The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Monopoly gives the shoe the boot
Fans voted to kick the silvercolored token, along with the thimble and wheelbarrow, from the classic game.
The boot has gotten the boot. Fans of Monopoly voted to kick the silvercolored token, along with the thimble and the wheelbarrow, from the classic board game, the toymaker Hasbro announced Friday.
In their places will be a T. rex, a ducky and a penguin when a new version appears in August. The fact that animals came out on top in the voting was not a surprise at Hasbro, said Jonathan Berkowitz, senior vice president of marketing for Hasbro Gaming.
“People’s token choices usually represent their favorite things, and we’ve found that animal tokens tend to pull at our fans’ heartstrings,” Berkowitz said in a statement. “In 2013, Monopoly fans voted to replace the iron token with Hazel the cat, which has become a favorite amongst players around the world.”
Three new pieces will join Hazel and the top hat, battleship and old-fashioned race car, which were part of the game when it debuted in 1935, and the Scottie dog, which was added in the early 1950s.
Hasbro asked fans of the game to vote in January for their eight favorite tokens from a list of more than 50. Choices included nods to the 21st century — a hashtag, Mr. Monopoly emoji and cellphone along with old-fashioned objects, including a stopwatch, typewriter and rotary telephone.
The Scottie was the favorite with more than 212,000 votes. T. rex came in second with almost 208,000. The top hat took third with slightly more than 167,500. Of the pieces that have already been included in the game, the wheelbarrow was last in the voting with 60,638.
Monopoly became popular soon after Parker Brothers first produced the property-trading game.
Hasbro, which bought the Parker Brothers brand in 1991, credits Charles Darrow of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with the game’s design. But the story of its creation is more complicated. Lizzie Magie, who lived in the Washington area, invented the similar “Landlord’s Game” 30 years earlier. (There were no fancy tokens or tiny houses in Magie’s game, however.) She sold the rights to produce the game to Parker Brothers in 1935 for $500, according to a 2015 book by journalist Mary Pilon. Magie never received any additional money for Monopoly’s success.
Magie and Darrow both get their due, however, in an exhibit at the National Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, New York. The museum inducted Monopoly in 1998 into its collection of classic toys and games.