Last year, I wrote about my five-year stint as the owner of a pair of pizza robots– the kinds that danced and sang back in the seventies, eighties, and nineties while you played arcade games or waited for your pizza to arrive. Last October, I provided a quick update. Today, I finally have another.
My first brush with pizza robots came in the mid-’90s, when my childhood awe quickly turned to unease as their show dragged on. It was my first trip to the uncanny valley! Eventually, my fear turned to fascination: by the early 2000s I was following the super-fans who rescued broken animatronics from obscurity and painstakingly brought them back to life.
Six or seven years ago, I learned that a fully-restored Rock-afire Explosion band lived half an hour away. Soon, I joined a loose nationwide circle of collectors. In 2019, we pooled resources to save seventeen abandoned robots near Chicago. I got a Billy Bob and Fatz out of the deal, and I printed parts, and patched them up until Billy Bob was performing again. Even after years of sporadic efforts, though, my robots were never quite complete. I finally let them go and sold them to my friend nearby who vowed to finish the work I’d started.
That sort of happened- Fatz was a basket case! As a jumble of fur, latex, and failing pneumatics, much effort was needed to completely bring him back to life. Unfortunately, life hit my friend square in the jaw and he flipped Fatz to someone in California. I like to think he’s out there waiting for his encore, but I don’t know for sure.
Billy Bob was a completely different story. When I first got him, the robot was little more than a bare frame. Piece by piece, though, I brought him back to life with a new arm, a base, a fresh mask, eighties-spec fur, and an outfit that looked close enough to the original. He looked ready to take center stage at Magic City in Waukegan again!
Unfortunately, I never addressed a few stubborn mechanical quirks. Those were lean years for me, and some of his rotary valves were toast. His knee-bend cylinder was missing. The servos that controlled his eye movements were completely fried. None of those issues stopped him from putting on a show at my house, though! Every time I aired him up and watched Billy Bob perform, it felt like a small miracle: After twenty years or more, he was back doing what he was built to do.
Billy Bob got some substantial upgrades after I sold him. My friend replaced his warped plastic neck piece with a spare and installed a new body turn cylinder. He also replaced his rotary actuators, built a new base identical to the original, and restored Billy Bob’s missing knee-bend cylinder. I’m told he was in the process of replacing the O-rings for Bob’s Fabco cylinders and almost got around to installing another rotary actuator for his head-turn mechanism.
My friend assured me I could visit anytime-like some old horse put out to pasture. I loved that idea and looked forward to seeing Billy Bob shine again! Then, earlier this year, another buddy sent me a screenshot: Billy Bob was listed for sale. He wasn’t mine anymore, but right or wrong, I felt betrayed all the same. As it turned out, the mystery buyer was another friend, Anthony Ybarra. A few weeks later, he texted me to say Billy Bob was safe. My panic eased and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Billy Bob couldn’t have gone to a better owner. Anthony is bright, sharp, and endlessly creative. That’s exactly the kind of person I want stewarding my old piece of animatronic history! He’s got the technical chops to keep Billy Bob humming and the imagination to make him shine for a whole new generation. If anyone can carry my old bear into the next century with the care and attention he deserves, it’s Anthony Ybarra. I can’t wait to see what he does.
My brief time in the old pizza robot fandom was an adventure of nostalgia and engineering. Mostly, though, it was a lesson in letting go. I hope Fatz is still waiting in the wings somewhere in California, but I know that Billy Bob has found a steward worthy of him. I couldn’t be happier about where he landed! Giving up my robots on wasn’t easy, but seeing them spark new creativity in others makes my time with them worthwhile.
My experience as the brief owner of pizza robots reminds me that the things we love don’t have to stay frozen in our possession. Sometimes, the best way to honor them is to let someone else carry them forward. Here’s to Billy Bob’s next encore under Anthony! Maybe, one day, Fatz will return to the spotlight too.
Buy me another robot
I love this. I discovered the Rockafire Explosion enthusiasts in the mid-00s after I saw the documentary. I think anyone born in that era has a vast well of nostalgia for these weirdos. I sure do. When I was a kid, sometimes my mom worked late on Fridays, and when my dad would pick my sister and me up from school we would beg to go to Showbiz Pizza for dinner, often with success. In hindsight I realize how tolerant and patient that man was. Meanwhile, my wife has childhood trauma from Billy Bob after being terrified as a three-year-old. The story goes that once when a critter got into the air ducts in her childhood bedroom and was scratching around, she ran out screaming “Billy Bob is in the walls!!”
Your dad sounds like a saint. I can’t blame your wife for her trauma! The earliest Billy Bob masks were downright frightening. The story is hilarious.
I would have practically have killed for a full-size RAE bot, but they quickly become unmanageable in my experience. My BB and Fatz were from a smaller, second-generation that mostly showed up in skating rinks and arcades as opposed to actual restaurants.
This is so cool!
Thanks!