Week 14: Album flat

These are called album flats. They're simply oversized photos of the Pac-Man Fever album cover used to advertise the album in record stores. I saw two different eBay sellers list copies of this poster of the album cover back in 2005. One said it was 24" in size; the other said 23". And I'm not sure I've seen another one listed since.

Thanks to Insane Ian for clearing up what these are!

On the charts January 9, 1982

40 years ago today, "Pac-Man Fever" debuted at #76 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Week 13: Pac-Man Fever sticker

Columbia Records created multiple items to advertise the album, mainly in record stores. This is a 4" sticker they created.

Wednesday cover: "Pac-Man Fever" by the BGMs

The BGMs are a Brazilian duo of Marcio Campassi and Marcos Lima who primarily do video game music. They originally released this cover of "Pac-Man Fever" in 2014, later making it part of a Pac-Man Fever EP in 2017.

The EP contains both the regular song and a karaoke mix. I was unable to find a Twitter presence for them, but they do have Facebook and SoundCloud pages.

It turns out the BGMs' cover is the ONLY cover of Pac-Man Fever to include the "insert coin" sound (a Pac-Man chomp) before playing the intro music.

Off-topic Tuesday: "Computer Games" by Mi-Sex

"Pac-Man Fever" was the first video game song to hit the Top 10 in the U.S., but it was not the first video game song. This song hit #1 on Australia's Kent Music Report in November 1979!

Wikipedia says "Computer Games" by Mi-Sex also hit #2 in Canada and #5 in New Zealand. Although released in the U.S., the best it did on the charts here was #61 on Hot Dances Club Songs.

National Dr. Demento debut

On January 3, the song "Pac-Man Fever" made its debut on the nationally syndicated version of The Dr. Demento Show. (It's debut on the local show was a couple weeks earlier.) Thanks to Jeff Morris and his site, the Demented Music Database, for the information!

Week 12: Jukebox title strip

If you're going to put a "Pac-Man Fever" 45 in your jukebox, you needed a strip to go with it. It appears there were both color and black and white versions of the strip. (Scans courtesy jscaptura of http://45spaces.com.) 

It's interesting that they mixed a ghost with arms with an armless Pac-Man. This was not typically done with licensed merchandise at the time. (Although you'll also notice that there's no Midway trademark notice either, so were the graphics even officially licensed?) However, you would still see this Pac-Man as part of the "Pac-Man" word logo on said merchandise.

It's actually interesting that there was a picture on the strip at all. Although it certainly wasn't unheard of, putting images on a 45's jukebox title strip wasn't the common practice of the day.

I've learned that there were two major jukebox title strip printers back in the day: Star and Sterling. I'm uncertain which company printed these. Or even whether it was the same company that did both, although that seems highly likely.