Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
There are two acceptable reactions to an animatronic band. A warm wave of nostalgia for the magic
of your childhood, or bone-chilling, abject terror. Here's an ape and a bear singing Arcade
Fire.
Walt Disney first conceived of animatronics in the 1950s, but it wasn't until the opening
of Disneyland's Enchanted Tiki Room in 1963 that his plan -- executed by Lee Adams and
a host of other early Imagineers -- became a singing, chirping reality.
Called Audio-Animatronics, or AA, those robot birds pre-dated Disney's animatronic Abe Lincoln
by a year, who made his debut at the 1964 New York World's Fair. The first human AA.
Lincoln became part of Disneyland's Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, heralding an era
of massive robot-people growth at the park.
And so Honest Abe gave us Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, and the Carousel of Progress.
But took a greater visionary than Walt Disney to fulfill the real promise of singing robots.
And the guy who invented Whack-A-Mole was that visionary.
Aaron Fechter -- who invented Whack-A-Mole -- started producing fully-animated stage
shows in 1978 with the Santa Clause Revue and Confederate Critter Show, which looks
like it was bananas.
But he is best known, and loved, for creating the Rock-afire Explosion.
Showbiz Pizza Place first opened its doors in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1980. Three years
after the first Chuck E. Cheese opened in Sane Jose and a full nine after Disney's Country
Bears Jamboree made their Orlando debut, it wasn't like Rock-afire was the first. But
they were the best.
It was a short ride -- when Chuck E. Cheese filed for bankruptcy in 1984, Showbiz Pizza
swooped in, bought it, and slowly unified the two chains under the Cheese brand. By
1992, there were no Rock-afire Explosion shows or Showbiz Pizza Places left in the U.S.
But Aaron Fechter is no ordinary animatronic band programmer and Whack-A-Mole inventor.
And the people who loved the Rock-afire Explosion are themselves afire -- with passion.
It seems Fechter managed to hold on to a few complete shows, using them to make videos
like that one and keep the band alive in our hearts and YouTube playlists. He's also sold
a few to fans. Like Chris Thrash, who made this.
It was Thrash's video of the Rock-afire Explosion performing "Pop, Lock, & Drop It" that recently
blew up on Reddit.
Between him and Flechter's programming, you can watch robots bears and apes and wolves
performing everything from Shakira to Nine Inch Nails to Arcade Fire.
Big names have also come calling for the official Rock-afire treatment -- MGMT enlisted Flechter
to program his band for their "Electric Feel" video in 2008.
And in 2013, Cee-lo had them schlepped out to Las Vegas for a very special performance
of "*** You."
You can still spot some Rock-afire Explosion shows in the wild -- Showbiz Pizza Place apparently
still operates in Lebanon and Dubai, and some independent shows at venues like Billy Bob's
Wonderland in Barbourville and Odyssey Fun World in Naperville are still... a thing that
is a thing.
Maybe just stick to the YouTube videos.
What's your childhood memory of animatronic bands like? Charming, terrifying? Let us know
in the comments and check out the description if you'd like to watch the full videos we
used in this episode. And subscribe for new episodes of This Exists every week. See you
at Odyssey Fun World.