Pac-Man, Video Game to Kids Commodity
While Atari, Intellivision, and ColecoVision games were popular, and games like Donkey Kong, Forgger, and Qbert leaped off the screen and into the merchandise realm, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man were kid toy royalty. It was a simple concept; a round yellow figure with nothing but eyes and a mouth ran around a maze, chomping on digital dots. But four multi-colored ghosts stymied Pac-Man’s goal. In 1982, with Pac-Man a raging success in the arcade and home gaming market, toy manufacturer Coleco obtained the license to develop figurines of Pac-Man and other gaming characters. Hanna-Barbera developed a Pac-Man cartoon. Buckner and Garcia released the song “Pac-Man Fever.” Toys and merchandise were inescapable. Hanna-Barbera, the cartoon giant behind The Flintstones and Scooby Doo, even developed a Pac-Man series running from 1982 and 1984. By 1983, Pac-Man was the “Mickey Mouse of the 80s.”