Hasbro, the giant US toy company which owns such celebrated brands as Action Man, Sesame Street, My Little Pony, Tinkertoys and Transformers, is also the world’s largest producer of board games, with such great names as Monopoly, Scrabble, Cluedo and Trivial Pursuit on its books. The company has revenues of $4 billion but has decided in recent days that it needs to update Monopoly a little. The world’s best-selling board game of all time, with sales that are reckoned to be around 250 million since it was introduced by Parker Brothers in 1935, the game is currently available in 111 countries in 43 different languages. A traditional part of the game have been the player tokens which have included a battleship, a shoe, a top hat, a thimble, a wheelbarrow, an iron, a Scottie dog and a racing car. The company says that it is now time to modernise the game and is proposing to retire one of the famous tokens and replace it with something a little more modern: a robot, a helicopter, a guitar, a diamond ring or a cat. In order to see what the fans want Hasbro has launched a campaign to allow them to vote for their favourite token and for the new token they would like to see. The voting end on February 5 and race fans around the world may perhaps be keen to save the racing car, allowing it to continue to pass go, enjoy free parking and go intermittently to jail. Some would argue that all the tokens should be replaced by modern-looking racing cars, but Hasbro is probably not going to go down that route. However, if you feel strongly about the race car, you can vote for it at https://apps.facebook.com/saveyourtoken/.
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joeblogsf1 
“…now time to replace it with something a little more modern: a robot, a helicopter, a guitar, a diamond ring or a cat.”
I’m presuming this was lifted from some Hasbro blurb, but never mind the racing car – since when diamond rings and cats become modern artefacts?
Ah Joe,
The wretches have already ‘modernised’ this venerable institution of rapacious capitalism by adding a thoroughly unnecessary veneer of complication. At Christmas my nephew demanded that the family participate in a game of the ‘City Edition’. The hell of it all. At least the original rules were simple-ish. Now there are all sorts of special exceptions, coupled with an electronic box that randomly determines the outcome of auctions (one of the unnecessary additions) while making a distressing noise.
Best avoided methinks.
SC
Save the racng car and add the guitar! Simples..
Yes, but please can it be a Fender Stratocaster.
Martin
1964 Epiphone Casino ?
Gibson Les Paul FTW
Diamond rings, I believe, were, for a long time, some sort of higher social status disclaimer but became unfashionable in recent times. Cats became modern artefacts sometime after youtube was invented.
An F1 car from the 80s would be ok but modern ones have too many thin sections to break off. From a point of view of casting the (or is it, dread the though, to be of plastic?) a LMS or supercar would be the right sort of thing plus it is easy to cast/mould with a simple two part tool. I believe the early ones were all of mazack or zamuck (with the emphasis on “muck”) a fairly heavy mixture of zinc, lead and floor sweepings, which may not be acceptable today.
Absolutely brilliant post, Joe!
Really!
I know, it can seem like sarcasm, but it is not at all!
This little racing car means a lot for many people, really!
So, thanks for a link!
PS See you in Melbourne
Alex “Russkiy” Popov :-))
Priviat, Russkiy!
At present the Car is playing second fiddle to Scottie. Let’s hope that in the fullness of time the former runs over the latter, although neither of them are destined to get the Boot.
From the first part of the column, I was expecting you to say they were going to do an F1 based version of the game.
It could be quite good – the player tokens could be different teams, you could have a stop/go penalty instead of going to jail, and a pit stop at the end of each lap.
What? Replace the lovely silver Bugatti (..ish) car with a stepped nose 2012 racer? NEVER! NEVER! NEVER! NEVER !
All meet Joe sunday Trafalgar Sq for demo and march.
I thought the picture accompanying the article was a spy photo of the Mercedes W04…
There was an interesting radio interview (abc 702 Sydney) about the modernisation of monopoly this week. One of the most recent versions does away with the monopoly money and now has ‘credit cards’. It made a rather valid point, in that it takes away from the original game, which teaches kids about basic things such as addition and subtraction.
That aside, when it comes to monopoly ( and formula 1), I am very much of the opinion that if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it…
Does anyone see the irony of having to vote for a board game icon with Facebook?
I would say that they can replace the current racing car token with a more contemporary racing car – it needn’t be the exact stepped nose version as someone suggested, but something from the mid-engined slick tyre aerodynamic era of racing…such as a Jordan 191 of Michael Schumacher or the McLaren MP4/4 of Ayrton Senna or the Tyrrell P34 – not that I am not a fan of the beautiful silver Bugatti. The thing is it looks too out-of-place in game that more or less mimics contemporary real life.
Contemporary Formula One doesn’t exactly mimic real life either.
😉
You’re right 🙂
I just meant it would be in step with the times.
If Hasbro really wants to modernize the tokens, they should add things like a computer mouse, a smartphone, a double cheeseburger, a condom and a handgun…
Reblogged this on WrAnTz and commented:
Get you votes in.
To go along with your interest in WWII history, there is a great article posted on CNN.com. that I just read on how the game of Monopoly was supplied to Allied POWs to use as escape kits. If the game board had a red dot on the “Jail” corner, there would be a silk map laminated in the game board. Real money was hidden in the stacks of “monopoly money. and small compasses and files were included with the tokens. They were also meant to decompose easily, so as not to give up the ploy to the captors. I would imagine anyone with such an edition of Monopoly would have an investment on their hands.
Nothing to do with F-1, but interesting none the less.
Monopoly sales of 250 million since 1937 seems like an awful small number, compared to 270 million iPhones sold since 2007!
You can only vote if a Facebook user. Very disappointing as go through process but rejected unless you can login. I choose not to use Facebook as it is primarily a personal data compilation business.
monopoly is a tired game, there are hundreds of games far better than monopoly around. tight boardgamegeek to get flavour. and f1 is well catered for in ‘formula de’ and ‘pitchcar’
i would rather they stopped publishing monopoly in a thousand and one variations which does nothing to improves game play and rather publish some of the newer superior games created by self published designers.