What Monopoly Token Are You?

TwinCrier said:

There's a man on a horse.

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RED that's ME said:

I like the car.

This was interesting on the history of MONOPOLY......



Today, it's the best-selling board game in the world, sold in 80 countries and produced in 26 languages including Croatian. But where did the MONOPOLY game come from? How did this phenomenal pastime get its start? MR. MONOPOLY tells the legend best. It was 1934, the height of the Depression, when Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania, showed what he called the MONOPOLY game to the executives at Parker Brothers. Can you believe it, they rejected the game due to "52 design errors"! But Mr. Darrow wasn't daunted. Like many other Americans, he was unemployed at the time, and the game's exciting promise of fame and fortune inspired him to produce it on his own.



With help from a friend who was a printer, Mr. Darrow sold 5,000 handmade sets of the game to a Philadelphia department store. People loved it! But as demand grew, he couldn't keep up with all the orders and came back to talk to Parker Brothers. And over its 65-year history, an estimated 500 million people have played!

• Over 200 million games have been sold worldwide.
• More than five billion little green houses have been "built" since 1935.
• A set made by my friends at Alfred Dunhill, with gold houses and silver hotels, sold for $25,000.
• The longest game in history lasted 70 straight days.
• The longest game in a bathtub lasted 99 hours!

The MONOPOLY game is so much a part of today's popular culture that my lawyers have trademarked many of its graphic elements. The tokens, Railroad, COMMUNITY CHEST, CHANCE, and Title Deed designs, as well as BOARDWALK and all four gameboard corners are legally protected.

Source: http://www.hasbro.com/monopoly/pl/page.history/dn/default.cfm

With the tokens serving as such an important part of the MONOPOLY game experience, it's hard to imagine the game without them. However, the first game produced in 1935 did not include tokens. Charles Darrow, who originally brought the game to Parker Brothers, recommended that players use household items like buttons and pennies to move around the board.

Parker Brothers decided to include mover-tokens in the game. The edition produced from 1935-36 included four small wax wood pieces, or pawns. In 1937 Parker Brothers, determined to preserve the game''s tradition, decided to produce die-cast metal tokens that were reminiscent of objects found in households across America. This decision marked the introduction of the flatiron, purse, lantern, car, thimble, shoe, top hat, and the rocking horse. The top hat was modeled after the chapeau of the game's Chairman of the Board, Mr. Monopoly, and the car, his 1930s roadster.


Two additional tokens, the battleship and the cannon, were also added in 1937. They were used at the time, in another Parker Brothers game called Conflict, which made it easy to add this pair to the MONOPOLY game. These 10 tokens--flatiron, purse, lantern, car, thimble, shoe, top hat, rocking horse, battleship and cannon--were used until 1942.

With World War II came a metal shortage in the United States. As a result, during the years 1943-47, MONOPOLY games contained tokens made out of wood. Shortly after the end of World War II the metal tokens were brought back to the game.

The early 1950s brought the addition of three new tokens and the departure of three original tokens. The lantern, purse and rocking horse were replaced by the dog (Mr. Monopoly's dog, Scotty), the wheelbarrow and the horse and rider. These three MONOPOLY game tokens still exist in the classic edition--the MONOPOLY game in the red and white box found today in stores and more than 200 million homes world wide.


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So the tokens were not designed to signify anything by the game's designer--he wanted people to use tokens from around the house. Many people carry out this tradition, either by using coins for missing tokens or borrowing tokens from other games. Source: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mmonopoly.html


Another interesting website play Monopoly in Giant size at a park: http://www.monopolyinthepark.com/

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