The Rock-afire Explosion


The Rock-afire Explosion is an animatronic character band designed and manufactured by Creative Engineering, Inc. for use in ShowBiz Pizza Place restaurants in the 1980s and early 1990s. The band's characters are various anthropomorphized animals, including a brown bear, a grey wolf and a silverback gorilla. They perform medleys of classic rock, pop, and country music, as well as original compositions and comedic skits.
CEI was founded by inventor Aaron Fechter, who oversaw production of the animatronics and provided several of the characters' voices. The band was replaced by Chuck E. Cheese characters and renamed Munch's Make Believe Band following ShowBiz Pizza's decision to rebrand in the early 1990s. As relations with ShowBiz deteriorated, CEI began selling The Rock-afire Explosion to other restaurants and entertainment centers around the world, including Circus Pizza, Pistol Pete's Pizza, and Billy Bob's Wonderland.
The show was considered pioneering in the animatronic industry, featuring life-sized characters capable of advanced movement and facial expression. At the end of the show's tenure, former Chuck E. Cheese marketing director Jul Kamen credited Rock-afire with being largely responsible for ShowBiz’s early financial success.

Production

Production of the show's programming and audio was done in-house by Creative Engineering, Inc. in Orlando, Florida. Nearly all Rock-afire shows were produced completely in-house, with CEI employees writing and performing songs and comedic skits. When ShowBiz began assuming control over programming, they used Songcode, a system inherited from their acquisition of Chuck E. Cheese.

Technical specifications

The Rock-afire Explosion uses four recorded tracks, two for audio and two for data. The data tracks are encoded using Biphase mark code produced during a programming process involving two computers. The circuitry of the RAE was originally purchased by CEI from Superscope, the makers of Pianocorder.
In the years following the separation from CEI, there was a need to upgrade the aging Songcode inherited from CEC, which was used following CEI's departure. As technology evolved and ShowBiz became more involved in programming, they switched to a new programming system called APS, designed by Dave Philipsen. Video playback capabilities were added with the implementation of a new controller, Cyberstar, designed by Bill Synhorst of Triad Productions. It allowed direct communication with existing driver boards, eliminating the need for the Pianocorder playback board.

Band members

The Rock-afire Explosion

  • Fatz Geronimo – keyboards, vocals
He is a silverback gorilla from New Orleans. He is a parody of real-life entertainers Fats Domino and Ray Charles. Unofficial band frontman, Fatz has a tendency to ramble. He introduces the most shows and orders other band members around, leading him and Rolfe DeWolfe into many arguments. Preceded by Fats from the Wolf Pack Five. Voice – Burt Wilson, Aaron Fechter, Shooter Jennings
He is a wisecracking surfer polar bear with a laid-back attitude, who often keeps the peace along with Billy Bob. When voiced by Fechter, he was less intelligent and more frantic. Beach Bear was carried over from the Wolf Pack Five. Voice – Aaron Fechter, Rick Bailey
  • Dook LaRue – drums, vocals
He is a mongrel from New Orleans with a smooth singing voice. He aspires to be an astronaut, and wears a homemade space themed suit. Slightly dimwitted, Dook often loses focus during shows and misses his cues. Preceded by Dingo Starr from the Wolf Pack Five. Voice – Duke Chauppetta, Brandon Shepherd
  • Mitzi Mozzarella – vocals
She is a mouse and a cheerleader. A conventional teenager, Mitzi is considered "loose" by the rest of the Rock-afire Explosion, and is obsessed with gossip, boyfriends, pop music, and Michael Jackson. Preceded by Queenie Fox and Mini Mozzarella from the Wolf Pack Five. Voice – Aaron Fechter, Monique Danielle, Shalisa James

Stage Left

  • Billy Bob Brockali – bass, vocals
He is a brown bear from Tennessee who wears yellow and red overalls and plays a wooden bass. His stage is themed as a service station, called Smitty's Super Service Station. Sweet and well-liked, Billy Bob is usually a mediator to the band's minor on-stage squabbles. He was the mascot for ShowBiz Pizza Place throughout its existence, and his image was on most of the chain's merchandise. Preceded by Billy Wilbur from the Hard Luck Bears and Bear Country Jubilee. Voice – Aaron Fechter
  • Looney Bird – occasional vocals
He is a red tropical bird. Created as Billy Bob's unintelligent sidekick, he was originally addicted to the alcoholic gasoline sold at Smitty's. In the late 1980s, his personality would undergo a drastic change and he would be portrayed as an inventor and scientific genius; he also became a more prominently featured character. Currently, his personality is neutral. Only Looney Bird's head is seen, as he raises and lowers from an oil drum. Some shows featured a segment where Looney Bird would answer fan mail. For this, the robot was retrofitted to include a pair of hands that held a piece of paper for him to read. Preceded by Gooney Bird from the Hard Luck Bears and Bear Country Jubilee. Voice – Aaron Fechter

Stage Right

  • Rolfe DeWolfe and Earl Schmerle –
A ventriloquist act. Originally intended to be a stand-up comedy act performed in between musical sets, they soon became regularly featured alongside the band as vocalists. Rolfe is a wolf, and Earl is his sentient ventriloquist puppet. Rolfe, who rarely sings, is portrayed as arrogant with a tendency to be incredibly rude to both the band and the employees that work at Showbiz. He has a fondness for disco music, and the works of Frank Sinatra. Earl serves to balance out Rolfe, putting him down and calling him out frequently. Rolfe was preceded by the Wolfman from the Wolf Pack Five, while Earl is an original character. Voice – Aaron Fechter

Other characters

The show also consists of several smaller prop characters, many of which do not have speaking roles. These include an animated Sun and Moon that provide background vocals, a birthday-themed spider named Antioch who speaks in gibberish, and a bear cub known as Choo-Choo, who hides in a small tree stump in front of Dook's drums and dances to the band's music. One of the more notable prop characters is Birthday Bird, who is perched on the neck of Billy Bob's guitar.
Additionally, Uncle Klunk, a human character based on CEI employee Jeff Howell, was created to replace Rolfe & Earl at different Showbiz locations across the country on an occasional basis. Forty animatronic Klunk characters were produced and traveled to different stores in the mid 1980s. Klunk is the host of The Uncle Klunk Abomination, and his segments consist of him taking calls with his bird sidekick, Click. The Klunk animatronics also served to be retrofitted into Santa Claus during the holidays.

Later years at ShowBiz and Concept Unification

ShowBiz Pizza Place was similar to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre, another animatronic restaurant chain that was popular in the United States. In the mid-1980s, both venues began to suffer financial difficulties, partially due to the video game crash of 1983 and also due to both companies having opened more restaurants than they could afford to maintain. When Pizza Time Theatre filed for bankruptcy in 1984, ShowBiz bought the company, hoping that new talent and merchandising opportunities could save both companies.
By 1985, Richard M. Frank had joined the company as CEO and chairman. The corporation maintained the two restaurant chains simultaneously for several years. Each continued its own stage shows and sold different merchandise. However, in the latter part of the decade, relations between Creative Engineering and ShowBiz began to sour. Aaron Fechter, the founder of Creative Engineering and creator of the Rock-afire Explosion, claimed that the fallout between his company and ShowBiz arose when ShowBiz asked him to sign away the licensing and copyrights to the Rock-afire Explosion, which would have allowed ShowBiz to cut production costs on the show, such as manufacture of future shows and royalty payments to Creative Engineering. Fechter refused, on the grounds that ShowBiz offered no monetary compensation for the rights.
ShowBiz began toying with the idea of adding licensed characters such as Spider-Man or Garfield to the Rock-afire show, and three ShowBiz locations actually replaced Billy Bob and Looney Bird with Yogi Bear and Boo Boo animatronics in 1987. Ideas to retrofit the Rock-afire into completely original characters were also proposed at the time by Creative Presentations Inc, a now-defunct animatronic company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, that already provided ShowBiz with new showtapes and replacement cosmetics for Rock-afire shows.
An experiment of Paul Linden and Dave Philipsen using JVC BR-7000 VHS Hi-Fi tape decks which integrated two stereo audio tracks, two longitudinal data tracks, and video led to a system in 1988 where television screens were installed above the Rock-afire stage as the company introduced their new Cyberstar TV screen system. During showtime, the characters were finally shown performing in video, as reel-to-reel formatted tapes began to be used less often. A reel-to-reel version of Cyberstar called "Cybervision" was tested at two restaurants in Austin, TX; Cybervision can be distinguished from Cyberstar by the fact that they only feature the animatronics, and no graphics or walkaround characters. Cyberstar was also implemented at Pizza Time Theatre, and remains in use at all Chuck E. Cheese's locations, albeit using DVDs rather than VHS tapes.
The changes to the Rock-afire stage were very minor, as the company later decided to enact a process called "Concept Unification," in which all ShowBiz Pizza locations would be remodeled into Chuck E. Cheese's. The remodel included the elimination of all Rock-afire characters from merchandise and advertising, and retrofitting/reprogramming the Rock-afire Explosion animatronics into a show called Munch's Make Believe Band, featuring the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre characters. Dook was moved to Billy Bob's place and became Pasqually P. Pieplate, Looney Bird became Pizzacam, Beach Bear became Jasper T. Jowls, Fatz became Mr. Munch, Mitzi was moved to Dook's place and became Helen Henny, The Sun became The Building, Choo-Choo became Munch Junior, and Rolfe became Chuck E. Cheese; The Moon was the only character carried over unchanged, and Antioch's computer and air lines were reused for The Wink, an animated Chuck E. Cheese head over the stage that would wink at the end of each segment. Unused animatronics and props were either sold off, used for parts or destroyed.
After ties between Creative Engineering and ShowBiz were completely severed, "Concept Unification" was announced in 1990 and locations were gradually converted throughout the early 1990s. As Concept Unification began at each location, the right and center stages of the Rock-afire show were shut down, leaving only the Rolfe and Earl characters operational. The two performed "The Rolfe and Earle Show", featuring the voices of Showbiz employees imitating Fechter's voice; the two ran a highlight reel of old Rock-afire Cyberstar segments and wondered aloud what the band would do now, and hinted at the coming Chuck E. Cheese-themed show. "The Rolfe and Earle Show" was the final Rock-afire show produced for Showbiz.