Cartoon Destinations: Gadgets Restaurant

Pack your bags and get ready to travel.  Today's cartoon destination is a blast from the past.  Today, in honor of Bugs Bunny's 80th birthday and Looney Tunes 90th, we're going to try to resurrect a lost moment in Looney Tunes history....Gadgets!

With the success of Chuck E Cheese and Showbiz Pizza, Warner Bros. thought, "Why can't we get
into the act?"  After all, they have their own "Chuck E Cheese" character, and surprisingly not even Disney ever thought about opening such a place with THEIR famous mouse.  The only other studio that thought of this was Peter Peitch's company/Jay Ward enterprises with their Bullwinkle's concept.

Gadgets officially opened in 1983.  The first of these locations were Springfield, OH and Baltimore, MD.  Unlike its competitors, Gadgets offered a variety of menus items for both kids and adults.  Steaks, hamburgers, pizza, and yummy drinks (alcoholic and non alcoholic) were on the menu among other dishes.  The menu, of course, designed to look like Looney Tunes Dell comic books from the 60s.

 
 

But food was just the beginning.  Two different audio animatronic shows were going on.  One featured the Looney Tunes, the other an original character.  Sammy Sands played the piano and sang songs.  His piano housed some drinks, a pack of cigarettes, and an ash tray, making him feel right at home.  He performed at the bar where Sammy's Whammy, a drink named after him, could be sold, "and believe me," recalled Lyn Brown from Independent Network News, "after you've had one or two of these, it doesn't matter whether [Sammy] is human or humanoid."  In other words.......it's a Whammy!!!

While the adults were getting Whammied by Sammy's Whammy, the kids could get their game on in the arcade.  Like its competitors, Gadgets offered the latest video games to play using game tokens.  The tokens used multiple designs based off of the famous Looney Tunes characters.

 

But the main attraction is the Looney Tunes Revue animatronic stage shows.  United Press International reported, "Diners at Gadgets will see a completely automated 20-minute show every half hour or so featuring 8-foot robots with pre-recorded dialogue and songs.
But the robots are very special and familiar characters indeed: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam, Porky Pig, Speedy Gonzales, Tweety Bird and Sylvester, Henery Hawk, Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil and other wackos from the Warner Bros. cartoon factory,".  Henery, Foghorn, and Taz would eventually be cutback.  For sure what we know are three stages.  The center stage had Bugs Bunny, Yosemette Sam, Porky Pig, and Pepe le pew (as well as Foghorn, Henery, and Taz).  Porky played the saxophone, while Pepe played the piano. Taz would play the base and Foghorn on the drums. Speedy Gonzalas would randomly appear in different spots making the illusion of him being the fastest mouse in all of Mexico.  Stage left is Daffy playing the guitar, and stage right is Sylvester, Sylvester jr, and Tweety.  Tweety would be found in his bird cage, while Sylvester played the trumpet.  In smaller locations, only Bugs, Daffy, and Porky were used on smaller three stages.  Porky on center stage, Daffy stage right, and Bugs stage left.  The latter of which Bugs played the piano, possibly being the same mech for either Pepe le pew or Sammy Sands.

In total, around 50 to 55 different shows were recorded, all voices by legendary voice over artist Mel Blanc.  Blanc would become heavily involved with the Gadgets concept since there wasn't a whole lot of new projects with Warner Bros. cartoons.  He did interviews and as one employee recalled a Make a Wish where he called up a location to help talk to a young boy who wished to speak to Bugs Bunny, "I actually kinda talked to Mel Blanc once. There was a local child whose wish from the "Make a Wish" foundation was to meet and talk to Bugs. They had Mel call the store, and I was perched by the phone with explicit instructions from the manager to put him through immediately when he called. I was so excited when the call came, I forgot to put the phone on hold, and I hung up on him LOL!....Needless to say, I got a major reaming!"

Many of the showtapes ended up being lost.  One mp3 was found which has since been uploaded on Youtube

The smaller stage for smaller locations had Bugs on piano, Porky, and Daffy

Former employees who worked there all had great memories of working there, though they all agreed that they did not like the uniforms they were wearing.  Many of these comments remained anonymous and all come from John Cook's Misce-Looney-ous blog post  about Gadgets.  Historian Dave Mackey recalls working at the Ocean, NJ location including dressing up as the wabbit himself making a grave mistake, "Yes, I had heard of Gadgets. Mainly because I worked there! I worked at the unit in Ocean, NJ. I was hired to do game room, but was eventually taken off that and put on the food line. Even wore the Bugs Bunny suit one day but made the cardinal mistake of making him talk. (I did the damned voice PRETTY GOOD.) Our Gadgets eventually closed down and became an independent restaurant, and even later the offices for a radio station. The mall that it was in has since been demolished and redeveloped, so the building isn't around any more."

One former waitress still had the tokens left over from the Westbury, NY location, "I too worked at a Gadgets. The one located in Westbury, NY. I was a waitress there from its opening until it had a unexpected closing in '92. I was just going through some of my old things and came across some of the arcade coins. My son was wondering where they were from and if they had any value?" 

Another waitress talks about the uniforms.  This one was the very same employee that accidentally hung up on Mel Blanc, "I worked at Gadget's in Niles, Ohio at the Eastwood Mall, from 1983 through 1984 or early 1985 I think. I have to say, the uniforms sucked LOL! Waitresses had to wear those ankle long, wrap-around skirts that had to be pinned halfway down or you showed all the kiddies your stuff when the breeze from the kitchen doors hit it!"

Cinde was another employee of Gadgets recalling the night before opening day, "I worked at the Gadgets in Towson Maryland and have very good memories of that job while I was in college. Yes the skirts were crazy and were so long you stepped on them all the time. Before the grand opening we had mock trials where the waiters and waitresses waited on each other.... booze was flowing and we could all barely walk out...boy times have changed! It was a great concept and I think the food was pretty good also. I did get sick of everyone asking when the show was going to come on! Any other past Towson Employees....managers...it was a great group of people!"

150 locations were planned to open; only about 5 known locations opened.  Problems within the company caused downsizing such as high maintenance costs, demographics, and even the video game crash of 83.  This was when ET was highly anticipated for Atari, but when it came out and was discovered to be a terrible game, it resulted in many people not buying into video games for a while.  Adults were more invested to a bar atmosphere than a cartoony one.  The concept became Gadgets Cafe, but it too would belly up.  Gadgets would end up closing for good with a report of at least one location lasting up until 1992.

Gadgets ended up being lost in time until 2010 when Jon Cooke posted a blog post about it with very little information.  No pictures, no videos, no tokens, just old articles and stories.  Renewed interest began at the Retro Pizza Zone forums.  This interest brought about pictures of the animatronics, old tokens were found, and finally....video.  Coming from the WPIX archives, a news package showed in action the Looney Tunes Revue and Sammy Sands. Then...something amazing happened at an auction in 2020....................................................................

The Looney Tunes Revue complete and intact at the auction

WE FOUND THEM!!!!!!!  The original animatronics, the stage, the backround........EVERYTHING WAS SAVED!  Granted, they need some TLC.  I doubt they'll ever perform again nor do any showtapes come with it, but here they are...the last surviving audio aniamtronics from Gadgets.  What was once just a hidden piece of Looney Tunes history was now coming to light.  There's still more work to be done and prayers to be told that perhaps someday, we'll see more footage, pictures, and promotions of Gadgets, but since the blog post 10 years ago concerning Gadgets, we found more.  Much more.  More memories, actual audio, actual video, the now known fact that such a place even existed, and even the animatronics have been found.  Perhaps the Internet really is a time machine.  A time machine that led us....to today's Cartoon Destination.

UPDATES:

More footage showed up concerning the shows.  Our first update comes to us with a package.

This location is from Towson, MD and has rare footage of the Taz animatronic.  You could also barely see Foghorn Leghorn.

More showtapes have been found too.  They get very interesting referencing historical WB Cartoon moments at times from singing The Merry Go Round Broke Down to Daffy Duck and Egghead to how the 60's were a drag for Daffy (if you read any of my posts, you'd know why).  

Briar Patch Productions on Youtube provided video footage of The Looney Tunes Revue in action both at Gadgets and on the road.  These videos showed everything in action and we see how Exploded Daffy worked.  

Finally through this video, we get photos of the Foghorn animatronic.  

There are still things missing here and there such as more showtapes, the walkaround inside the stores, and more store footage, but the pieces of the puzzle are now coming together.  This hidden piece of Looney Tunes history is now brought back to life, and I for one am excited that after 12 to 13 years of research, we now know a whole lot more about Gadgets.  It's not just a memory anymore, it's well documented Looney Tunes history.