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| Games from the 1960's were packaged in the elongated rectangular package. |
We have a member of our family who has discovered the game of Monopoly. He is enthralled. His first experience was the "Maine" version discovered during a family vacation to Acadia National Park. I was given the original model based on Atlantic City when I was just about his age. No one is surprised that I still own it. My buddy couldn't get over the 'ancient dice'. He rolled them to great effect and won the family game at our house over Labor Day.
Monopoly has an interesting history. First of all, it's the best selling board game in history. It was invented in the 1930's by an unemployed heating engineer, Charles Darrow in the early 1930's. There has always been a mild controversy about the invention of the game. Darrow was shrewd enough to patent his version. Several other versions were circulating around the country, but the inventors didn't patent the game. The other versions were mostly based on "The Landlord's Game" patented in 1904 by Lizzie Magle. She renewed her patent in 1924. Crucially, her game did not involve the concept of a monopoly. Instead, the point of her game were tenants as victims of greedy landlords.
Darrow's game became so popular in the Northeastern United States that he couldn't keep up with demand. He sold the game to Parker Bros. in 1935. Darrow must have had a good lawyer because he received royalties on every game sold and became a multi-millionaire. Parker Bros. marketed the game as cheap entertainment in the time of the Great Depression. They also settled all claims from similar game creators.
The original North American sets are based on the streets of Atlantic City, New Jersey with one exception: In New Jersey the street is 'Marven Gardens' but in the game the street is 'Marvin Gardens'. Monopoly has spread all around the world. Outside of North America, there are sets using streets from different cities.
According to our Australian friends, as children the set they played with was based on London streets. Nowadays, there's an official Australian version which doesn't use streets for the properties. Instead, the cards are famous Australian destinations and landmarks - voted on by the public. The Australian tokens are also different: the kangaroo, flip flops, a meat pie, and a surf board to name a few. There are also regional versions of the game.
Now, you can license games for any city/country/subject. Here are some of the weird ones: Bass Fishing; Fed Ex; Elvis Presley; Harley Davidson; Dog Artists; Powder Puff Girls; any professional team; Nintendo (Mario Bros.); Betty Boop; National Parks...... and on and on. Parker Bros. is still cleaning up almost 100 years later.
I have always found the tokens interesting. The first tokens were (1) the battleship (2) shoe (3) cannon (4) iron (5) thimble (6) top hat. They were all metal. In 1936 the purse; the rocking horse; the lantern and the racecar were added bringing the number of tokens included in the game to ten. Many of the original tokens were given to the metal scrap drives during WWII. People became accustomed to using buttons or other trinkets as tokens. My game from circa 1960 has wooden tokens. One thing I know for sure: Everyone has a favorite token from their game.
Families tend to play Monopoly when they have extra time. As we all know, Monopoly can drag on forever. At least it seemed like that to me as a child. [It's why I still prefer 'Sorry' to 'Monopoly'.] At some point in families with elementary school age children, Monopoly makes an appearance. It's popped up in our family. Guess what? My 65 year old game still plays just the same as the newest model. I'm expecting the Monopoly phenomenon to last quite awhile since the four year old isn't plugged into the game......YET.
