In 1982, Pac-Mania was in fell effect and according to this blurb from Joystik magazine, we could expect many Pac-Man related consumer products in the comic year. Including the very awesome looking Pac-Man phone. Sadly I say “looking” because the phone was not of the highest quality. My friend managed to break his in less than a month and he never fully recovered from the trauma.
The Pac-Man opened up at the mouth. You would talk into the bottom half of the Pac-Man, which is also where the push buttons were located. The top half of the Pac-Man was wear the earpiece was located.
The weakness of the phone was the hinge. An adult could handle a feature like this, but for a kid not so much. The phone just needed to be left on the floor, mouth down. Then just a simple misstep could damage the hinge.
The box the Pac-Man phone? It is pretty perfect. Whoever came up with the styling on this thing, should win an award.
I started digging up these Pac-Man phone memories after spotting this article in Joystick! about the phone.
Notice that they like to point out the advanced features such as push-button dialing and redial on the “Yellow Callers.” Redial at this time seemed super exotic and I was desperate to get my hands on a phone with the feature since I liked to call radio stations all the time.
At the time they had all sorts of items featuring the “Yellow Fellow.” I definitely had the Pac-Man toothbrush
One thing I remember about the Pac-Phone is that is had a combination spiral cord. So part of the cord for attaching the body of a phone into the wall was spiral and stretch. For some reason, I found that very exotic and interesting at the time.
I see Pac-Man phones for sale all the time. At their cheapest, they are about 10 bucks. In box or in mint condition you would look to be spending about $50.