Date: Fri 11-Dec-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

Scrabble-Brunot-Mannix

Full Text:

Last US Scrabble Letter Factory Shuts Down In Vermont

(with cut)

Last Friday marked the end of the only US factory still making wooden Scrabble tiles.

The wooden tiles, first manufactured in Newtown during the 1940s, had been churned out at the rate of one million per day at a plant in Fairfax, Vt., for the past 20 years.

But Hasbro Inc. closed the Milton Bradley Wood Products Company plant last week. The reason is a 10-point word: business.

Hasbro spokesman Mark Morris said the company began looking at the most efficient way to make each product and decided to get out of the business of producing the tiles.

The game will still be made; the tiles will still be wooden; players will still be able to call Hasbro's consumer service line when they lose a letter.

But the closing nevertheless strikes a nostalgic chord, especially for the 87 people who are losing their jobs after doing their part to put those rectangular letters in one of every three American homes.

"Sometimes it was hard to believe that we still had to make them," said Harold Wright Jr., who worked at the factory for 8« years. "But the order just kept getting bigger every year."

Scrabble sells one million to two million copies in North America every year.

Even President Clinton and the first lady play the game on vacation.

John D. Williams, Jr, executive director of the National Scrabble Association, said he's heard that people in Jerusalem met during the Persian Gulf War to play Scrabble wearing gas masks.

"Scrabble tiles are one of the most recognizable icons, American icons," Williams said.

Lois Hood enjoyed being a part of it all, although she can't play Scrabble without inspecting the tiles. "It's automatic," she said. "I'll always check the tiles."

Mr Morris said Hasbro is still considering contractors both in the United States and overseas and hasn't decided where its tiles will come from in the future.

Some people in Fairfax are convinced they'll be made overseas, and they find it hard to believe that a company would close one plant before finding another.

But Mr Morris promises Scrabble lovers one thing: "Believe me, the tiles will continue to be made out of wood."

First Made In Newtown

Around 1948 Newtown resident Sarah Mannix was approached by James T. Brunot to cut the wooden tiles for a board game he was developing. She got involved with the production of Scrabble because she had a wood shop where she made toys in the years following World War II.

"Mr Brunot was a very enterprising man," Mrs Mannix said. "He put in hours and hours of work to develop this game."

During World War II Mr Brunot had been called to Washington, DC, to serve on the President's War Relief Control Board. That is where the he and his wife first became interested in the board game, originally called "Criss-Cross Words," that would eventually become famous as Scrabble.

The game had been invented by an unemployed architect named Arthur Butts, probably in the late 1930s. Early test games made of cardboard had been around for several years when the Brunots were introduced to it in Washington. Arthur Butts was unable to interest Parker Brothers toy company in producing the game, so he agreed to sell his rights to Mr Brunot.

When Sarah Mannix was cleaning out her barn on South Main Street last summer she discovered a box of the uncut wooden Scrabble tiles, still there after 50 years. An article about her experiences of making the tiles and working with Mr Brunot appeared in the August 7 edition of The Bee.

"Mr Brunot and his friends changed the name because they wanted to apply for a patent," Mrs Mannix said. "They also changed the rules and developed new ones. Mr Brunot came to me and asked if I could cut the letters for the game. It turned out to be a lot more complicated than we expected."

Mr Brunot realized that he needed a place besides his basement to finish and assemble the games so he arranged to use the old Flat Swamp Schoolhouse on Route 302. His big break came in 1952 when an order arrived from Macy's Department Store in New York City. Ultimately Macy's decided to promote the game during the Christmas season. Needing more production space, Mr Brunot moved operations to a building on the corner of Plumtrees Road and Old Hawleyville Road that now houses a nursery school. He also rented offices in the newly constructed Wheeler Shopping Center (now generally known as Queen Street Shopping Center) for the headquarters of his production and marketing company.

Soon he approached the Selchow-Righter Company and contracted with them to produce the standard edition of Scrabble but he kept control of the production of the deluxe wooden tile edition and all foreign language versions. In 1977, five years after the death of his wife, Mr Brunot closed his office and retired, turning over the remainder of his business to Selchow-Righter, which eventually became part of Milton Bradley. He died in 1984 at a health care center in Bridgeport. Alfred Butts died five years ago at the age of 93 in Stockton, N.Y.

(The Associated Press contributed to this article.)