Read time: 6 min.

Getting my old robot to stand up for the first time in twenty-five years was an enormous accomplishment for someone who didn’t know what he was doing! Unfortunately, sporadic patches of mangy fur weren’t enough to make it resemble Billy Bob of the New Rock-afire Explosion. After I confirmed he was mechanically sound, I set out to give my robot a glow-up.

You might not know them by name, but I’m sure you remember pizza robots, those animatronic avatars that danced and sang before a piping-hot pie arrived at your family’s table. Here’s the third part in a brief series of how I came to be one of the few who have their own.

It’s funny that Billy Bob spent forty years as the face of the Rock-afire Explosion since mine didn’t come with one. Fortunately, two more Billy Bobs were part of the cache of robots my friends purchased from Odyssey Fun World in Illinois, and the one from Naperville still had its mask. It was in rough shape, but I hoped it would stand up to some experimentation.

Pizza robot masks were molded from latex, a versatile, cost-effective material. Unfortunately, it tends to melt. The Billy Bob mask we got at Odyssey Fun World was pretty saggy, but a friend wrestled it back into shape with chicken wire and tape. He made a plaster mold, poured the latex, and let it cure. After he plucked it out, the new mask was airbrushed to the OEM standard. The donor held up like a champ!

Making a new face for a pizza robot takes a few days but results in a near-perfect duplicate one mask thickness smaller than the original. To my eye, Billy Bob’s new face looked even better than the donor! I laid it over my robot’s skull, made a few measurements, and drove some snaps to attach it. I stepped back, gawked at the awkward fit, and pounded in more snaps. Billy Bob from Magic City had a face! I figured his fur would cover up the extra snaps.

Those extra snaps made it harder to escape the reality that my bear was still bald, so I turned my attention to upholstering him. I’d graduated school and was back to working full-time, but finding matching fur for Billy Bob’s head and chest felt like a job in and of itself! I ordered sample after sample, but everything I received from fabric vendors looked much more realistic than what I needed. I still can’t believe how far fake fur has come since the late 70s.

Unfortunately, getting fur from the original supplier was a non-starter, so I was at a frustrating standstill: Billy Bob had come so far with his original equipment, but I seriously considered re-covering him in a different style or color. It felt like a waste to sacrifice his original feet, forearms, ankles, and paws, but I was just about to turn Billy Bob into a polar bear when the answer unexpectedly arrived at my doorstep.

Another friend owned a full-sized Rock-afire Explosion show, an original set of Chuck E. Cheese robots, and Looney Bird from Odyssey Fun World. I’d done some graphic design and illustration work for him over the years. Out of nowhere, he surprised me with a box of vintage Billy Bob fur from the golden age of the Rock-afire Explosion. I greedily accepted his donation!

I set the fur over Billy Bob’s skull and made some quick measurements. It looked like my buddy sent just enough fur to cover Billy Bob’s head, and I recalled that each New Rock-afire Explosion robot was mechanically identical. I assumed their cosmetics were too, and convinced the friend who made my mask to let me make a pattern from his Mitzi Mozzarella robot. He wound up making the pattern for me.

I’ve never touched a sewing machine, so I turned to my mom to help put the pattern to fur. She was up for a challenge and Mom and I spent two difficult days measuring and sewing some cheap fake fur together as a template before we took scissors to the vintage stuff. It took all weekend for the sides, crown, and gusset to come together, but Mom did it! With little to spare, I glued Billy Bob’s new mane to his scalp and ears. Billy Bob had fur again.

Billy Bob was less naked than before but still needed some clothes. I’d spied a tattered pair of overalls at Odyssey Fun World but let them go to a friend who actually paid for his robots. Amazon came to the rescue with the perfect polka-dot shirt, but finding overalls was another issue. I couldn’t find the striped fabric anywhere, but a red and gold tailgating get-up from Game Bibs came close enough.

Billy Bob was finally clothed, so it was time to perform! It doesn’t take an Apple IIE and tape deck to run a pizza robot show these days. If you have a robot, you need only an air compressor for the cylinders, a PC,. and a bit stripper to convert the digital signals into MAC valve pulses. Another friend invented the modern control system that became the standard in the aftermarket fandom. Armed with custom software and a controller another friend designed, Billy Bob became one of the first of the Odyssey Fun World robots to come back to life!

I stood there slack-jawed as Billy Bob peformed skits like “Celebration,” “Goofy Birthday,” and “Power Blew” for the first time in years. I was proud! I’d gone from being terrfied of pizza robots to having my own in record time thanks to lots of help. Waking up Billy Bob was a triumph of collaboration, and thatz when I found Fatz.

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