After a Chuck E. Cheese location closed in a small Illinois town a few weeks back, a strange video made the rounds on the internet.
In the foreground, all appears normal, as employees wheel old machines and decorations out to a moving truck. But in the background, a horror story unfolds: 2 women hover over an old Chuck E. Cheese mascot head, taking turns beating the sh*t out of it with a sledgehammer.
And, as it turns out, that’s just part of the family entertainment chain’s policy…
See, that mascot, Chuck “Entertainment” Cheese, has been around since the company first launched back in 1977.
His goofy-looking face has gone through numerous rebrandings over the years: he started out as a “cigar-smoking rat from New Jersey” and gradually morphed into a more kid-friendly critter.
But one thing’s never changed: the Chuck E. Cheese mascot is an integral part of the chain’s brand.
As Atlas Obscura chronicles, Chuck E. Cheese maintains a strict policy of demolishing its mascot’s head when a location closes down for several reasons:
First, to protect the kids: as one company executive says, seeing a dismembered Chuck head in the garbage would be “very traumatic for a child.”
But the most pressing reason is likely legal. Chuck E. Cheese needs to protect its trademark and intellectual property — and sometimes that requires crushing your mascot’s head, so others don’t find it in the trash and sell it on eBay.