Chuck E. Cheese's - Concept Unification Premiere (June 1990)

Showtape Title: SPP Concept Unification Premiere
Release Date: June 21, 1990

In 1990, after ShowBiz had cut ties with CEI, they began an effort to unify all of their ShowBiz Pizza and Chuck E. Cheese's restaurants under one brand name. This was Concept Unification, which saw the Rock-afire Explosion characters stripped of their cosmetics and retrofitted to resemble the cast of characters from ShowBiz's sister restaurant, Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza. Despite being known for the demise of the Rock-afire, Concept Unification also saw some major changes be made to the CEC cast. They were no longer the Pizza Time Players, but Munch's Make Believe Band, led by Mr. Munch, who's personality and voice were altered to make him more like Fatz. In addition, Jasper was now playing electric guitar rather than the banjo, and took on a more laid back "rocker" personality, rather than his crazy hillbilly persona of the PTT days. The biggest character change however, had to be that of the band's only female vocalist, Helen Henny. Helen had started out as an old Broadway diva, who was always clucking. But beginning with this tape, and going forward, Helen was now a spunky young girl, who was the band's lead vocalist. The apparent reason for the changes to the band (specifically Helen ) was because ShowBiz wanted to keep the marketability of the Rock-afire characters, without actually using the Rock-afire Characters. So the obvious solution was to merge the elements of the Rock-afire with the characters of Pizza Time Theatre, creating Munch's Make Believe Band.

This showtape was the first released for Munch's Make Believe Band, and was made to introduce ShowBiz customers to the new band preforming at the restaurant. The first song is dedicated to individually introducing each band member, and they are described as the "new" band numerous times in the three segments. Obviously, this tape only played at ShowBiz stores, as it would feel very out of place at Chuck E. Cheese's stores at the time, considering that they were all still themed around Pizza Time Theatre. This show had a very short run, only playing for the first couple of weeks after the CU installation, before being replaced with whatever tape was playing at CEC stores at the time the change over took place. It was originally released in June of 1990, seven months after Concept Unification initially began, and would be sent out to every ShowBiz store between 1990 and 1992 as a part of the Concept Unification package, which included this showtape, the installation video, the "Rolfe & Earle" showtape (which I also uploaded the audio for), and the diagnostics for the show. However there is evidence that this show was produced in 1989, as a video made for ShowBiz employees to preview the MMBB that showed the 3-stage at the Dallas "Montfort" Texas store preforming segment one of this tape was filmed around November of that year.

Chuck E. Cheese vocals - Scott Wilson
Mr. Munch vocals - Scott Wilson
Helen Henny vocals - Unknown
Jasper T. Jowls vocals - Bob West
Pasqually vocals - Bob West

Tracklist:
00:00 - Cyberstar Intro
00:23 - Segment 1 - Together We've Got It / Heart of Rock & Roll
05:53 - Segment 2 - The Right Stuff / I Wanna Dance With Somebody
11:30 - Segment 3 - Simply Irresistible / Footloose
17:21 - Hidden Bday - Birthday Extravaganza

Audio and Image Source: Munch's Make Believe Band - Topic, a channel which no longer exists.

For those who wish to view the full version of this show with all video footage and intermissions, it has been uploaded to Youtube by Munch's Make Believe Band Archive. Link:    • Chuck E. Cheese's Concept Unification...  

All audio and images in this video are owned by CEC Entertainment Inc. No copyright infringement is intended. This video exists for historical purposes only, as a means to archive this audio, so it's not lost forever.