Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum is an arcade and museum located in Farmington Hills, Michigan. It is devoted to a large collection of coin-operated animatronic dummies, mechanical games, and other curiosities. Exhibits include, for example, the classic RomaniFortune teller machine that used to grace many carnival sideshows. Most of the machines at the museum are still functional and visitors are encouraged to use them.[1] Marvin's is open 365 days a year. It is currently located in a 5,500-square-foot (510m2) space.
In late 2023, a new development, including a Meijer store, was proposed which would involve tearing down the building occupied by Marvin's.[2] The choice was approved by the Farmington Hills council on 14 February 2024, although the owner has stated that Marvin's will be relocating.
Founder
The museum's founder, Marvin Yagoda was a collector for over 60 years.[3] He graduated from the University of Michigan as a pharmacist and took over his father's store, Sam's Drugs in Detroit. Yagoda was a recognized expert in the field of mechanical and electrical game apparatus; he has been involved in appraisal of such items for the television series American Pickers.[4][5] Yagoda died peacefully on January 8, 2017, at the age of 78.[6] Marvin's son Jeremy grew up in the business and carries on his father's legacy.
Collection
Among the collection is P. T. Barnum's replica of the Cardiff Giant,[7][8] one of Sing Sing Prison's electric chairs in which 30 people died,[9] and an automaton "food inspector" set up to continuously vomit into a pile of milk bottles.[10] There are also various modern coin-op arcade games, and a prize counter to exchange tickets. The museum also hosts a collection of Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre animatronics with a complete set of the Pizza Time Players (excluding Chuck E.) with one of the guest stars Madame Oink and the clapper board.[11]
In popular culture
In 2005, Tally Hall, a band from nearby Ann Arbor, titled an album after the museum.[12] The logo of the attraction was used on the main album cover.
↑ Semion, Bill (2000). Fun with the Family in Michigan: Hundreds of Ideas for Day Trips with the Kids (6thed.). Globe Pequot. pp.59 of 352. ISBN978-0762708086.
Nolan Kay Bushnell is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News "Innovator of the Year" award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America". He has started more than 20 companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. He is on the board of Anti-Aging Games. In 2012, he founded an educational software company called Brainrush, that is using video game technology in educational software.
Farmington Hills is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. A northwestern suburb of Detroit, Farmington Hills is located roughly 22 miles (35.4 km) from downtown Detroit. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 83,986, making it the second-largest community in Oakland County.
Chuck E. Cheese is a chain of American family entertainment centers and restaurants founded in 1977 by Atari's co-founder Nolan Bushnell. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, each location features arcade games, amusement rides and musical shows in addition to serving pizza and other food items; former mainstays included ball pits, crawl tubes, and animatronic shows. The chain's name is taken from its main character and mascot, Chuck E. Cheese. The first location opened as Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre in San Jose, California. It was the first family restaurant to integrate food with arcade games and animated entertainment, thus being one of the pioneers for the "family entertainment center" concept.
The Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous archaeological hoaxes in American history. It was a 10-foot-tall (3.0 m), roughly 3,000 pound purported "petrified man", uncovered on October 16 1869 by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. "Stub" Newell, in Cardiff, New York. He covered the giant with a tent and it soon became an attraction site. Both it and an unauthorized copy made by P. T. Barnum are still being displayed. P.T. Barnum's is on display at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
The Rock-afire Explosion (RAE) is an animatronic character band designed and manufactured by Creative Engineering, Inc. (CEI) for use in ShowBiz Pizza Place restaurants in the 1980s and early 1990s. The band's characters were various anthropomorphized animals, including a brown bear, a grey wolf and a silverback gorilla. They performed medleys of classic rock, pop, and country music, as well as original compositions and comedic skits.
Bullwinkle's Entertainment, previously known as Family Fun Centers & Bullwinkle's Restaurant and formerly Bullwinkle's Family Food n' Fun is a chain of family entertainment centers. Locations feature a sit-down restaurant, complemented by arcade games, go-karts, bumper boats, mini golf, laser tag, a ropes course, a zip line, and small rides for children. Games and activities are generally themed around the company's namesake, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum is the debut studio album by American rock band Tally Hall, originally released on November 12, 2005. Their previous recordings were all independently produced and distributed demos. All of the tracks on the album are finished versions of their demo tracks, with the exception of "Haiku," which is a completely new song. The album gets its name from a museum of mechanized curiosities that is located in Farmington Hills, Michigan. The album's cover art is also based on a number of machines located within the museum.
Tally Hall is an American rock band formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in December 2002, and publicly active until the conclusion of their Good & Evil tour in 2011. The band is known for its upbeat melodies and whimsical lyrics. The members originally described their musical style as "wonky rock", later redefining their sound as "fabloo", in an effort to not let their music be defined by any particular genres after critics began defining the characteristics of "wonky rock".
ShowBiz Pizza Place, often shortened to ShowBiz Pizza or ShowBiz, was an American family entertainment center and restaurant pizza chain founded in 1980 by Robert L. Brock and Creative Engineering (CEI). It emerged after a separation between Brock and owners of the Chuck E. Cheese franchise, Pizza Time Theatre. ShowBiz Pizza restaurants entertained guests through a large selection of arcade games, coin-operated rides, and animatronic stage shows.
Buddy's Pizza is an independent pizza restaurant chain based in Detroit, Michigan. Founded in 1946, the company has an annual revenue of US $30 million. The chain's 23 restaurants have over 700 employees. Buddy's has been called one of the five best pizzerias in the United States by the Food Network. It has a bocce ball league that plays every Saturday morning at its original Conant Street location.
Pizza Showtime was a family restaurant and entertainment centre operating in Perth, Western Australia from 1980 to 1984. Similar to the American Chuck E. Cheese chain it was a sit down pizza restaurant complemented by arcade games, and animatronic characters.
The Detroit Dark Angels were a women's semi-professional American football team founded in 2010 by Chuck Lauber and Aaron Brothers. In 2014, the team was purchased and reorganized as a 501(c)3 corporation DDA Football Inc., by a group that included former Detroit Demolition players Alecia Sweeney and Yarlen Henry along with Coach Keith Thomas.
Aaron Fechter is an American mechanical engineer, entrepreneur, voice actor, singer, and musician who owns and operates Creative Engineering, Inc. (CEI). He is best known as the creator of The Rock-afire Explosion, an animatronic show featuring a variety of characters created primarily for Showbiz Pizza Place restaurants throughout the 1980s. A fallout between Showbiz and CEI, along with the chain's dwindling revenue, led to the show's decline and eventual removal by the early 1990s.
Robert Howard Cantor is an American singer-songwriter and creator of multiple viral videos. He is mostly known as a vocalist, guitarist, and co-writer for the indie rock band Tally Hall.
Events from the year 1973 in Michigan.
Events from the year 1985 in Michigan.
Events from the year 2017 in Michigan.
"The Bidding" is a song by American rock band Tally Hall. It was released on October 24, 2005 as track 5 of Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. The song was written by Joe Hawley with vocals led by Hawley, Rob Cantor, and Zubin Sedghi. It received generally positive reception, amassing over 145 million plays on Spotify and 24 million plays on YouTube. In 2019, the song became a viral song on the social media platform TikTok, with many using the beginning verse and two ending verses as a sped-up soundbite on the site.
The discography of Tally Hall, an American rock band, consists of two studio albums, two compilation albums, five extended plays (EPs), six singles, one promotional single, nine music videos and five appearances on compilation and soundtrack albums or in video collections. The band was formed in 2002 while attending the University of Michigan. A year later, they recorded their debut EP, Party Boobytrap, followed by their second release, Welcome to Tally Hall, in 2004. The latter incorporated a larger spectrum of styles, and the two EPs were combined on the full-length Complete Demos the same year.
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