These Scrabble Ads Are _________

The Super Bowl has taken over the advertising industry for the last few weeks. So when stumbled across these ads for Scrabble and they had nothing to do with football, it was a breath of fresh air.

Most print ads are pretty forgettable, or filled with so much product information that it takes away from what message is actually there. But when a print ad is simple and controlled in its messaging, it is really like a piece of art. 

Each of these ads for Hasbro's Scrabble, which were created by Ogilvy in Puerto Rico, is just that. 

I love the nostalgia provoked by the images. In a time when families play XBox Kinect and Angry Birds more often than board games, it is the same kind of nostalgia that is elicited by the game itself.

When that nostalgia is combined with the simple line in each ad, which replaces a word of a famous phrase with a synonym made of Scrabble tiles, the result is striking and humorous.

So to fill in the blank, these Scrabble ads are: Brilliant ... for 11 points!