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Abe Nathanson
At eighty, Providence graphic artist Abe Nathanson is the inventor of Bananagrams, a wildly successful Scrabble-like game. We asked this top banana to peel back the secrets to his success. —Sarah Francis
Last year, Bananagrams won Toy of the Year at the New York Toy Fair and your company shipped two million of them. Why is it so popular? It costs under $15. It’s simple. It’s flexible; you can rearrange the tiles, plus it’s faster than Scrabble. There’s no reward for having an arcane vocabulary, and it’s age neutral. Word of mouth has helped make it successful.
How did you come up with the Bananagrams idea? One time after playing a marathon Scrabble game with my nine-year-old grandson, Aaron, I said, ‘This takes too long. We need an anagram game that drives you bananas.’ So I made the prototype with Aaron, my granddaughter Ava, and Rena, my daughter. It was a family project. My ex-wife, Sandy, designed the pouch.
The kids picked the tile font. We wanted a game that didn’t need scoring, a board, timer or paper. We made a few and gave them as gifts. That was five years ago. It took off from there.
Why a banana? Why not, say, a kumquat? The banana is the only fruit that’s fun. The pouch the game comes in looks like a smiley face sideways. The
banana shape is really cute.
Got any Bananagrams secrets you’d like to share? I still play with Aaron now that he’s fourteen and he still wins. I remind him that he has the world’s best teacher, me, and I taught him all my tricks. Words like qi and xu.
At this point you’ve heard every Bananagrams pun. What’s your favorite? It’s very a-peel-ing.
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