Chuck E. Cheese, America’s sixth-best remaining video game arcade and 60,000th-best pizzeria, isn’t doing great. Between declining cultural relevancy and the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s no surprise that the company declared bankruptcy in June. But what’s to be done with billions of unused prize tickets, never to be spat out of a Skee-Ball machine? The answer is, apparently, “shred ’em all.”
Representatives of Chuck E. Cheese have asked a bankruptcy court judge for permission to destroy no less than seven billion prize tickets, the kind that can be redeemed for everything from a fake mustache to a PlayStation at the restaurant’s prize counters. According to CNN Business, the sheer volume of unused tickets could fill 65 shipping containers.
The company wants to purchase the printed tickets and destroy them, at a cost of $2.3 million. The thinking is that this would save them the cost of having to redeem the tickets in exchange for prizes, which would be a potential $9 million. Chuck E. Cheese was attempting to move its token and prize system digital before the pandemic struck.
It’s a tantalizing thought to the inner 10-year-old. Somewhere, presumably locked behind steel- safe doors and laser tripwires, is a dragon’s hoard of billions and billions of paper tickets, enough to buy a mansion made out of plush baseballs and unbranded frisbees. If you could assemble a crew, plan a heist, and find enough child-sized rappel harnesses, you could make the score of a lifetime.
Source: CNN Business