(Photo: Roberto Machado Noa/Getty Images)

Suggesting that, like the mob, no one ever gets out of Munch’s Make Believe Band alive, we learned today about a disturbing corporate policy apparently enshrined in the bylaws of the Chuck E. Cheese corporation. Courtesy of a local reporter streaming from the site of a closing member of the franchise in Oak Lawn, Illinois, we’ve got Facebook video of a couple of teens boredly destroying Chuck E. Cheese’s poor plastic head with a sledgehammer, apparently on company orders. According to Lorraine Swanson of the Oak Lawn Patch, she was told by employees that this ritual destruction of the singing pizza mouse is standard operating procedure for a dying member of the brand. (It’s not clear if the sledgehammers are also a required part of the process, although, when pressed, we admittedly couldn’t come up with a better disposal technique for a discarded plastic mascot skull.)

Earlier this year, Chuck E. Cheese suggested it would be phasing out some of its mouse-based branding, most notably by shutting down its creepily famous animatronic band. And hey, we get it: Nobody wants to get sued because some collector broke their arm dumpster diving for the coolest closed restaurant swag imaginable. Still, we have to side with Lorraine here, who sadly remarks “It’s rather symbolic” as a pair of teens slowly beat their former murine pizza god to death.