Lego Pac-Man, the new set is a tribute to an eighties icon

If there is one thing that a Lego succeeds very well, is to replicate the symbolic objects of a generation.

Take, for example, the world of video games. The set dedicated to the Atari 2600 made happy those who grew up in the seventies. And the set starring the Nintendo Neson the other hand, excited those who started playing in the following decade and in the first half of the nineties.

In short, it was missing from the appeal a completely eighties icon. And to fill this “gap”, the Billund company has focused on Pac-Man.

The new set Lego Iconsoutput next June 4th, is an extraordinary homage to one of the most famous video games in history. Collaboration with Bandai Namcowhich also celebrates the 43rd anniversary of the game’s birth, has led to an arcade reconstruction that makes you want to go back to an arcade, chasing yet another record.

The Pac-Man made of Lego bricks it is 32 centimeters high and 25 centimeters wide. And it is marked by some interesting details. There is a “working” joystick, free to move in the four canonical directions. And then, at the push of a button, it lights up the coin drawer. Finally, a crank on the right side allows you to “animate” the screen: when you turn, the protagonists of the video game set off and travel through the legendary labyrinth. In short, the mechanism is identical to the one that allows Super Mario – in the Nintendo Nes set – to move inside the vintage TV built (also this one) with bricks.

Finally, the flagship of the set is made up of three great colored versions of Pac-Man and the ghosts Blinky and Clyde which can be placed on top of the cabinet or anywhere else in the house.

Of Pac-Man, the game, we know practically everything. Toru Iwatanithe game designer who created it 43 years ago, was aiming for a ‘different’ game.

“When I started working on this project in the late seventies – said Iwatani – the arcades were full of violent video games focused on killing aliens. They were dark places where only kids went. What I wanted to do was transform the arcades in more lively places that women could live in. So I thought it was a good idea to design a game that could be good for everyone, male or female”.

And just this one quest for inclusiveness must have weighed heavily in Lego’s choice to focus on Pac-Man. Among other things, the minifigure chosen to characterize this set is precisely that of a woman playing Pac-Man in a game room. The Danish company is increasingly focused on the production of contents and sets able to excite everyone, without gender distinctions. This is the case with the “new” line Friends – or rather its recent update – but also the new world Dreamzzzwhich we witnessed the launch right in Billund, on the campus that is the company’s headquarters.

We know a lot about Pac-Man, we were saying, even about how its shape was born: Iwatani had something of an epiphany over a pizza that was missing a slice.

A unpublished anecdote, however, emerged precisely from the meeting between Lego and Bandai Namco. Aadil Tayouga, Director of Licensing and Business Strategy of Bandai Namco Europe, commenting on the new set said that “the fact that the yellow of Pac-Man is inspired by the yellow of the Lego Group made the collaboration even more natural”. If Pac-Man is yellow, in short, it is due to the company founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen.