Thursday, August 29, 2013

Monopoly announces new playing piece

by +Ian C

Monopoly is one of the greatest selling board games of all time, and has been around in various form since the beginning of the 20th Century. The game revolves around the concept of greed, where the players roll dice and buy and sell properties with the aim of owning everything by the end of the game. 

Monopoly, Classic Edition
Monopoly, Classic Edition

This get rich quick concept is one of the reasons for the ridiculous number of units sold. However the primary reason for monopoly selling more units than there are people on the planet is that the owners, Hasbro, have whored out the license to any franchise that breathes by simply changing the street names, modifying the chance cards and adding 'opoly' onto the end.
  • San Franciscopoly
  • Star Warsopoly
  • Taking a shitopoly
New on CafePress! Create Your Own Monopoly Board Game!

With the game fast approaching it's official 100 year anniversary, Hasbro decided to retire one of the now familiar playing pieces and introduce a new one. A token of the game's personality to reflect the buy/sell get rich at all costs concept. To ensure that they did not look like the bad guys, they opened the whole thing up to online voting. Everyday people could log in and vote for which outdated token should be removed and which shiny new one should take it's place.

Which Monopoly piece was retired?
The Iron had a 1 in 8 chance of getting the boot, as did the boot
The iron got the short end of the deal and advanced to the retirement home without passing 'Go' and without collecting $200, leaving a space for which new playing piece?

What do you consider to be iconic symbols of modern times? Pizza, The iPhone, Miley Cyrus twerking? None of these featured on the short list. This is what voters were given to choose from; a diamond ring, a robot, a helicopter, a cat and a guitar.
Possible new Monopoly tokens
Which one do you think reflects modern Monopoly culture?
Hasbro also left open an option to write in a better suggestion which the majority of voters opted to use and as a result a totally unexpected and unplanned playing piece won the vote. In the eyes of the public, which item from modern society best reflects the ideals of creating a Monopoly and amassing insane amounts of money while stomping all over your opponents:

New Monopoly Token, Donald Trump's Wig
The Winner - Donald Trump's Wig
Unfortunately, Mr Trump was not willing to go along with the whole idea since Hasbro couldn't afford to pay the outlandish amount he requested for the usage of his wig image let alone the cost of using the Trump name, so they just went with the public's second choice of the cat. The new piece is already in game boxes and on store shelves ready for Hasbro to monopolize Christmas 2013.

Do you agree with the cat or would you rather see something different in the box? Are you glad the iron is gone? What token would you have retired? COMMENT HERE



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