Amuse.Me

Amuse.Me (formerly founded as Jolly Roger), is a British coin-operated ride manufacturer and the world’s leading manufacturer of licensed and premium coin operated kiddie rides. The company was founded in 1988 by Roger Newborough (1946-2014). In 2001, Jolly Roger was acquired by Photo-Me PLC.

As Jolly Roger[]

Our story begins in 1988, when a man named Roger Newborough founded a company under the name Jolly Roger Amusement Rides Ltd. Many of their earliest rides included a Tractor, a Plane, and etc. These rides were popular enough to keep the company alive. In the early 90s, Jolly Roger introduced more rides in their range, such as the Paddle Steamer, the Monster Jeep, the American Big Truck, the Fire Truck, and the Mini Train.

Fast forward to the summer of 1993, when Newborough’s company announced their very first licensed kiddie ride. This ride is also their very first see saw kiddie ride. The ride was based off of Mr. Blobby of Noel’s House Party fame, in one seat of the see saw, and on the seat facing Bobby the rider would sit on, there was a start button and another button that would play sound effects. The ride also played music along with voice clips of the titular character.

Also in same year, they introduced their first dashboard cover. The dashboard cover was black with the speaker on the left and the coin slot on the right. It has a red start button with a left circle button and a right circle button. There's also a coin door on the bottom. Later on, they began to use Stamar 200X timers.

Continuing off from the Mr. Blobby see saw, Jolly Roger introduced even more licensed rides, including a car with the orange lasagna loving tabby cat Garfield, a boat with Popeye, another Blobby ride that used the same mould as the Popeye boat (with Blobby in place of Popeye and the boat being green; the ride also used the same audio as the Blobby See Saw), a range of Mr. Men rides, another range based out of Pink Panther, one based off of the Busy World of Richard Scarry, and another fleet of see saw rides, including a Mr. Bump See Saw and a Pink Panther See Saw.

Around 1996, Jolly Roger decided to update their dashboard cover. The only modification they’ve done to the dashboard cover is the removal of the small left and right circle buttons. The new dashboard had two rectangular buttons, them being the start button itself and just one sound effect button found underneath.

By 1998/1999, Roger Newborough and his company decided to switch the timer to SoundMaster. It is unknown why he made his company do that, but it's most likely that most earlier Jolly Roger rides with a System 200X timer only has one sound effect each button, while SoundMaster has 1-4 sound effect each button. The SoundMaster timers can also be fitted in Jolly Roger's earlier rides, either still being manufactured during the time or for refurbishment.

The Jolly Roger SoundMaster timers are the only ones that can know that it has more than one ride available rather than any other SoundMaster timers. Amutec's Soundmaster timers do know that a ride will have more than one ride available (that is if you inserted more coins in the coin slot) but their timers say "Have another ride soon!" and then proceeds to say “Please press the start button.” Jolly Roger's SoundMaster Timers will just say "4/3/2/1 ride(s) to go. Press start."

Jolly Roger would also announce more new licensed rides like Little Monsters, Mighty Mouse, Paddington Bear and another Garfield ride, this time, literally taking form of Garfield himself, appropriately titled “Totally Garfield.” They also announced their DC Comics range, one of them being the Batcave and Superman train, though, these two are both based from their respective animated series. Also in that year, they would bring their rides to the US malls and arcades with a distributor, Theisen Vending Co.

In January 2000, Jolly Roger released the world's first Bob the Builder ride at the ATEI that was being held at that date. The ride was based off of the backhoe loader Scoop, Bob’s very first machine he ever acquired. The ride had Bob standing on one side of Scoop, and the standard dashboard setup being used at the time, including the Soundmaster timer. When the ride began development in 1999, Jolly Roger didn’t expect that, in the following decade, that their ride would become one of the largest successes the kiddie ride industry has ever seen, along with the Postman Pat craze that began in 1991. Because the Postman Pat kiddie ride was losing popularity, Scoop dethroned it after the initial release. And mr men rides will use the mr bump album. Following on about the Scoop craze, it was so successful that about 2000 units were produced! Following the popularity of Scoop, in 2003, JR released a kiddie ride version of Roley, which wasn’t as much successful as Scoop was, though.

In 2001, Jolly Roger switched back to Stamar's System timers, since Stamar has now made a new timer that can hold 1-4 sound effects each button) Their SoundMaster speech prompts are now either sold to Amutec or most like became SoundMaster's primary speech prompts. Rather than buying the System 200X timers, Jolly Roger now uses the System 4001 timer. While that they did discontinue most of their rides like the Mr Men range (rip mr bump album), Popeye and Mr Blobby, they did continue to manufacture other rides of select ranges like the Little Monsters, Garfield and Bob the Builder ranges. Also in the same year, Jolly Roger updated their dashboard cover again. The two rectangle buttons were removed and the coin slot is now in the middle. There's a circular start button on the left and the red circle button labeled "PRESS" on the right. Both buttons can make sound effects.

The company was then sold to Photo-Me PLC in the same year as the new timer switch. Photo-Me didn't close the company after the purchase, but they did distribute both new and old Jolly Roger rides. They would put a yellow price plate with a 4-5 digit code (eg, 8-1-A-3-F). Jolly Roger also announced new rides including the Barney tractor, the Arthur bus, and Troy the Tractor. In 2004 Jolly Roger announced their first video rides starting with Scoop and Roley. Later, many other rides released later on had their own video option releases. They also released the Tractor Ted ride (which is licensed) but it is unknown when it was released (the ride shares the same mould as Troy the Tractor). In the same year, Jolly Roger released Noddy, Thomas and a few others. Also in that year, they now continued to make RG Mitchell's 2000s classic rides. That was due to the fact that R.G. Mitchell was acquired by Photo-Me PLC in 2005. While the R.G. Mitchell ride re-releases now have the standard JR (AR) base and the Stamar 4001 timer used by JR (AR), the RGM reissues still contain BOT-1 speech prompts alongside Stamar's own speech prompts.

In the later years, they announced more licensed rides based from shows that you would see on Nick Jr. (No, Not the USA version), CBeebies or Channel 5's Milkshake! They announced, Igglepiggle, Roary the Racing Car, Rupert Bear and Lunar Jim. They also announced their first carousels starting with Gallopers, Teletubbies and Noddy. And around that time, it looks like that Jolly Roger has now discontinued Clifford, Little Monsters and their DC Comics range. In the later years, Jolly Roger kept going back and fourth by manufacturing the first few licensed rides, then manufacturing the first few generic rides. But they did announce new licensed rides starting from 2012. They released Ben and Holly, Tickety Toc, and Octonauts.

They also introduced their EZEE Swap range around 2012. The EZEE Swap rides were essentially just rides connected on a base with a monitor on the front. You would get it brand new with a bee fitted, but you would also get other rides like the rollercoaster, plane and the racing car, and swap the ride from the bee to the rollercoaster. It's possible that you might have to swap the timer too since the timer might have the bee video attract mode but not the rollercoaster video attract mode, and you might have to get the new timer or there might be one timer fitted in the mould.

Unfortunately, in 2014, Roger J. Newborough, had suddenly passed away.

During 2016, they began production of their van rides, all of them using the same mould as the ANWB. These included the Surf Shack, Delivery Express, and JR Rescue vans. All of these could also be rebranded by the operator’s choice. In the same year, Jolly Roger made new PC Based board for Campervan

Later that year, they introduced the legendary "Vehiclero (as we call it)" range. They released the Spydero, Bykero and the iX Pod. In around 2017-2019, Jolly Roger announced more licensed rides starting with the Bing Talkie Taxi, and the Minion Mobile.

And around that time, it looks like that Jolly Roger has now discontinued their Bob the Builder ride range, meaning that the reign of the legendary Scoop kiddie ride was over. During the time when Jolly Roger is getting ready to release their new Shopkins Melon Cutie Car ride, it was initially going to be exclusive to Ireland, Australia and Asia, which was said to have been due to licensing reasons. Despite this, Photo-Me began to distribute the ride in the UK.

By 2020, Jolly Roger made a ride specifically designed for Chuck E. Cheese stores, with the first unit being sited at a store in mid-March of that year. However, it seems like these were also going to be available in the UK, just without Chuck E. in the centre. However, none of these train carousels have been found in the UK yet, as there is no footage of these available.

Also during that time, JR was also thinking of making another version of the Spydero, this time, with an interactive game, just like how the Bykero later got it’s own game option release around the time of the standard Bykeros release (it is rare). It would’ve been called the Turbo Spydero, or Spydero Interactive. There does exist footage of this new Turbo Spydero ride, but theres only just one video available. But it seems like the ride never came, and instead we were given what is called Spydero V3. These V3 units had the screen replaced with a display, and surprisingly, rather than using the standard JR movement, the ride has a movement similar to that of OMC’s rides, which in turn, had the same movement as Kidzstuff and some of Northern Leisures rides (Northern Leisure bought Kidzstuff, who bough OMC).

As Amuse.Me[]

In around 2021 or 2022, Photo-Me now changed the name to ME Group, and then decided to change their kiddie ride division, Jolly Roger, to Amuse.Me. The only ones from the 2000's still make are Albert Heljin and ANWB ride range. It is unknown why they changed the name, but it's most likely that ME Group wanted to put their "ME" to their every brand possible. (similar how Nintendo keeps putting "64" at the end of each N64 game"

In the Netherlands, most rides like Fetch the Vet are dubbed in Dutch, while the Albert Heljin and the ANWB range are exclusives. The Albert Heijn rides were only exclusive to Albert Heijn locations, meaning that you couldn’t find them anywhere else.

Ride Manuals: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiA_bSkucKDAxX0vokEHc1ACU4QFnoECBcQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theisenvending.com%2Fassets%2Fpdf%2FJOLLY%2520ROGER%2520SUITE%2520DEC%252006.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1EVsuy4TF9ODiET9op4Fdz&opi=89978449

Rides[]

As nearly all Jolly Roger models are shown on the gallery, the ones that are missing are: Gentle Giant, Turbo Trike, "Racing Car" "Brown Horse" and Bulldozer.