Chuck E. Cheese robot helped man find his way
TAMPA— Jared Sanchez’s master bedroom has the vibe of a novelty pizza restaurant for children, with an electric bill to match. It’s close to $400 a month.
Lights spell out “The King” in every direction. There are 50-inch monitors, arcade machines, mint condition He-Mans. The floor is a black-and-white checkerboard.
Then there’s the live wire that is Sanchez himself. Seated at his control center, his frosted tips perfectly gelled, he taps his foot in a sparkly Air Jordan. His shirt says “The King is back.”
This is a 37-year-old man living his dream. The dream of finding an obscure Chuck E. Cheese robot from his childhood and bringing it back to life.
To his left, a 10-foot metal skeleton with creepy eyeballs the size of baseballs stares down. To his right, two 700-pound lions with the same blue eyes stand idle in the sequined costumes he sewed for them. He taps a button and the lions come alive. They dance, strum guitars and sing a parody of a booming Bon Jovi song, a sharp “pfft, pfft, pfft” shooting from their pneumatic cylinders. These are the Kings. “All it takes is the right person to see this, and we could make a television show out of this, like easily,” Sanchez yells over the music. “And I have people saying, ‘Oh, it’s old technology, it’s old technology.’ Well, that’s what they told Jim Henson. That’s exactly what they told him!”
He takes a pull from a vape pen, checks wires and changes inputs. He sings along with the Kings.
It’s King life! It’s my new endeavorrr! This is gonna rock forev-errrr! I just wanna sing while I’m aliiiive!
Sanchez was scarred by his 12th birthday. It was 1992 and his parents brought him to Chuck E. Cheese in Albuquerque, as they had many times before.
At the time, Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre featured a full band of animatronic, humansized animals . It was a wild, futuristic concept when Atari