There seems to have been an abundance of Pac-Man-related toys when I was a wee tyke, circa 1982, and for whatever reason I owned a few of them. The oldest toy I still own from my childhood – the one that’s still the original, that I’ve never had to buy a replacement of on eBay – is a wind-up Pac-Man by Coleco.

I also had this guy, a PVC ghost from Pac-Man, part of a whole line of PVC figures also by Coleco. I believe they predated the cartoon series; they’re certainly not based on it. Nor is he based on the actual game ghost – he’s just some sort of cartoonish interpretation of it. My fondness for this piece isn’t based on nostalgia for Pac-Man, though; it’s just a nice, solid, fun little PVC I owned as a kid, and a nice desk tchotchke.

Although it doesn’t say it on the front of the package, he’s apparently known as “Blinky the Red Ghost” – maybe it says that on the cross-sell on the back. Believe it or not, there doesn’t appear to be a website out there that has cataloged this toy line in detail. The closest thing I could find was this.

So apparently Pac-Man was huge in the early ’80s. It’s easy to forget that, since Mario more or less wiped Pac-Man off the map a few years later.