Aaron Fechter, photographed for SPIN in Orlando by Colby Katz

Chris Thrash was just seven when his parents took him to Showbiz Pizza Place in Columbus, Georgia, in 1982. Amid the blaring video games, ball pits, and steaming-hot pepperoni pies, he found himself plopped down in front of the restaurant's stage as the houselights went down. The curtain pulled back to reveal a towering, adult-size bear in overalls, a wolf wearing a vest, a spacesuit-clad dog, even a gorilla sporting a gold tuxedo jacket, playing guitars, keyboards, and drums. A sign proclaiming the band's name -- the Rock-afire Explosion -- flashed red and yellow as the animatronic group whirred to life and began moving their lips, eyes, and arms to cover versions of Michael Jackson and Beatles medleys. The boy stared in awe. "It was magic to me," says Thrash, now a 32-year-old used-car salesman in Phoenix City, Alabama. "I couldn't wait to go back."

While Showbiz no longer exists, some 25 years later the Rock-afire Explosion has returned, thanks in no small part to Thrash's efforts. Two years ago, he purchased a complete band from Aaron Fechter, the owner of Creative Engineering -- the company that designed the Rock-afire shows -- and set it up in a backyard shed. There, he reprogrammed the 150-pound robots to perform songs by Usher, Fergie, and Michael Bublé. After uploading the performances on YouTube, he set off a Rock-afire renaissance that's led to dozens of homemade music videos, a cameo in MGMT's "Electric Feel" video, and a forthcoming documentary.

Propelled by pneumatic valves and nascent robotic technology, and programmed by early Apple computers, the band -- bassist Billy Bob Brockali, singers Looney Bird and Mitzi Mozzarella, keyboardist Fatz Geronimo, guitarist Beach Bear, and drummer Dook LaRue, as well as Rolfe deWolfe and Earl Schmerle -- entranced, and even scared, kids. "I just remember them sitting there lifeless, motionless," says Against Me! frontman Tom Gabel, who saw the band in Texas on his seventh birthday. One fan, Snapper Ard, was inspired to take up the drums after seeing them. "I would play the records and pantomime the characters for hours," says Ard, who ended up maintaining the robots at one of the restaurants as a teen and eventually got a job with Creative Engineering.

From 1980 to 1983, Fechter's Creative Engineering was churning out hundreds of bands for Showbiz. A year later, Showbiz merged with its competitor Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatres; in 1992 all the restaurants adopted Chuck E. Cheese's name, and the animatronics that powered the Rock-afire Explosion were retrofitted into the rat-fronted Munch's Make Believe Band. Fechter retained the copyright to the Rock-afi re characters and began selling off the nearly 80 sets of the band he still owned. He also devoted time to a new invention, "a stand-alone machine that would allow you to send and receive messages between friends." If that sounds familiar, by the time Fechter was ready to bring his "Anti-Gravity Freedom Machine" to the public in 1996, "the Internet put me out of business," he says.