This 1970 effort to unseat Monopoly as the grown-up-games champion goes real grown-up in its marketing.
The concept of Masterpiece seems interesting enough: you and your friends are art collectors at an auction. You get paintings that are assigned values ranging from fraud to $1 million, and your job is to buy/sell/auction your collection to end up with the most money at the end of the game. Kind of cool and cutthroat, right? Monopoly meets Pit?
The commercial doesn’t seem to think so. It focuses on one aspect, the fact that you’re an art collector, and makes a whole meal out of how fancy that must be. This ad makes the game look like the snootiest, most boring game out there. Big fail.
I have to admit that I haven’t been to any art auctions in my entire life but this commercial exactly matches what I imagine art auctions to be like.
-ds