The Only Rock-afire Explosion in Canada
Dormant in its dark delight, a document of the last band north of the border.
November 27, 2022 — I traveled to Kelowna BC for the first time. Why I went there is not important (it was a quick business trip for the art school where I work). What’s important is that I knew they had a Rock-afire Explosion at a family fun arcade centre called Scandia Golf & Games. But would it be running? What condition would it be in? I heard rumors it was not in good shape, and happened to be staying close enough to the venue to investigate and find out for myself. To my knowledge, it’s the only one in Canada.
It wasn’t running. It was apparently running okay before COVID hit, and Scandia had plans to restore it to its former glory, until vandals stole some of the character masks and it currently just sits there watching kids play video games.
But what is The Rock-afire Explosion?
It’s complicated. The short answer is they are animatronic characters who used to play at the now-extinct Showbiz Pizza Place restaurants in the 1980s. Some people may ask, is this the same thing as Chuck E. Cheese? That’s even more complicated. The answer is No….but….sort of. I shan’t explain. If you really want to know, read this and then come back here.
Why am I writing about this?
Also hard to explain, but I was obsessed with Showbiz Pizza Place as a kid, specifically the handful of times I went there in 1983 and 1984. I was 8-9 years old at the time. There were two other pizza places I enjoyed in the Detroit area where I grew up: the original Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theatre, and another place called Major Magic’s All-Star Pizza Revue. But Showbiz was the best one.
My grandparents introduced me to places like this, and would take me there often. I was mesmerized by these colorful and unsettling characters on the stage, and how they came to life under flashing lights when their curtains opened. My grandparents even snuck a tape-recorder in to capture all the songs for me to listen to. They knew I loved it that much.
Look at that kid on the right. Do you see my obsessive stare? (This is the only photo I have of the original Rock-afire during Christmas of 1983, at a Showbiz in Dearborn, Michigan.)
This fascination tied into the same obsessive gob-smack that the Muppets and Disney World dark rides graced my childhood with, and I’m sure it played a sub-conscious part in my eventual forays into stop-motion animation and puppetry.
I’m fully aware these characters are creepy and fodder for plenty of nightmare fuel. And yes, I’m fully aware they inspired Five Nights at Freddy’s. I really don’t care. They played a big part of my childhood psyche.
If you didn’t grow up with things like this, you will never understand. But I know there are plenty out there who do.
A proper show in its glory…
Here’s one of my favorite classic Rock-afire Explosion bits — a scene of banter and a song with all three stages. The funniest thing about the voice actors behind this show is that they would simply go into the studio and ad-lib all kinds of stupid things and make mistakes during songs. But instead of re-recording it, they left all these organic blunders in and programmed the animatronics to match it. Who does things like that anymore?
It’s not only their movement that’s always fascinated me; it’s the stillness. I would often sneak up and peek that these mechanical marvels behind the curtain during breaks in-between their pre-programmed musical numbers. They were frightening and fascinating as they sat there in the darkness, still living and breathing in their own world, as if they were in a meditative state, waiting for their next cue.
…but now.
The stillness of the retro robots at Scandia (and other defunct attractions across the continent) is a different kind of stillness. It’s one of neglect, a frozen museum to days which are simply over. Would anyone care if these figures were restored? Would kids today fawn over them in the same way?
We may never know. But all the same, here’s my documentation of what may be the first and last of its kind north of the border, stoic servants of a power ridiculed and feared by many but loved by a few.
UPDATE: Not too long after posting this, the show was sold and it’s no longer there. This could likely be the very last video documentation of the show in this location.
Memories of these characters in their glory days, as I said, are linked to memories of my grandparents, who moved to Arizona a few years later when I was 12. Before they passed away, I visited them there on several precious occasions through the years, and I would always see quails. In our house, we have one of my grandmother’s stained glass pieces of a quail hanging in our window.
I walked along a slush-dusted highway in Kelowna on my own personal trek to see Scandia’s dormant Rock-afire Explosion, a lost gem and relic of my youth. On the way there, and on the way back, guess what I saw?
