Pac-Man Land

I'm pretty sure we've mentioned Pac-Man Land before (or Pac-Man Playport as I recall it being named). For a brief time, Pac-Man and his wife the lovely Mrs. Pac-Man (or Pepper as us die-hard fan know her) were the mascots of the Six Flags amusement parks. Of course, this was the early 80's and at the time Six Flags only consisted of a few theme parks - not every single park in the country as they are today. Anywho...I was fortunate enough to visit Six Flags Over Georgia while Pac & Pals made their home at Six Flags. Pac-Man Land consisted of the now-traditional kids attractions like climbing structures and ball pits plus a chance to meet and greet the chomping yellow family.

Why do I bring this all up again? Well, thanks to the wonders of good ol' YouTube I found a brief video that someone (HistoryOfSFOT) has put together of their pictures of the obscure Pac-Man attraction. These pictures were probably taken at the Texas park, so maybe the Georgia version was called Pac-Man Playport. Either way, who cares! It was a Pac-Man themed play area for Blinky's sake!

One of the pictures I already posted above, so that leaves about 75% of the video for you to enjoy! Enjoy:




I want to go to there.

The Ghosts of Christmas Awesome

Perhaps you caught the classic Christmas special Christmas Comes to Pac-Land on TV this weekend! No? Oh well! But check out this way cool Pac-Man flavored X-Mas tree that some chomp loving folks put together. If you wanna see it yourself you'll have to fly to Madrid...ya know, in Spain. But it's pretty darn cool, don't ya think!? After all, Pac-Man is the international sign of peace, love and Christmas cheer!

Classic Commercial Sunday - Underwear That's Fun To Wear

Let's face it, life just didn't get any better than Underoos! For those of you out of the loop - Underoos were underwear for kids that looked like the outfits of several different popular cartoon characters and super heroes. Fruit of the Loom debuted the product in 1978 in three test markets. Here was the first commercial...

I had a sweet Mork & Mindy pair that looked like Mork's uniform from Ork.

If I was a girl, you could bet I would have had these cool Flintstones ones...

I think we can all agree that the Underoos brand started to go downhill when they started making sets that looked more like regular T-shirts. We all loved The Dukes of Hazzard, but a Dukes T-shirt was not as cool as looking like Superman!?!

The Underoos brand name is still around but the kids today just don't get as excited about them as we did back in 1978!

Chomping Down Hill

Here at WWoB, we love anything that has to do with our good ol' buddy Pac-Man...
...which is why today we're running this newspaper clipping of people dressed up like Pac & Co. hitting the slopes. There's nothing like a nice warm mug of power pellets to keep ya going after a long day of skiing!

Sleep With Pac-Man

While most of Walt Disney World's resorts recreate a bygone time or place, Disney's Pop Century Resort celebrates the past...the past 50 years of pop culture to be exact. The 2,880 room hotel is filled with homages and tributes to some of the great stuff that's made the last 50 or so years great! There's a section of the resort for each of the decades from the 1950's up to the 1990's.

Since I've been on such a Pac-Man kick lately, here on the blog and on the Wii...I thought I'd share with you some pictures of the 1980's building of the Pop Century Resort which is a giant tribute to the little yellow guy himself. I didn't take any of these pictures, I swiped that all from Flickr...but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy them!

They even threw in a giant Rubix Cube on the end of the building to house the staircase. It's a class act I'm telling ya!

I've stayed at the Pop Century three times. Twice we stayed in the 60's building with it's day-glow flowers, giant can of Play-Doh and Yo-Yo staircases, and once we stayed in the 70's building which features a giant Mickey Mouse telephone, a humongous Big Wheel and a very large 8-track tape on the end for the stairs. In my opinion, one of the most inspired hotels in Walt Disney World!

Pac-Man Cafe

I don't think I need to tell you this, but if you put a giant statue of Pac-Man on the side of the road, I'm stopping and taking a picture. And so it was that I discovered Pac-Man Cafe, a charming little bistro that briefly appeared among the other tourist traps of Orlando, FL. Pac-Man Cafe offered families a chance to dine with Pac-Man and dozens of ghost-monsters surrounding them. The walls of this place were covered in dots and power pellets and the likeness of Inky, Blinky, Clyde, Pinky and Sue. They served Pac-Man pizza, which was just a regular pizza with one slice missing to make the whole thing look like Pac-Man. Sure, you weren't getting a whole pizza...but who cares. You gotta admit, it was a pretty darn good idea! The Pac-Man Cafe also featured the Galaxian Bar which featured imagery from another classic Namco game. The upstairs was home to video games as far as the eye could see. And the real attraction, in my book, was the Pac-Man museum: a free exhibit featuring all the great Pac-Man merchandise from the early 80's. This place was awesome!

We discovered the place as we were getting ready to head out of Florida and head home. We had just eaten lunch, so we paid a quick visit to the museum and vowed to come back for the full experience the next time we were in sunny Orlando. "The next time" turned out to be 7 months later, but when we went to dine with Pac-Man we were met with a boarded up restaurant and no sign of Mr. or Mrs. Pac-Man anywhere. The place had gone out of business already! No Pac-Man shaped pizza for us! We would have to go home and order a pizza and take out the slice ourselves and pretend it was Pac-Man...but we weren't fooling anyone. We drowned our sorrows in a meal at the nearby Race Rock, a car racing themed restaurant. We couldn't care less about car racing but they made some wings that would knock the bow out of Mrs. Pac-Man's hair! (Race Rock is gone now too!)

Anywho....Pac-Man Cafe. How awesome did this place look!?

The Original Ace of Cakes

At some point on this blog I've mentioned my mom's cake decorating business that she had when I was growing up. She quite literally probably made the cake for every birthday party I went to between the ages of 5 and 13. She used to have a photo album of all the cakes she had done, which kind of served as a catalogue for customers. Recently we found a handful of those pictures and they fit right at home here on WWoB, because each one is a little tasty treat of pop culture goodness!

That's tight! I'm sure this was for one of my birthdays. I wonder if she still has the pan?

This Princess Lea cake was for the girl across the street. Judging from the number of candles, the year was 1978 making this one of the first wave of Star Wars cakes.

Ahhh...I had many Smurf cakes throughout the years. This one is especially colorful and was made by tracing a picture out a coloring book onto rice paper. Then coloring it with icing on top.

My mom also made several Pac-Man cakes over the years, although probably only one for me. This cake also has little ghost-monster cupcakes with it. Ain't that cute?

Now this Pac-Man cake is based on the Atari 2600 home version of the game. I can remember my mom watching me play while she sketched down the pattern of the screen. Ya gotta love the attention to detail. Happy 12th Birthday Who Ever This Cake Was For!!

In Pac-Man We Trust

Recently I mentioned my trip to Six Flags Over Georgia in the great summer of 1984 and a little remembered attraction known as Pac-Man's Play Port. I still haven't been able to find out much information about the kids themed area of the park except that a few of the other Six Flags parks had a whole Kiddieland section devoted to Pac-Man. Anywho, my mom (who is always quick to get my crap out of her house by offering it to me as material for the blog) offered me these Pac-Man game tokens which she assumed were from Pac-Man Play Port. Alas, these tokens are from the 1982 World's Fair which was held in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pac-Man had a big presence at the `82 World's Fair and I remember it all quite fondly. There were several large gift shops throughout the fair selling all kinds of Pac-Man stuff. If I'm not mistaken, I got a Pac-Man elastic belt with a magnet buckle, it had Pac-Man chasing the ghosts, and dots and power pellets all around it. The Fair also boasted lots of arcades which were superhot at the time. These Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man tokens are just two of the seven that were produced for the fair. They are pretty cool. The image on the Pac-Man token is a popular graphic that was used on a number of items like lunch boxes and Frisbees.

And finally we leave you with this image from the 1982 World's Fair staring 9 year-old me along with my brother and a certain ghost chomping friend who mistook us for Inky and Blinky!

Carrie Underwood & Pac-Man

Stepping outside the world of complete crap for a moment...maybe I could love this song by Carrie Underwood a little more...?!?



However, realizing that you don't surf in here to listen to country music, I'll also post the commercial from the early 1980's advertising Pac-Man Pasta. Good Eats!

Pac-Man Vitamins

Here's another beautiful relic from the 1980's. For a while, the Flintstones had to take a backseat to our good friend Pac-Man as he came out with his own brand of Children's Chewable Vitamins. As you may recall, the game of Pac-Man consisted mainly of Pac-Man running around a maze eating dots or pills and an occasional power pellet or vitamin. So, of course what a great tie-in! However, in the game Pac-Man eats hundreds...if not thousands of dots/pills in the course of a few minutes of gameplay. Consuming that many real Pac-Man brand vitamins in a few minutes might not leave you feeling too well, but I'm sure some lame-o kid somewhere overdosed on them for attention. All that happened to him was he was able to walk out the front door of his house and simultaneously walk back in through the back door.

Pac-Man closed down his vitamin operation sometime ago. The Flintstones are still in the business as they have been since the original Flinstones show went on the air in 1960. (They were one of the show's original sponsors.) Other animated friends you'd find in the vitamin section of your local Walgreen's today: Spongebob, Dora, Winnie the Pooh, Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine, Curious George, Disney Princesses, Spider Man, Scooby-Doo, and even old-timer Bugs Bunny!