Pac-Man Arcade Cabinet Candy - Five Below
Pac-Man Arcade Cabinet Candy - Five Below
It's a nostalgic novelty product-filled weekend! After having the moment earlier ranting about The Real Ghostbusters animated series and Twinkies, I'm back with another retro throw back, this time it's gaming related!
Growing up my mother and grandmother each had a NES. That's right, they were cool like that, and I used to watch them play all kinds of games. (Well mostly my mom. Grandma only played the original Mario and Duck Hunt and never tried anything else.) This was long before the Let's Play days on YouTube, for me, my mom was the original Markiplier. She'd play Megaman 4, Q*bert, Mario 1, 2 & 3, Tetris and Pac-man. I would play a little here and there, but I really got into Pac-Man and Tetris somewhere in my teens.
In my middle school days I'd get so into playing Tetris that I'd stop blinking and tears would steam down my face, it was intense. Plus with no way to save scores back then I used to take photos of the TV screen when I was done. My love of retro style gaming lives on, with Pac-man, Tetris and Mario World 3 being my holy-Nintendo Trinity. I even know all the ghost names! (Inky, Pinky, Blinky & Clyde, although in Ms. Pac-Man Clyde was re-named Sue, which always felt like a missed opportunity to me. It should have been Bonnie, like Bonnie & Clyde.) I have some dinky Pac-Man plug-n'-plays around here somewhere, and my b/f downloaded a version onto one of his gaming systems for me and his daughter to play together, so my love of Pac-Man is still going strong as I approach my 30's.
With that being said, when I saw this teeny tiny Pac-man arcade cabinet at Five Below, I had to have it. First of all, everything is cuter in mini-form, and secondly, it's so well done!
We've got little printed coin slots on the front, panel art on the sides, and controls with a full gaming screen. Look at all that detail in the screen's map! I just... it's so stinking cute. I make all kinds of obnoxious sounds looking at it. There's no getting around it, I bought this JUST for the packaging. I'm pretty sure the candy inside is going to suck, but even if it does. I still get a super cute Pac-Man cabinet to store paperclips in on my desk so I'll regret nothing. Still, let's see what's inside anyway.
The bottom of the tin pops off easily to reveal a plastic baggy filled with compressed pac-man-shaped tablets. I thought for sure this candy was going to go with the lazy white dot-tablets, so I'm kind of impressed they went with a custom shape. Already things are better than expected.
Unwrapped, the candies don't smell like much, they're just generically sweet, but they look pretty darn cute.
Wakka, wakka, wakka... I can't help but make the sounds! I munched on one of the pac-men to see what it tasted like and..I can't put my finger on it. It's sweet, fruity, and a little tropical. I kind of want to say these are pineapple flavored, but I'm not 100% sure. Kind of an odd choice for Pac-man, since his go-to fruits are usually cherries, strawberries, oranges, apples and melon, but it tastes a lot better than I was expecting. It's pretty much a pineapple Sweet-Tart, without any sourness.
This isn't a product I would buy just for the candy, even though it turned out to be tastier than I imagined, this is a nostalgia-fueled impulse buy for retro game lovers. The packaging is so freaking cute that I had to have it, but I wouldn't repurchase this unless they came out with other game cabinets (like Tetris) so I could have all my favorites in tiny tin-form. It's a collectable item more than a candy, but as far as novelty products are concerned, this one tastes pretty darn good.
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