“It’s 1999 and you just filled out your Book-it slip. You order cherry Pepsi. You are safe”

Before Netflix and Uber Eats, we spent our Friday nights renting a flick from Blockbuster and devouring the pizza buffet at our local Pizza Hut.

70s Pizza Hut

Step back into the '80s at this Texas Pizza Hut, a nostalgic restaurant that hasn't been renovated in 50 years/

Update 11/09- sign has been replaced with a new Pizza Hut/Wingstreet sign. Sebring, FL

While comedian Craig Robinson appears in Pizza Hut advertisements to promote the nostalgic, bygone days of pizza past—Pizza Hut Classics serve up the real deal. Kind of. With only 17 locations across the United States, they're a bit of a mystery.

Time for some pizza!

Pizza Hut in 1979

Here are a few ads featuring Pizza Hut Pete from the early days of Pizza Hut in Lorain County. The large square ad is from 1969 and the vertical ad (below) is from 1973. Note how in the 1969 ad, Pizza Hut Pete figures prominently on the building itself, with large cutouts of him on the building's roof and sides. Now he's just the answer to a trivia question. I remember going to the Oberlin Avenue location a lot in high school, with the occasional trip "all the way out to Sheffield Lake" for…

Pizza Hut - Pete - Fredericksburg VA - January 1978