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Marcel the shell returns to YouTube

After landing its creators a book publishing deal, Marcel the shell takes care of business once more on YouTube. 

 

Fernando Alfonso III

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Posted on Nov 15, 2011   Updated on Jun 3, 2021, 1:19 am CDT

The world’s most famous talking sea shell is back with another smile-inducing YouTube video.

“Marcel the shell with shoes on, two” is the sequel to a popular YouTube video featuring a small, one-eyed shell being interviewed by a documentary filmmaker. Both videos feature Marcel being performing mundane tasks around his house, like making a phone call and turning the page of the book, all while talking in a child’s throaty voice.

The first YouTube video was such a huge hit—collecting more than 12 million views in a year—that it earned its creators Jenny Slate, a Saturday Night Live alumn, and Dean Fleischer-Camp a book deal with Penguin Young Readers Group.

“I just wanted to do something that I didn’t have to explain,” Slate told The L Magazine in May. “I think we’re lucky that it’s popular, being what it is.”

Marcel’s recent adventure has taken YouTube and Twitter by storm, where thousands of users made the talking shell a top trending topic. In the last three hours, Marcel’s new video has been mentioned more than 3,000 times, according to statistics from Topsy, a social media search engine.

“[M]arcel the shell 2 just made my day so much better,” tweeted Toni Dupell (@tonilee4).

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*First Published: Nov 15, 2011, 6:04 pm CST