed a few months ago.

‘Everything has its cycle’

Six or seven years ago, Holt said, he stopped producing robots for the company as part of a pre-COVID “slowdown.”

Then, Chuck E. Cheese made the final call: No more animatronics anywhere.

In some ways it’s understandable, Holt said, though he believes animatronics provide a far better experience.

“Everyone likes to do a lot of cost-cutting,” he said. “Cost-cutting means a lot of video. Video is cheap. A lot of theme parks try that. … When you go to a theme park, you want to be immersed.”

It’s certainly a different chain than Hammad Zaidi remembers.

In the 80s, adolescent Zaidi dressed in a stuffy rat costume at a Johnson County location and greeted children at birthday parties. Laughing, he recalled being kicked — even peed on — by screaming children.

At the time, the kids marveled at the animatronic bands.

“Anyone over 14 would make fun of it, and anyone under 4 would be afraid of it,” Zaidi said.

The company’s decision to nix the robots doesn’t seem too surprising to Zaidi, with technology progressing as rapidly as it has in the last decade.

“It’s kind of sad for me because I’m in my 50s, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to someone young,’” he said.

Almost half a century in, Holt has been doing this far too long to underestimate how much joy animatronics can bring others. He’s seen it in the way his creations get children interested in robotics: An educational division of his company helps kids learn about science and creativity.

He’s seen it with Chuck E., too.

With wet eyes, Holt told the story of a man who toured his studio in California. The visitor walked in and saw a model of Chuck E. standing in front of him, then burst into tears.

Every day, the man said, his parents dropped him off at a Chuck E. Cheese. He spent all day there, until they came back to get him after work.

“My parents hated me,” the man told Holt. “(Chuck E.) was my brother. I sat in front of the stage and watched him all day long.”

Holt wiped his eyes.

“It’s been kind of a dream come true of mine to be able to do what I’ve wanted to do all my life,” he said.

On a Monday afternoon in Independence, a group of children playing quietly don’t seem notice Chuck E.

Perhaps because he isn’t singing and dancing anymore. Instead, a mouse puppet appears on screens and belts out a tune.

Soon, an entire generation of children will no longer associate Chuck E. Cheese with its robotic bands. They’ll have no idea what it was like to see Chuck E.’s eyes fly open, his body straighten as his sidekicks begin singing a tune.

“It’s OK,” Holt said. “Everything has its cycle.”

Includes reporting by The Star’s Eleanor Nash.