If you are anything like me, you probably spend way too much time surfing YouTube. The millions of videos encompass any number of topics – including Scrabble. You can find Scrabble clips from movies or TV, game tips, clips from the TV show SCRABBLE and commercials. The Scrabble commercials in particular have made my day a couple of times, and I want to present some of my favorite YouTube Scrabble commercials to you.
Scrabble the Beautiful Word
The first few commercials I want to show you are actually all part of a YouTube channel called ScrabbleTBW. These are ads which were made by a French advertising agency for Mattel during the course of “The Beautiful Word” campaign. The premise of these videos is that they tell a story through sound and vision. At first the story seems ridiculous but beautifully depicted. It only makes sense in the end when you see the images transformed into words formed by Scrabble tiles on a Scrabble board.
Old Commercials
From today’s perspective, older commercials in and of themselves are usually quite funny. The Scrabble commercial from 1990, however, almost tops everything else. The style, the music, and the message are so over the top that you cannot help but laugh. It definitely reflects the time in which it was aired because it centers on family fun and spending quality time together. In contrast, the competitive nature of Scrabble tends to be a main focus in today’s Scrabble commercials.
Foreign Commercials
The American commercial are not the only fun ones out there, other countries have funny Scrabble commercials too. For example, an advertisement from India shows two boys coming in late for judo practice. Upon being asked the reason for their tardiness, one answers “I overslept” and has to do pushups. The other one, having learned big words by playing Scrabble, tells his coach that he suffers from clinomania. His coach, not knowing that this simply translates into the desire to sleep more, excuses him for his tardiness and he can join the class without punishment. Another example is a Spanish advertisement, which shows in cartoon-style how the Spanish word for cats (GATOS) earns 6 points, but the word for rats (RATONCITOS) earns 12 points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjh-geJx0w4
Commercials Using Scrabble
There are a couple of companies out there that use Scrabble in their own commercials. Subway and McDonald’s, for example, used Scrabble in a promotional campaign in which they printed Scrabble tiles on their wrapping and cups. If you had the right combination of tiles, you would win some kind of prize. This was of course publicized in their TV commercials. A different kind of commercial was done by ESPN. They feature basketball star Shaquille O’Neal playing a game of Scrabble in which he plays words such as Shaqtastic or Shaqtesque. Yet another commercial that uses Scrabble is an AT&T ad in which three generations of women play Scrabble with each other. The daughters and grandma are texting the whole time and using abbreviations commonly used in text messages and online.
Student Commercials
When you search for Scrabble commercials you will also find some short student-made commercials which are essentially like official ads because they stress the fun you can have with Scrabble. A lot of them use puns or integrate the words on the board into the story of the commercial. One student commercial I like a lot is called “Genius”. In this one, a so-called nerd and a girl play a game of Scrabble. The girl plays a lot of academic words, until at some point in the game the nerd questions the girl’s knowledge of words’ the meanings. Her answer? Watch for yourself.
Do you know of any funny Scrabble commercials or other great Scrabble videos? We would love to see them! Leave us a link or a description in the comments or on our Facebook page!