Chuck E. Cheese Wants to Shred 7B Prize Tickets

Somewhere out there, there is a stash of Chuck E. Cheese prize tickets big enough to give one to everybody on the planet—and the company wants to have it destroyed. The children's restaurant chain, which applied for bankruptcy protection in June, has asked a bankruptcy court for permission to spend $2.3 million to destroy 7 billion prize tickets before they fall into the wrong hands, CNN reports. The tickets, which players win at arcade games and exchange for prizes, could potentially be traded in for around $9 million in merchandise at its 612 locations, the company said. According to the court filing, the supply of tickets could fill "65 40-foot cargo shipping containers.”

"Since prize tickets are redeemable by guests at significantly higher value than the cost of prize tickets, the debtors instead need to arrange for the destruction of the remaining stock of prize tickets in the supply chain to mitigate any risk of these tickets being circulated to the general public," the court filing said, per the New York Post. The company said orders for the tickets were placed before the bankruptcy filing, and before the pandemic accelerated its shift away from paper prize tickets to electronic tickets and contactless service. (More Chuck E. Cheese stories.)