I grew up in the early 1980’s, a time when cartoons were often based on toy lines and video games, so much that entire programming blocks were revolving around them. CBS, in particular, had a very video game-inspired line-up, the “Saturday Supercade,” which involved characters like Frogger, Donkey Kong, and Q*Bert. ABC on the other hand, had shows like Pac-Man and Rubik The Amazing Cube in their arsenal.
Honestly… these cartoons weren’t especially good. But that didn’t stop kids my age from tuning in, week after week, so obviously they were doing something right.
The always-impressive Warner Archive – frequently releasing DVD’s of shows that might not support a retail release – has just put out a DVD containing the first season of the Pac-Man animated show. If you’re like me and haven’t thought of the show in, oh, nearly 30 years, this is a treat. The audio and visual quality look great, especially considering the age of the material and the notion that it’s manufactured on demand – you’d really never know either of those things.
The episodes are honestly fairly generic. Nostalgia really is the key draw here. This series was not really “art” so much as cashing in on a fad that was popular in 1982. Considering at the time we had Pac-Man Cereal and more (and hey – that cereal was really good), merchandising was all over the place.
In Pac-Man the animated series, the ghosts have a leader (did they in the games?) and Pac-Man has a family. Ms. Pac-Man has a name (“Pepper”) and there’s even a Pac-baby. And years before political campaigns brought them to prominence, there’s even a Super-PAC in Season 2 (not on this set… maybe it’ll come out if this does well?) Marty Ingalls was the voice of Pac-Man here, and other prominent 1980’s voiceover actors can be heard within. Warning: you WILL get the theme music stuck in your head, as it is played repeatedly throughout.
I still am very glad this was released. It’s not as exciting to me as some other recent Warner Archive releases including Silverhawks and The Centurions, but somewhere out there there is a collector who will eat this up and watch again and again. And as I pointed out, the assembled package is very well done.
You can get Pac-Man exclusively from the Warner Archive here.
2 Comments
Please, this cartoon was awesome. Much better then the Snorks, Galtar, or the crap fest that was Yo Yogi. People love to hate on sh-t, so jaded by having to grow up after this classic era.
I was born in 1977 so that was before the time of the Snorks, Galtar, or “the crap that was Yo Yogi.” I was exactly the right age for Pac-Man. I just don’t feel that anything about Pac-Man was especially extraordinary, when the strongest buttons that were pushed were the nostalgia buttons.