Pictionary
A drawing-and-guessing team game for all ages.
Pictionary is a word-guessing game inspired by charades, invented by Robert Angel with graphic design by Gary Everson.[1] Since the mid-1980s, Pictionary has sold over 38 million copies in 60 countries.[2] Teams compete by having members guess words based on sketches drawn by their teammates.[3]
Quick Facts
- Designer
- Robert Angel
- Publisher
- Angel Games
- Western Publishing
- Hasbro
- Mattel
- Date
- 1985
- Years
- 1985–present
- Genre
- Board game
- Players
- 3–16
- Setup time
- <1 minute
- Playing time
- 90 minutes
Facts from the source article.
Making and release
Angel recruited two partners to help launch the company: his co-worker Gary Everson and a friend of a friend, Terry Langston.[2] Pictionary was set to launch on June 1, 1985, but a week before the launch the printing company could not sort the 500,000 game cards it had produced.[2] In 1994, Hasbro purchased the North American rights to Pictionary as part of a deal to acquire Western Publishing.[2] Robert Angel, together with his friends, devised the initial idea for Pictionary in 1981.[4]
The concept Angel and his roommates developed turned out to be highly popular among their group.[4] Over six days, Angel and his partners personally sorted through the game cards.[5] Within a year, 6,000 units of the game were sold, each priced at $35.[5]
What the cited sources add
A CNBC article reports that Angel, now 62, told the story of Pictionary in his book "Game Changer"[2] Angel's inspiration came from a Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary he kept on his nightstand, leading to the name "Pictures + Dictionary = Pictionary"[2] Angel remembers getting the first big check from Pictionary in the fall of 1986 as sales were climbing.[2] Angel and his partners grew Angel Games and Pictionary for 17 years.[2]
After weeks of negotiating, Mattel bought Pictionary for $29 million.[2] Angel stated that when he created Pictionary, he "had no assets".[2]
References
- Wikipedia, "Pictionary" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ravulur, "Game Boys", Puget Sound Business Journal, Oct 12, 1997 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Scipioni, "How a 20-something waiter made millions creating Pictionary: 'I had no idea what I was doing'", CNBC, 2020-08-26. facts only, no text reused. cnbc.com
- Wikipedia, "Pictionary" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Company News; Western Publishing to Sell Its Games Unit to Hasbro", The New York Times, 1994-04-08 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Pictionary" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Scipioni, "How a 20-something waiter made millions creating Pictionary: 'I had no idea what I was doing'", CNBC, 2020-08-26 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Pictionary" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Scipioni, "How a 20-something waiter made millions creating Pictionary: 'I had no idea what I was doing'", CNBC, 2020-08-26; "Game Boys", bizjournals.com (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Pictionary (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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