Many
will argue what is truly a classic in this industry, but
very few could make an arguement against Pac-Man.
Undoubtledy one of the most successful and greatest games
of the 1980s, Pac-Man has since risen to legendary
status in the gaming world. A beloved character this Pac-Man
was, so much so that somebody thought it a good enough idea
to give him his own television show. Enter Pac-Man
the animated series.
Now,
kids, have you ever wondered where Pac-Man came from?
Well, have you ever thought of what he does for a living?
Why certainly you'd like to know what he sounds like atleast...
Really? Well, the least you could do is humor me as I
attempt to regale you with tales of comedic proportions.
The concept is simple: take a five-minute time-waster and
turn it into a TWENTY-five-minute time-waster. How do they
do it? Well, the plot is so thin that simply overviewing
the main characters will give away the entire season. Speaking
of which...
Characters
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Rotund
half-breeds: your typical American family. |
Goodies
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Pac-Man
Voiced by an aging Marty Ingels nearing his fifties,
Pac-Man is the protector of the Power Forest where
all the Power Pellets (known as Power Pills in the
video game) are grown. This isn't the same Pac-Man
we all know and love, no this one likes to run around
in boots and wear coal miners gloves to bed. |
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Pepper
Or "Ms. Pac-Man" as I and everyone else
likes to call her. Pepper, too, has gone under some
changes most notably her name change to PEPPER and
is now referred to as "Mrs." Pac-Man to
insure the Pac-Baby wasn't born out of wedlock.
That and she's white and now wears a cancer wig. |
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Pac-Baby
Not only is this the most genericly tacked on cute
kid this side of Seven (like the Married With
Children reference no one will get?) it's also
an early commentary on interracial relationships
as Pac-Baby is clearly the middle ground of Pac-Man's
yellow skin tone and Pepper's pasty-white complexion |
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Chomp
Chomp and Sour Puss
We follow up a generic baby character with an even
more generic cat and dog dynamic. They hate each
other, you get the idea. |
Baddies
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Mezmeron
Slant eyed arch nemesis of Pac-Man. For one reason
or another he wants all the Power Pellets in Pac-Land.
Think Darth Vader without the helmet and the originality. |
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Clyde
Generic-gangster-leader-ghost of the pack. |
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Blinky
The red ghost. Blinky is basically a big pussy.
'Nuff said. |
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Pinky
As much as I wish this were true, it is not. I couldn't
find a good enough picture of the pink ghost known
as Pinky as he doesn't see much screentime, but
one can dream can't they? A rather generic character
among generic characters with the only interesting
detail being he can shapeshift, but I think they
all can anyway. It certainly would be a much better
trade-off given the circumstances. |
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Inky
Inky? Really? That's the best you've got? And this
is a name from the original Pac-Man series.
Inky is almost as stupid as his name, if not stupider.
Not only does he have a cock eye but he also seems
to have no control over his tongue. All that is
left to do is to make him smell like shit, but that
is never acknowledged directly in the series. |
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Sue
Female ghost. Umm...that's about it. Oh yeah, and
she's a major bitch. |
So each episode of the show is seperated into three parts:
the first story, a middle "skit", and the second
story, much like a lot of other cartoons in the day. The
first part is entitled Presidential Pac-Nappers
as you can see above.
We start the show with an image of a situation any child
would like to see their favorite hero in, no, not at a stand-off
with a supreme super villian or saving the world from global
domination, NO. It's Pac-Man sleeping on the side of the
road sporting a five o'clock shadow presumably after being
kicked out of his place of residence by Mrs. Pac-Man (I
mean, PEPPER) for munching a little more than necessary.
When he wakes he does what any homeless streaker would do:
run for his life. But this time he's not being chased by
the police, no, no no. You see in this world he IS the authority.
Why the law is running from the criminal is something to
question, but in the world of Pac-Land nothing is quite
certain.
Anyways, Pac-Man flees from the ghost or personal demons
or whatever you want to call them until he runs straight
into an industrial-sized tube that just happens to be in
the middle of the street. Of course since this isn't real
life he doesn't just smack his face into the vertical side
of the L-shape but runs all the way up it into the air where
he crash lands into some randomly spawned trash cans.
Pac-Man is cornered now and has two choices: either he tells
them where the elusive Power Pellets are or they chomp his
bones. No, really, it was that graphic. These guys were
some hardcore gangster serial killers. They weren't just
going to defeat Pac-Man or make him look stupid, they were
going to straight up eat the guy in public, presumably alive.
What the fuck.
Luckily Mrs. Pepper Pac-Man Pickled Peppers
Witherspoon comes and saves his ass from the ghosts when
she places a single quarter in a public vending machine
and it literally busts Power Pellets all over her face.
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Pac-Man
fiending for Power Pellets. |
Yes, the Power Pellets which have eluded Mezmeron and his
gang of misfits for so long are readily available in easy-to-access
"Pac-Snak" vending machines. That's right, Pac-Man
"jumped the shark" in the first few minutes of
the first act of the first episode of the first season.
That has to be a record.
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Pac-Man:
Portrait of a Serial Killer. |
Once Pac-Man consumes the Power Pellets he is given the
courage to consume the ghosts, most sinisterly might I add.
You see, unlike in the game where there are big and small
Power Pellets, all the ones in this show are the same and
after an abundance of them you are given Pac Power or "P-P-P-P-P-Pac
Power!" It's similar to Puppy Power in the idea that
they are the exact same thing.
After the ghosts are defeated they return (in eye form)
to Mezmeron the Drug Lord's Evil Fortress. C'mon, it's so
easy and I'm not one to agree with these early '70s to late
'80s cartoon drug accusations, but just look at the guy:
We all know what he really wants: he just wants to get a
'lil high is all. Alright, maybe, A LOT high as he does
want all of the Power Forest, but so what if he's fiending
for some of that Double P, it's all good. Infact, my theory
is this is all a big drug-induced dream of the real Mezmeron
and that somewhere around season two he'll wake up in a
tub full of ice and of his own blood without any arms or
legs. Hell, even the opening
theme song was a little whacked. But that's just a theory.
Anyways, they devise a plan to kidnap or "Pac-Nap"
the President of Pac-Land by going down into and sewer and
past the security via underground tunnel and into the Yellow
House (yeah, I know), an angle which would be rehashed years
later in an episode of The Simpsons.
So they somehow broadcast themselves over the television
stating that they have the President Pac-Napped and up for
ransom which is when the previously unintroduced Pac-Hilter
tells Pac-Man to get his shit together.
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"Heeeeeere's
Packy...umm, or something." |
Which he does by EATING A FRIGGIN' DOOR DOWN...
...and then promptly running away.
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In
Pac-Land doll screws you. |
Pac-Man rebounds from this embarrassment by pulling a replica
blow up doll of himself literally out of his ass. Why Pac-Man
would do such a thing or why he would have a blow up doll
of himself goes without answer but the ghosts proceed to
aggressively gang bang the doll until it explodes with pleasure.
You know, it's starting to make more and more sense why
Pac-Man would be sleeping at the side of a road and shacking
up with Pac-Hitler. Uhn shizer.
But Pac-Man's attempts were all for nothing because now
these ghosts are getting serious: "either you're going
to tell us where the fucking Power Pellets are or we're
all going to fall to our deaths." God damn these guys
are serious, either Pac-Man yaps or Pinky is going to drop
the House killing them all.
So of course, like an yellow-colored-coward would do, Pac-Man
snitches his brains out telling the ghosts the exact location
of the mysterious Power Forest which is "just the other
side of those trees." Yeah, wow.
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Children
of the Damned be damned. |
Of course this is all just an elaborate trick to get Mezmeron
mauled. Hey, I just got it. Mezmeron, get it? Mez-MORON.
Yeah, wow.
Pepper arrives again to feed Pac's addiction and the feast
begins once more. One ghost is so afraid that he begins
to dig his own grave, another forcefully drowns himself.
No, really.
The murderous duo walks off into the sunset and thus ending
our first chapter in a saga of madness.
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I'd
make a Ted Bundy reference, but I think we've
already gone far enough in this induction. |
Next we witness a bizarre little skit where Pac-Man crucifies
his foes on a cactus. How charming.
In our next tale we see Pac-Man and Co. take a trip to the
Pacland Park where hilarity certainly ensues.
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"What
the hell is this? Go get me some real food, ya
crazy bitch." |
Basically the Pac Family are enjoying some fun at the park
doing lots of stuff nobody really wants to watch people
doing like throwing frisbees and eating stupid crap.
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Where
have I seen this before? Oh, wait, that's right:
EVERY CARTOON EVER. |
But the main brunt of the show is Chomp Chomp vs. Sour Puss,
something we all wanted to see when we tuned into a show
about Pac-Man.
Not only that, but the ghosts are back doing all kinds of
generic-unnoticed-tomfoolery.
You can already see where this is going, it's been done
again and again. The bad guys defeat themselves because
of their "comical" wreckless shenanigans, blah,
blah, blah.
I'm not entirely sure why they thought this would be a good
idea. I mean, Pac-Man was just a game, no different than
Pong except for the fact that it had a bit of personality.
They took that tiny bit of personality and attempted to
make an entire television series out of it, and for awhile
they did until it was promptly let go. To be fair, this
wasn't exactly a good time for cartoons to begin with as
it was paired next to Rubik, the Amazing Cube when
the series really started to tank. Yes, there was actually
a show based around an even less exciting game with even
less of a plot, if at all possible.
Pac-Man wouldn't even be considered a Smurfs
rip-off, it was more a Snorks rip-off which was
essentially a rip-off of The Smurfs. So that would
make Pac-Man a rip-off of a rip-off. Everything about Pac-Man
was like The Smurfs/Snorks. "Pac"
was used as a prefix for almost everything. They painted
with Pac-Paint, they fished with Pac-Worms. I mean, when
you start renaming actual living things to fit you're stupid
little show then it get a little strange.
And it wasn't just the renaming of things to fit into the
Pac-Universe, (ugh, I just said that didn't I? I hate myself.)
everything became Pac-themed. Hell, even the sun was shaped
like Pac-Man.
Now, pray tell, who is responsible for this mess? Why, do
what everyone else does, look at the end credits.
That's right, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, otherwise
known as legendary cartoon empire Hanna-Barbera which would
of course explain a lot of the Smurf content and
then later episodes where it basically reads like a list
of leftover parts. Basically you can look at Pac-Man
like the hotdog of cartoons or perhaps the head cheese.
You know, after watching all this crap and writing about
it on this here website I can really say that from the bottom
of my heart that I'd wish that Pac-Man would really go fuck
himself and with his life-size replica stored deep in the
catacombs of his bunghole I think he could pull it off...or
out. |
