Turns out there's already a non-video game character in Smash. https://pacman.fandom.com/wiki/Pac-Man_Bank
TL;DR: Pac-Man was plagiarised from a toy, but the Tomy were cool with it and agreed to make products tying in to the Pac-Man game.
TL;DR: Pac-Man was plagiarised from a toy, but the Tomy were cool with it and agreed to make products tying in to the Pac-Man game.