"1980s ShowBiz Pizza arcade scene"
During the 1980s, Kansas City was the height of a fierce battle in a unique industry: children’s entertainment centers featuring pizza and animatronics. Amidst the glory of Chuck E. Cheese, a Kansas City-born chain known as ShowBiz Pizza Place also emerged as a significant competitor.
At its peak, ShowBiz Pizza Place, fondly known as “the home of pizza, Pacman, and performing robots,” boasted over 200 outlets in the country. ShowBiz lured masses with its unique combination of animated robotic entertainments, cutting-edge video games, big-screen televisions, and kid-friendly amusement parks.
Travis Schafer, a fan and online archive runner for ShowBizPizza.com, recalls how attending to ShowBiz Pizza for his birthday was a rare treat during his childhood. Devoting his time and effort, he plunges deep into the untold stories of ShowBiz Pizza through several resources, including eBay, thrift stores, and old newspaper archives.
Chuck E. Cheese and ShowBiz Pizza share a complicated history. Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari video games, initiated the first Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre in California in 1977. Two years later, Robert Brock, a Holiday Inn franchiser based in Topeka, had plans to launch over 200 franchises of Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre across the Midwest and South. However, due to contractual frustrations, Brock charted his course and opened the first ShowBiz Pizza in Kansas City in 1980, triggering a parallel universe of competition.
The first ShowBiz Pizza originated in what was then the Antioch Center near Gladstone. The glamorous opening was celebrated with the headline, “Pizza Palace Purveys Pizzazz.” Enticing patrons with an animated animal band, the new entrant soon received an overwhelmingly favorable response.
However, the birth of ShowBiz coincided with a lawsuit from Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre citing breach of contract and ended in Chuck E. Cheese’s favor. As the market dynamics evolved and businesses slowed down for both ShowBiz and Chuck E. Cheese, the latter filed for bankruptcy in 1984.
Soon, the robotic animals became unfashionable, due to hefty maintenance costs. The two rivals merged between 1985 to 1992 under the corporate umbrella of ShowBiz Pizza. By 1992, all locations were recrafted into Chuck E. Cheese, utilizing the brand’s owned trademarks and copyrights. Today, Chuck E. Cheese stands tall with 480 locations in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico.
ShowBiz Pizza’s legacy in Kansas City did not end in the 1990s. In 2018, the short-lived Rock-afire Arcade Bar managed to salvage some of the original animatronics from ShowBiz Pizza. Yet, the teetering state of survival continues. In 2020, the company filed for bankruptcy and has been forced into restructuring. The Antioch Center, once housing the first ShowBiz Pizza, was demolished in 2007, the physical space now existing only in memories.
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