Pac-Man (1982)

Welcome to the Pac-Man page at TV.com! Capitalizing on the arcade craze of the early 1980's, Hanna-Barbera came up with this cartoon series based upon one of the most popular video game characters ever. Yep, it's Pac-Man, the yellow, ghost-eating round guy who's still popular even after 30 years of existence with the fact that millions of games based on his character have been purchased for home game systems, and even downloaded on cell phones for the personal leisure of fans who still enjoy powering up and chomping Ghost Monsters! Based loosely on the original video games from Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Jr. Pac-Man and Super Pac-Man among them, H-B managed to bring all these characters to life for the TV series. Of course, Pac-Man is the star of the show. He's married to Ms. Pac-Man, who goes by the name of Pepper here. Together, they have their cute and mischievous son, Pac-Baby. The Pac-Family is completed with a pair of Pac-Pets; Chomp Chomp, the loyal but greedy Pac-Dog, and the mean-spirited Pac-Cat Sour Puss, who always chases Chomp Chomp around and often plays pranks on him in efforts to get him out of the picture. Most times though, they usually backfire on him. Pac-Man raises his family in their hometown of PacLand, while also working as security chief of the hidden Power Pellet Forest, where he has to keep its supply of power pellets from falling into the hands of the villainous Ghost Monsters, under their supreme ruler Mezmeron, a bald giant, long-robed humanoid being with cybernetic parts whose desire for power pellets drives him to hatch various plots for the Ghost Monsters to carry out--often failing courtesy of Pac-Man. The series' second season introduced new characters like the heroic Super Pac, whom with his powers and insane sense of humor and ego, at times did more harm than good, as well as Pac-Man's cousin P.J., whose efforts to be cool often brought trouble as well. Yep, the familiar villainous Ghost Monsters from the games are here as well! There's Inky, the dim-wittedly funny light blue member of the gang whose pockets are filled with whatever tools and gadgets needed to help his fellow ghosts, and if necessary escape from Pac-Man. Then Blinky, who's red-colored and goes from being the brave ghost leader in the video games to a wimpy coward in this series. Then there's Pinky, who despite his color is deep-voiced and physically the strongest of the Ghost Monsters, as well as an expert shapeshifter who can change into various forms and objects in efforts to pursue or flee from Pac-Man and company. Then it's Clyde, who's orange-colored and goes from being slow-witted in the video games to the gang's leader. And finally, we have Sue, the lone female, introduced in the Ms. Pac-Man game. Her regular color is blue in this series, which was most likely done to better differentiate her from Clyde since they were both colored orange in their respective games. In most episodes, the Ghost Monsters cause Pac-Man and company trouble and the the good guys usually get out of it by munching on power pellets to energize themselves and chomping the villains, who in this series change to a color of lavender when they're about to get it good! Remember the word "chomp"! That's one of the words often used in this series for in PacLand, it's a "chomp or be chomped world". Pac-Man debuted September 25, 1982 and ran for 2 seasons originally on ABC. Overall, this was a pretty good series that had some deviations from what was familiar in the video games, but it was certainly entertaining and good to watch if you find yourself not able to watch anything else. The series runs every now and then on Boomerang from Cartoon Network.