Shouldn’t we be happy about anything that makes people excited about language? Most assuredly. I mean, seriously: have you seen the lack of spelling skills amongst people online? It makes all of us here at Needcoffee.com look like freaking geniuses by comparison.
If you are familiar with Scrabulous (which sounds like a description of a skin condition to me, but to each his own) then you know it’s a thinly veiled Scrabble knockoff that was turned into a Facebook app and then blew up.
[ad#longpost]It got people excited about playing the game of Scrabble, which is something the owners of Scrabble, Hasbro and Mattel, certainly haven’t been able to do. I guess they haven’t figured out how to market a Simpsons or NASCAR version or something. Anyway…
Hasbro, Mattel and Facebook have all gone silent running in the wake of the news that Scrabulous is getting pulled from Facebook because it infringes on the Scrabble game.
Now, if you want to read all about it, here’s the article: and it’s pretty much along the lines of what we say. Hasbro and Mattel are well within their rights to do this, but they also should be prepared to reap the benefits–like pissing off a bunch of people that they could have instead turned into customers by either reaching an agreement with the Scrabulous folks or just buying the damn thing.
Then you Facebook zombies could look forward to playing Yahtzulous against each other or something.
Image from the Bad Scrabble Hands website. No, really.
Isn’t calling it ‘Scrabulous’ a bit like putting a red flag in front of a bull?
Oh sure. But I’ve read another article where they basically just created this thing because it would be fun and only when they blew up in popularity did they think, “Oh shit, we’re very, very visible right now…”
Wait … both Hasbro and Mattel own Scrabble? That doesn’t see right to be. Hasbro and Parker Brothers, perhaps. But Hasbro and Mattel? They are archrivals! Like Superman vs. Lex Luthor!