Ed Bogas Recalls Voicing Pizza Time Theatre Animatronic
Image Source: YouTube
Most everyone has gone to Chuck E. Cheese’s at some point. In its early years, it went by a different name, Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theater. Though Charles Entertainment Cheese was there from the start, several characters came and went before the quartet of Jasper T. Jowls, Pasqually P. Pieplate, Mr. Munch, and Helen Henny became established as Chuck E.’s backing band. One of these early characters was a little cat named Crusty.
Crusty the Cat was one of the first characters created for the pizza chain. He acted as the straight man to Chuck E. Cheese and was viewed as an unlucky character, as shown by the number 13 on his “Swingers” baseball jersey. He was a prominent character in the franchise’s early days, even having his own pizza called "Crusty's Vegetarian Delight.” Crusty also was featured in a lot of early promotional material. In the demo, he was voiced by John Widelock, but his voice in his only official showtape was unknown for years, until now.
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YouTuber The Animatronic Anchor recently interviewed Ed Bogas and Desiree Goyette. Ed Bogas is a composer who has worked on several cartoons including Garfield and several Peanuts specials. He also composed several songs for PTT. However, he wasn’t just a composer for the franchise. He is the first official voice actor (outside of the demo) for Crusty the Cat. Bogas recounted his time with the character, stating:
"That was the very, very beginning…Nolan Bushnell had just had a huge success with Pong, and then he wanted to move into this animatronic stuff…He was the first guy, I think…I mean…it was based on the same kind of stuff they have at Disneyland…think it was the same guy actually…His concept was that they would be entertaining for people…They got Bob Black involved. Bob Black was a producer and writer at Foot Cone building I think it was. It was one of the agencies, and I knew him from that from doing commercials with him…He kinda organized the whole thing, and he got people to do the voices…we had sessions, and I was one of the characters.”
Unfortunately, Crusty did not last very long. As mentioned earlier, the character was only in one showtape.
“They killed my character almost immediately,” Bogas stated, “and I don’t know whether that was because of performance or because it just didn’t fit in, but I only got to be Crusty for a couple sessions, I think."
Michael M. Hatcher, then director of entertainment for PTT, wanted to add a Cookie-Monster-like character. However, an existing character would have to be removed, so out went Crusty, and in went Mr. Munch. Crusty only appeared at the first PTT location. Bogas stayed on to do the music until a new team took over.
Besides composing for pizza restaurants and cartoons, he also composed for video games, including Hardball, Super Tetris, Wordtris, and even the much-maligned Action 52. This is quite an interesting find!
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