Original 1983 box.
Pac-Man Cereal (officially known as just "Pac-Man") was a cereal brand that was produced by General Mills in the 1980s, based on the Pac-Man arcade game. It was first introduced in North America in 1983, and stopped production around 1988; the cereal may have lasted slightly longer in other countries.
Overview[]
Pac-Man Cereal included corn puffs and colored marshmallows shaped like Pac-Man and the four Ghosts, Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. Later versions also had bigger Pac-Man marshmallows (referred to as "Super Pac-Man" marshmallows), as well as two-tone Ms. Pac-Man marshmallows.
Marketing[]
Pac-Man Cereal was heavily advertised on television, with roughly a dozen known commercials produced for the North American market. Earlier commercials were generally animated, with Pac-Man emerging in front of two children - the ghosts follow him carrying a box of cereal.
Beginning in 1985, the commercial format was greatly altered; the final three ads produced take place in a somewhat-vogue, dance club-like setting. Two of these commercials feature a song commonly dubbed "Do the Pac-Man", with the children moving their arms to form Pac-Man's mouth "chomping". The other commercial of this type was to highlight the "shocking pink" Ms. Pac-Man marshmallows; taking place on an all-pink set resembling a diner.
One Pac-Man Cereal commercial was produced in animated 3D - a very uncommon medium for the time period. However, this commercial seemingly went unaired; only test footage is known to exist on a 1984 demo reel of 3D animation.[1]
Trivia[]
Box for the 2018 cereal.
- Judging by old newspaper records, Pac-Man Cereal was likely first distributed to stores in June of 1983 (as no records exist prior to this point).
- A Donkey Kong cereal was released a few months before Pac-Man Cereal, made by General Mills competitor Ralston. It is believed that the Pac-Man cereal was created to compete with the Donkey Kong one; between the two, Pac-Man was the more successful product overall.
- The Pac-Man Cereal "dance club" commercials are noted as being the second known role for then-child actor Christian Bale, who would become a famous film actor in his adulthood (starring in American Psycho and the Batman Dark Night Trilogy).
- While unconfirmed, Pac-Man Cereal may have been discontinued due to Namco re-acquiring the U.S. rights to Pac-Man from Bally Midway (who provided the license to General Mills). Midway transferred ownership of Pac-Man back to Namco in 1987 - roughly the same time period Pac-Man Cereal ended production.
- In 2018, exclusively sold at GameStop, a Pac-Man cereal was released by toy company Funko. However, it is not directly related to the original product; the cereal itself is lemon-flavored, and lacks marshmallows. A mini Funko POP figure is included in the box.
- Several recent Pac-Man products (from the late 2010s onward) use character designs from the Pac-Man Cereal box artwork. It appears that Bandai Namco provided merchandising rights to the "cereal" designs beginning in 2017, as part of the licensee Pac-Man Retro Style Guide.[2] The art assets are also used on wallpapers in Pac-Man Museum +.
Gallery[]
