Pac-Man Lunch Box Proof!
Pac-Man, Signs & Decorations April 7th, 2008I love surprises. Most people do, unless it’s one like “I’m going to stab you!!!!” or a fortune cookie that reads “food poisoned…you go bye bye”.
Well…this was one of those GOOD surprises:
I forgot that I won this on eBay. It’s an original artwork proof for the Aladdin Pac-Man lunch box made in 1982. I was surprised to see it stored inside an Aladdin envelope. Here’s a description of it from the eBay auction:
Up for bid is an original paper proof sheet for Aladdin Industries 1982 PAC-MAN lunchbox - front, back, and sideband. It is in perfect condition, bright and shiney, unfaded, no rips or tears. It is made of the same type of material that a poster is made of. It measures 22X32. It is dated 3/22/82. It has been folded to fit into a normal size file drawer. I found a bunch of these folded and in a file, I will be listing them over the next few days. This item has probably been in that file for 26years. Please ignore the camera glare in the photos - it looks like there is some fading - there is not. This item would look great framed.
More pics:
I guess this was a proof to get the artwork approved by someone (Namco?) or maybe just to get it approved internally before releasing the final product. I’ve never seen one of these before. The seller also had a Dragon’s Lair one that sold for a little more than this one. If you know more about this, please comment. 
April 7th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Nice! You know, I think I actually had a Pac-Man lunch box when I was a kid…I don’t really remember what the design looked like, though.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Thanks! I bet it was the same lunch box.
Shouldn’t you be changing diapers right about now?
April 7th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
It might have been a plastic lunch box, though…I can’t really remember. It probably was the same one. I remember having a Go-Bots lunch box at one point, and I know that one was plastic.
As for the diapers, the Mrs and baby get out of the hospital on Saturday!
April 8th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Hey nice find! You are correct, these would likely be proofs for the art director to check and sign off on. Namco/ Midway probably wouldn’t see these, they would be for in house proofing. They would check for printing errors mostly, hopefully all the art and copy errors would have been caught by this point. They would use these to look for plate defects, make sure there isn’t any moire patterns caused by the cmyk screens, and make sure the printing plates are on register, and just to generally see if it looks how they intended it to. If everything checks out they give the printer the green light and they’d start runnin’ em. I have to do this sometimes at work when our paper proofs come back from the printer.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Thanks! Very cool…thanks for the great info. I should have bid on the Dragon’s Lair one too.