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. They were loud, uncanny, and absolutely unforgettable! Unfortunately, we never had a ShowBiz Pizza where I grew up in Muncie. Just down the road, though, Anderson hosted one of its own for three glorious years in the early 1980s
Pizza robots got their start in 1977 when the founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell, began searching for family-friendly places to install arcade games like Asteroids and Tank1. Eventually, he decided to establish his own place. At Bushnell’s Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre, captive kids had nothing better to do than pump quarters and tokens into Atari machines while their pizzas baked2.
A competitor backed by Brock Hotels called ShowBiz Pizza Place came online in 1979. From a technical standpoint, the chain’s Rock-afire Explosion robots blew Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Players out of the water! At ShowBiz, the mascot -a hillbilly bear named Billy Bob- had undeniable appeal. On top of that, the band’s animatronic percussionist actually played a real drum set! Customers flocked there, and ShowBiz became the fastest-growing food franchise in the country in 19813.
Anderson joined the party on March 23, 1983, when ShowBiz Pizza Place opened its 166th restaurant in the city’s Southdale Plaza4. Staffed by sixty full-time employees, the new location was a full-blown entertainment hub with fifty video games, a dedicated area just for younger kids, and a menu packed with crowd-pleasers- pizza, nachos, ice cream, and even a salad bar. Open seven days a week, the Anderson ShowBiz ran from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday. It stretched the fun until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays5.
If Anderson’s ShowBiz Pizza sounds like the one you might remember, that’s because it mostly was: with one notable exception: most ShowBiz locations were built around a massive, forty-foot-wide, three-stage animatronic show featuring seven larger-than-life characters.
Anderson, however, was one of five that opened with a scaled-down “mini stage6,” that spotlit just four robotic performers: Mitzi Mozzarella, Fatz Geronimo, Billy Bob, and Looney Bird. Fortunately, that limitation didn’t last long. By late 1983 or early 19847, the restaurant was remodeled and upgraded to the regular sprawling stage setup8.
Anderson’s Showbiz Pizza proved just as popular as the rest of the company’s restaurants. In October, 1984, Billy Bob even served as the parade marshal for nearby Middletown’s first annual Fall Funfest9! That month, the outpost became one of fifty in the chain to start operating an “After Hours” teen club from 9 p.m. to midnight10. Sadly, the fun wasn’t to last , though: forty Showbiz Pizza locations closed in late 1985, including ones in Logansport, West Lafayette, and Anderson11.
The closures followed just months after ShowBiz bought rival Pizza Time Theatre. For several years, the combined company ran both chains under the shared banner of ShowBiz Pizza Time, Incorporated. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the two concepts were fully merged under the now-familiar Chuck E. Cheese name. In the process, ShowBiz itself quietly disappeared, leaving behind memories of pizza, arcade noise, and the Rock-afire Explosion. Today, the site of Anderson’s former ShowBiz is home to Bourbon Street Sports Bar & Grill.
Sources Cited
1 Bowman, E. (2023, December 1). A visit to the last animatronics still singing in Chuck. E. Cheese. All Things Considered. Web. Retrieved December 15, 2023.
2 Packer, L. (1979, October). Catering To Kids. Food Service Marketing. Trade journal. Print.
3 Kloss, G. (1981, August 6). It’s not your typical pizza place. The Milwaukee Journal Green Sheet. p. 1.
4 ShowBiz Pizza Place to open Wednesday (1983, March 22). The Anderson Herald. p. 10.
5 (See footnote 4).
6 1983 Creative Engineering /Showbiz Pizza Place Memos (1983, October-November). ShowBizPizza.com. Web. Retrieved December 15, 2025.
7 The Rock-afire Explosion Classic Stage (Mini). (n.d.). ShowBizPizza.com. Web. Retrieved December 15, 2025.
8 (See footnote 6).
9 Showbiz bear in Pendleton parade (1984, October 31). The Pendleton Times-Post. p. 24.
10 Show Biz ‘After Hours’ open to teens only 9-12 Friday night. The Pendleton Times. p. 16.
11 Marocco, M. (1985, October 6). ShowBiz Pizza Place Closes. The Logansport Pharos-Tribune. p. 14.
Those robots are seared into my brain, for good or ill. And I’m pretty sure I’ve commented here about my wife’s traumatic childhood encounter with Billy Bob. It will always be Show Biz for me.
That Anderson location looks very similar to the one I grew up going to on Friday nights in Parkersburg, WV, which at one point was heavily vandalized by the KKK. I’m not sure why the klan targeted it, but my only guess is that they took issue with bears, gorillas, mice, and that creepy wolf all cavorting happily together in the uncanny valley.