If you’re a child of the ’80s, you probably bought at least a pack or two of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, or some
other kind of video game stickers. Remember those? They came in wax packs with a piece of pink cardboard masquerading as chewing gum, just like baseball cards. While there were later ones based on characters like Super Mario Bros., for the sake of this article, we’ll limit discussion to video games’ “Golden Age.” (That is, the early 1980s.)
Although there were two different companies making video game related stickers during this time (Fleer and Topps), there are many similarities in the way they were sold. All of them came 36 packs to a box. (Super
Pac-Man was also available in boxes of 48 packs.) Each pack (except maybe Dragon’s Lair) contained three sticker cards, three rub off game cards, and the previously mentioned stick of “chewing gum.” The packs sold for 25 to 30 cents each.
Fleer started the whole thing by releasing Pac-Man stickers in 1980. Back then, Pac-Man was on everything from mugs to shoes to bed sheets, so it’s only natural the trading card industry would try to get in on the action. There were 54 stickers in the set. The front of the stickers generally had black, yellow, or white backgrounds and featured either one or two Pac-Man characters with word balloons or one or two rectangular stickers with sayings on them. The text on several stickers was taken from the lyrics of “Pac-Man Fever” by Buckner and Garcia. (“Slide out the side door”/”I’m cookin’ now.”) Others were just plain silly.
(“Happiness is a hungry Pac-Man.”) This may also have been where the words “Waka! Waka!” were immortalized, as they appeared on several stickers. – Read the rest of the article here from Classic Gamer Magazine (courtesy of Old School Gamer)!
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