Barely Remembered: Pac-Man Cartoon

Originally written in March and early April, 2018, but not posted before CA's Community Blogs came down.

Remember a couple years back now, when I did articles on the likes of Dungeons and Dragons, Pole Position and Rubik's Cube? Somewhere in all of that, I think I mentioned something about having watched the Pac-Man animated series when I was a kid, too.

Like I said in the Rubik's Cube article, the early 80s were really a time when it seemed like anything and everything that was even remotely popular with the youngsters was given an animated tie-in series of some sort or another. Amongst the various examples of this to be found is the Pac-Man cartoon series, based on the video game series of the same name.

In the case of the cartoon show, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man were a married couple, with Ms. Pac-Man being renamed Pepper. Because they were indeed married, they also had a child together, somehow, named Pac-Baby, if memory serves. I'm honestly not sure of how that would work in context of the show, but I've seen fan art around that certainly gives one reason to think about such things.

A less weird part of the family dynamic in the Pac household was the pets. I'm going with the plural there in spite of the fact that I only remember them havig the Pac equivalent of a dog because I would not be surprised if they actually had more than one pet over the course of the show, and even more than one at a time. I say this because, as I'm sure I keep mentioning, I'm built something like a Pac-Person myself, and as such, I can say that with their build, getting one's groove on would be a cumbersome task at best, which means that households with multiple offspring were rare, to say the least.

This is one of those shows that I can remember watching sometimes, but never really giving enough attention to to really talk much about. As I remember it, there was no plot connecting the various episodes. Each episode, therefore, was about the Pac family and the other members of their village going about their daily lives as best they could with the Ghost Monsters from the games interfering with the intent of gathering Power Pellets for their master, a wizzard or scientist dude who looked kinda like Darth Vader without his helmet and dressed in red. I'm not entirely sure of why the Darth Vader guy wanted to get Power Pellets, but my best guess is that he had some intent of taking over Pac-Land, the country that the show took place in.

The plot of each episode was fairly formulaic, generally centered around the Ghost Monsters and their leader coming up with some plot to get some Power Pellets, only to be foiled by Pac-Man and friends, who would wind up “chomping” the ghosts and sending them back to their base as pairs of eyes, a-la the games. I know there's a Christmas episode that got reviewed on Cartoon Clipshow several years ago, and Rob the Wonderful does a better job of explaining all this there.

This is one of those shows where all I remember in terms of episodes is one where the Ghost Monsters are going about their usual antics, and when it comes time for Pac-Man to do his thing, he can't because all the Power Pellets in town have gone stale somehow, which means Pac winds up leading them to the source of the pellets, but somehow manages to stop them from getting back to their base with that information. I'm sure there was a Superman type character somewhere in the show, too, but I'm not really sure how all that worked out. It's been a long time since I've seen any episodes.

What I remember more is the theme song. It's simple and it's effective at getting the point of the show across. Just as important, for me, anyway, is that it's the source of the first joke I ever tried to tell at lunch when I was in grade school. Failed horribly, of course, but it was a first effort along those lines. Plus, I was only in fourth grade, maybe, at the time, so it makes sense that I'd fail at it.

The only other thing of note I can think to say of the show is that I'm pretty sure this is one of the ones I sometimes watched in the morning before school at the time, as part of USA Network's Cartoon Express block. I guess that makes it sometime early to mid 80s. Hard to believe it's been that long already, but then again, I'm 40 years old myself, too.

But anyway, that pretty much covers what I remember of the Pac-Man cartoon series. It's not much, but then again, there wasn't all that much to the show, either. But that, too, makes sense, since there wasn't much in the way of things to work with in the games to begin with, but a part of my childhood all the same.