The Rat is back. Kinda.

For those bored by the details of the homeowner associations show they prepared in April 2023, John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight provided an entire alternate show detailing the history of iconic family-friendly entertainment and restaurant chain Chuck E. Cheese. It was fascinating.

The mouse-obsessed chain has that rabbit hole effect on people. Six years ago Shane Dawson did a video about the Chuck E. Cheese pizza conspiracy which ended up being one of his more effective YouTube clickbait schemes, prompting so many reactions that the Chuck E. Cheese corporation had to issue a statement denying Dawson’s claim that his local mascot-themed arcade/pizza parlor appeared to be recycling leftover pizza for new customers.

But when Chuck E. Cheese is out of the documentaries and into the news it doesn’t often get good press. More often than not, when media refers to Chuck E. Cheese it appears as thinly veiled parody — the stereotypical location where children can be as loud and obnoxious as they want while parents regret their life choices. It’s into this context that the brand itself launches A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas on November 27 via YouTube and Amazon Prime although it might already have started playing in a Chuck E. Cheese near you.

Oliver’s surprisingly engaging episode works mainly because behind that obnoxious corporate facade lies a 48-year-old history of complex animatronics. They are both the most elaborate ones you’ll see outside Disney World, and also considerably more saucy. But, as of January 2025, Chuck E. Cheese itself no longer uses these robots, which is an odd decision. If the surprise viral success of the survival horror franchise Five Nights at Freddy‘s is any indication, children really like weird animatronics. Granted, though, there are decent reasons why the corporate office of Chuck E. Cheese might not want to lean into the creepier aspects of their brand.

But I’m at a loss trying to figure out what they’ve decided to do instead. The new cartoon version of Chuck E. Cheese commissioned by the new masters of the Chuck E. Cheese corporation neither resembles the historical Chuck E. Cheese franchise documented by Oliver nor the contemporary restaurants visited by Shane Dawson. It’s just a cartoon referring to the mascots as if they were long-beloved characters and not just the latest arbitrary rebrand.

The Nathan-Kress-voiced version of Chuck E. Cheese himself (I guess kids today still love iCarly?) doesn’t bear any similarity to the previous versions. He’s neither an obnoxious rat, nor a cool skateboarding mouse. He sort of resembles the tiny 3-D version of the mascot that immediately preceded him. Except now he’s in 2-D. And he appears to run a party supply company now, except that at one point characters from his company try to buy party supplies from a party store. Seems like he should be buying them wholesale. Indeed, strictly speaking, the first scene where he recklessly drives the Partymobile seems to imply he should already have lots of party supplies, since all the generic Christmas decoration orders were canceled due to a lack of Christmas spirit.

Yes, A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas is one of those cartoons where the slightest amount of thought pulls the whole premise apart. The script is a contrivance to provide some means of Chuck E. Cheese and pals to plausibly save Christmas. Mandatory Christmas episodes on children’s cartoons are a long-standing tradition, to be sure. But any sort of anti-commercial message is badly undercut here by the fact that A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas is an extended product placement for a national chain best known for disjointed animatronic music, snotty behavior, and bad pizza.

A Chuck E Cheese Christmas does its best to attempt to relay some sort of wholesome family message — maybe something like “Christmas comes from the heart, not from generic decorations.” For all the effort this animated special makes to discuss the importance of Christmas spirit the climax isn’t exactly impressive.

Directed and produced by Phineas and Ferb, and Lego City Adventures veterans Zac Moncrief and Steve Trenbirth does not help. Despite – or perhaps because of — the producers’ experience working on well-regarded animated shows, maybe they simply weren’t expecting anyone to still be paying attention by the denouement.

I can’t begrudge anyone in the industry just working for a paycheck, it’s mainly the corporate angle that I find shockingly tone-deaf. Who is A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas even for? Millennial parents who might or might not get the Xena: Warrior Princess reference, but definitely won’t recognize any of the Chuck E. Cheese characters in this highly generic form? Easily bored children who will switch over to a Five Nights at Freddy’s let’s play video from their favorite streamer on on YouTube as soon as the adults aren’t looking?

If A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas offers a single reason why anyone should actually want to go to Chuck E. Cheese’s, the presumed purpose of this fifty minute piece of not-particularly-stealthy brand advertising, I’m hard pressed to find it. Maybe the corporate office just decided that if they made Chuck E. Cheese cartoons, they could run them on replay around the clock at the actual locations to give a pretense of entertainment that’s cheaper to maintain than the animatronics.

If that’s the plan — a full Chuck E. Cheese animated series to run on the screens at the actual remaining locations — I would advise against it. I can think of few better ways to alienate parents of young children than providing more bad cartoons in a world that already has too many.