I remember well the first time I saw a Pac man machine. Cute, but where were the explosions and what were you supposed to shoot :) Seemed like they were trying to make a game girls liked. Moving in a maze avoiding ghosts. And the characters on the screen had names. Like they were trying to make a cartoon. You could finally identify something on the screen and call it something. It was a few dozen trips to the arcade before I ever got around to dropping a quarter in the Pac man machine. This game was completely different from all the other games at the time.  It never reached the three wide three deep status like asteroids or space invaders. But then maybe by that time there were more games in the arcades to spread out the crowd. The second row of pinball machines in most arcades was starting to be replaced by video games.

And it didn't take long for them to make a cartoon caricature out of Pac man and start a merchandising frenzy.

Care for some 22 year old candy? Judging by the spots on the candy I doubt it would taste any good :) I actually picked this up at a yard sale in 1990 for 5 cents. I tried shaking them all back to the center like it says you are supposed to do to play the game. But gave up after a few minutes. I was never really good at the real game either :)

It seemed different companies had different likenesses of Pac man. Some looked like the actual arcade image. I recall Namco owning that. Midway owned the blob image on the candy. And Coleco owned a little yellow ball looking character. Here is my little PVC Pac man.

Kids loved this stuff. I'm sure Nintendo was paying attention while they were getting Mario ready to introduce to the world. If I find any more Pac man stuff I'll scan it and put it here

PAC MAN Fans