Pac-Man: The First Animated TV Show Based Upon a Video Game

Pac-Man: The First Animated TV Show Based Upon a Video Game

By Mark Arnold

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Pac-Man: The First Animated TV Show Based Upon a Video Game

By Mark Arnold

Bear Manor Media

2022

Pac-Man: The First Animated TV Show Based Upon a Video Game

© 2022 Mark Arnold and Fun Ideas Productions.

All rights to the Pac-Man characters are trademarks of Bally/Midway Manufacturing Company in the Western Hemisphere and by Bandai Namco Limited in the rest of the world. All rights to the versions used by Hanna-Barbara are owned by Warner Bros. Animation.

All rights to all other characters represented in this book are owned by their respective copyright holders or are in the public domain.

The material used in this book is used for historical purposes and literary criticism and review and is used by permission and is used as Fair Use to be illustrative for the text contained herein. It is not designed to plagiarize or in any other way infringe on the copyright or in any other way infringe on the copyrights of any copyrighted materials contained herein.

The opinions contained within the interviews contained in this book are those of the person being interviewed and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the author.

First printing.

All Rights Reserved.

Reproduction in whole or in part without the author’s permission is strictly forbidden. Permission is granted to other publications or media to excerpt the contents contained herein for review purposes provided that the correct credit and copyright information is included for any materials reproduced.

For information, contact:

Ben Ohmart - [email protected]

BearManor Media

Cover and chapter illustrations by Dean Rankine.

Typesetting and layout by DataSmith Solutions.

Published in the USA by BearManor Media.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Arnold, Mark.

Pac-man: The First Animated TV Show Based Upon a Video Game / by Mark Arnold.

Includes index.

ISBN - 978-1-62933-937-5

DEDICATED TO SCOTT SHAW! AND BEN OHMART

for recommending that I write this book. It was actually more fun than I expected.

Contents

Introduction

A Brief History of Hanna-Barbera Productions

A Brief History of Arcade Video Games

A Brief History of Pac-Man

A Brief History of The Pac-Man Cartoon Show by Hanna-Barbera

Who’s Who on The Pac-Man Cartoon Show

Pac-Man Episode Guide

Pac-Man Model Sheets

Pac-Man Postscripts

Index

Acknowledgements

Dean Rankine, Mark Evanier, Sergio Lehman. Apologies to anyone whom I have forgotten. Your contributions are noted.

Introduction

Ok, I must admit that this book REALLY came out of left field. In the past, Ben Ohmart has suggested books that I could do and it’s usually something to do with something I’m interested in like Cracked or Mad . This time, thanks to a quick recommendation by cartoonist Scott Shaw! on his Facebook page, I was suddenly drafted to write this book.

I have never expressed huge interest in video games and have said that a Hanna-Barbera book would be a massive undertaking if done correctly. In fact, for those wanting a good Hanna-Barbera history, I recommend five books: The Art of Hanna-Barbera: Fifty Years of Creativity by Ted Sennett, Hanna-Barbera Cartoons by Mike Mallory, The Hanna-Barbera Treasury by Jerry Beck, A Cast of Friends by William Hanna, and My Life in Toons by Joseph Barbera. At press time, there is a new book called Hanna-Barbera: A History by Jared Bahir Browsh. I haven’t read it yet. It seems highly academic.

In any case, although I did occasionally watch the Hanna-Barbera Pac-Man cartoons since they were part of The Pac-Man/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show, I figured I would take on the challenge. I was already watching due to me being a huge Harvey Comics and Richie Rich fan and a Little Rascals fan.

It turns out that a few of the cartoons are quite good and that I found myself actually laughing out loud at some of the episodes, particularly Happy Pacs-giving, Pac Van Winkle and especially Public Pac-Enemy No. 1 which I consider the best of the series. In fact, I consider the second season better than the first with the additions of P.J. and the dim-witted Super-Pac. It’s a surprisingly funny show considering that Hanna-Barbera was really churning it out at the time.

Pac-Man was one of my favorite video games during that golden age and I will describe its origins later in this book. I was one of those people who would go to the video arcade for a few hours to try some new games, but also play some of my favorites like Asteroids, Dig Dug, Burger Time, Donkey Kong, Tempest, Frogger, Centipede, Space Invaders, and of course, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man.

In order to make this work, I decided to make this book short and fun. Usually, I write these big 700 page tomes that - as Stu Shostak of Stu’s Show likes to say - make a better doorstop than a book. Well, forgive me, I just like to be thorough! I’m just as thorough here, but I decided to make it more streamlined and keep it under 100 pages. I’m even going to keep this Introduction short. I think I’ve succeeded.

—Mark.

A Brief History of Hanna-Barbera Productions

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera are iconic in the world of animation. Though some may disparage a large amount of their work, the fact that so many of their characters are memorable to this day 50 and 60 years after their original release is a testament to their creativity.

Hanna and Barbera first made their mark at MGM Studios in 1939 when they teamed up to make a number of cartoons featuring the cat and mouse team of Tom & Jerry. The first one called Puss Gets the Boot was released in 1940. They continued to make 114 Tom & Jerry cartoons until the animation studios were shut down in 1957. New cartoons were released through 1958. Over the years, the Tom & Jerry series won seven Academy Awards for Best Cartoon Short Subject. The series was also nominated for six additional Oscars.

The team ventured outside of MGM a little bit, most notably animating the stick figures of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz on the openings and closings of the original CBS network runs of I Love Lucy from 1951-1957.

Ironically, both MGM’s animation studios and I Love Lucy came to an end in 1957 leaving Hanna and Barbera without work and without any solid future prospects. The decision was made for them to branch out and form their own company, and produce animation material exclusively for television. During their last year at MGM, Hanna and Barbera started developing the idea for what would become their first animated series and their own studio, The Ruff and Reddy Show which eventually debuted on NBC on December 14, 1957.

At first, they tried to talk MGM into the half hour show idea, but MGM weren’t interested. Director George Sidney introduced Hanna and Barbera to the executives at Screen Gems television distribution, which was a division of rival movie studio Columbia Pictures, who had had recent success with the UPA line of animated shorts starring Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoingboing.

Hanna-Barbara Enterprises was formed and they set up shop at the old Charlie Chaplin Studios on LaBrea Avenue in Hollywood. They were able to get the cream of the crop of animators due to the mass layoffs happening within the industry, so they recruited Michael Maltese, Warren Foster, Dan Gordon, Tony Benedict, Art Scott, Willie Ito, Kenneth Muse, Alex Love, Carlo Vinci and many others.

The Ruff and Reddy shorts took the same format of the first animated cartoons made for television, Crusader Rabbit. That is, short five minute cartoons serialized to make a longer story. The cartoons were designed to be shown individually as part of another show, or could be grouped together into a half-hour program. Namewise, the characters seem to be switched. The red cat is named Ruff and the dog, even though he has red hair on the top of his head is named Reddy. Unlike Tom & Jerry, Ruff and Reddy spoke a lot to compensate for the very limited animation, and they are best buddies instead of bitter enemies.

The Ruff and Reddy Show was very successful and lasted for three seasons, concluding its original run on April 2, 1960. In the meantime, Hanna-Barbera created another new series that was even more successful. It was called The Huckleberry Hound Show (1958-1961) starring a good-natured blue dog who spoke with a southern accent. Unlike Ruff and Reddy, The Huckleberry Hound Show had multiple five-minute segments that were also self-contained. The other segments included Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks about a cat and two mice and Yogi Bear about an Ed Norton-like bear. The Yogi Bear segment was so successful, he got his own show in 1961 and he was replaced by Hokey Wolf, a conman wolf in the vein of Sgt. Bilko. Huckleberry Hound was very successful and originally ran through 1961. It was originally syndicated and sponsored by Kellogg’s cereal. In April 1967, it was released from advertiser control and syndicated again.

For some reason, Hanna-Barbera still felt there was some viability to theatrical cartoons, so they created the French-Canadian wolf, Loopy De Loop, whose theatrical film series resembled a Hanna-Barbera TV show. The series lasted for 48 shorts from 1958-1965. The shorts were eventually aired on television in syndication in 1969.

Next up was The Quick Draw McGraw Show (1959-1961) which followed the same format as Huckleberry Hound. This time the star was a clumsy horse and his donkey sidekick named Baba Louie. The other segments were Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy about father and son dachshunds and Snooper and Blabber, about a cat and mouse detective agency. Like Huckleberry Hound, it was syndicated and sponsored by Kellogg’s.

The success of these three series led to Hanna-Barbara’s first series on network, ABC, and in primetime, called The Flintstones. Prior to The Simpsons, it was the most successful animated TV series in primetime, lasting six seasons from 1960-1966. It starred caveman Fred Flintstone, his wife Wilma, their pet Dino, Fred’s friend and neighbor Barney Rubble, Barney’s wife Betty, and later additions of children Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, the Hopparoo and the Great Gazoo. The original concept was similar to The Honeymooners.

The success of The Flintstones led to other primetime shows for Hanna-Barbera, all with middling success originally, but later became iconic in their canon. These were the Sgt. Bilko-like Top Cat (1961-1962, ABC); the futuristic Flintstones called The Jetsons (1962-1963, ABC); the adventurous and somewhat serious Jonny Quest (1964-1965, ABC), and the live-action and animation hybrid The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1968-1969, NBC).

In the meantime, Hanna-Barbera kept turning out funny animal shows with The Yogi Bear Show (1961-1962, syndication), which had two new segments: pink lion Snagglepuss and petite duck with bulldog guardian Yakky Doodle and Chopper.

This was soon followed by The Hanna-Barbera New Cartoon Series with Ed Wynn-like Wally Gator, swordsman turtle and sheepdog Touché Turtle and Dum Dum and lion and hyena Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har. The show was also syndicated and originally ran during 1962-1963.

In 1963, with Hanna-Barbera expanding,