TV Show Info
TV Show Name: Christmas Comes to Pac-Land
Studio: Hanna-Barbera
Genre(s): Animated/Seasonal
Release Date(s): December 16, 1982
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
You little round eating balls are weird…
Pac-Man, Mrs. Pepper Pac-Man, Baby-Pac, Chomp-Chomp, and Sour Puss discover a man named Santa Claus has crashed in Pac-Land. With Santa comes a story of Christmas, but Santa finds his sleigh is damaged beyond repair. As the people of Pac-Land work to repair Santa’s sled, Pac-Man must rescue Santa Claus’ bag of toys from the ghosts Inky, Blinky, Pinky, Clyde, and Sue. The deadline for Santa is coming up quick and without Pac-Man’s help no one will get their gifts on Christmas.
Directed by Ray Patterson, Christmas Comes to Pac-Land was a primetime special of the Saturday morning cartoon series Pac-Man which ran on ABC from 1982 to 1983. It premiered on December 16, 1982 and sometimes can be found airing during the holidays.
This better be a box of pills…
When Christmas Comes to Pac-Land premiered it was more likely for cartoon shows to get animated specials…this means more average animated specials. I loved the Pac-Man show and was obsessed with Pac-Man, but I realize that it wasn’t that good and neither was this special.
The plot of the special is a rather typical holiday plot. The characters (aka the people from Pac-Land) have never heard of Santa Claus or Christmas but learn about the holiday through him and end up helping him. Also like a lot of these Christmas specials, even villains like Inky, Blinky, Pinky, Clyde, and Sue realize the error of their ways for the holiday and get gifts. This was always odd to me in that I guess that the ghosts go back to being evil the next day, and everyone is ok with it and forget that for one day they were good. In the happy world of Pac-Land everyone is good enough for a Christmas present.
Even evil ghosts who try to swallow our souls deserve gifts
Pac-Man was pretty standard fare animation by Hanna-Barbera…It always kind of bothered me that the Pac-Man from the show didn’t match the Pac-Man from the video game cabinet…of course the video game cabinet rarely resembled the other portrayals of Pac-Man anyway. The show does have a vocal appearance of the popular voice over actor (and Optimus Prime himself) Peter Cullen as Santa Claus and Sour Puss, and Marty Ingles as Pac-Man.
Christmas Comes to Pac-Land would be fun for kids of the ’80s and the story is basic enough that younger kids might like it without knowing the characters. I just wish Santa Claus had eaten a power pellet and went after the ghosts.
