crazycaleb

The commercial used a copy of the pac-man board, then turned it into a platformer. I'd say that's a pretty good indication that they were inspired by pac-man. They may have been just trying to go for a general atari/odyssey/etc parody, but certainly pac-man was the main inspiration. They mis-represented pac-man because, as others have stated, pac-man actually ate pretty healthy. I mean, there's no telling what was in those power-ups, but as far as human food goes I remember it mainly being fruits.

More importantly, the commercial is conspicuously silent about the more dangerous aspect of a video game addiction: the sedentary lifestyle. Games no longer "teach" bad eating habits like that (if they ever did). It's more likely that a kid is going to get hooked on games and not want to go outside anymore (like me) than that he's going to watch a little cartoon eat a bunch of burgers and decide to do the same thing. Yet the message was "what kind of eating habits are your kids learning?" with no real mention of getting out and doing something with your life, just eat subway.

Can we all talk about what's really important here? The fact that Bill said the words "more productiver" and no one has called him out on it. Hilarious.