Monopoly Spoiler

Genre:
Fantasy/Comedy

Directed by:
Ridley Scott


Monopoly is a board game published by Parker Brothers, a subsidiary of Hasbro. The game is named after the economic concept of monopoly, the domination of a market by a single entity.

According to the BBC, Monopoly is a redesign of an earlier game "The Landlord's Game" first published by the Quaker and political activist Elizabeth Magie. The purpose of that game was to teach people how monopolies end up bankrupting the many whilst giving extraordinary wealth to one or few individuals.[2]

According to Hasbro, since Charles Darrow made the game in 1933 and sold it to Parker Brothers in 1935, more than one billion people have played the game, making it "the most played (commercial) board game in the world."[3] The 1999 Guinness Book of Records cited Hasbro's previous statistic of 500 million people having played Monopoly.[4] Games Magazine has inducted Monopoly into its Hall of Fame.[5] The mascot for the game, known as Mr. Monopoly or Rich Uncle Pennybags, is a mustached man wearing a monocle and morning dress.

US versions

The eight pawns/pieces are: dog, top hat, wheel barrow, race car, boot, iron, battleship, thimble, and formerly used to also include the cannon, horse and rider and bag of money. One piece: the train, appears in Deluxe versions only. The original version was sold by Charles Darrow, and later by Parker Brothers. The board consists of forty spaces containing twenty-eight properties (twenty-two colored Streets, four railroads and two utilities), three Chance spaces, three Community Chest spaces, a Luxury Tax space, an Income Tax space, and the four corner squares: GO, Jail, Free Parking, and Go to Jail. In the U.S. versions shown below, the properties are named after locations in (or near) Atlantic City, New Jersey.

In September 2008, the layout of the board was modified to more closely match the foreign-released versions, as shown in the board layout below. The notable changes are the colors of Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues (which changed from purple to brown), the adaptation of the flat $200 Income Tax (formerly the player's choice of 10% of their total holdings or $200) and increased $100 Luxury Tax amount (upped from $75). Similar color/amount changes are used in the U.S. Edition of the "Here and Now: World Edition" game, and are also used in the most recent version of the McDonald's Monopoly promotion.

A player who reaches the Jail space by a direct roll of the dice is said to be "Just Visiting", and continues normal play on the next turn.

Marvin Gardens, the leading yellow property on the board shown, is actually a misspelling of the original location name, Marven Gardens. Marven Gardens is not a street, but a housing area outside Atlantic City. The housing area is said to be derived from Margate City and Ventnor City in New Jersey.

The misspelling was [said to be] introduced by Charles Todd and passed on when his home-made Monopoly board was copied by Charles Darrow and thence to Parker Brothers. The Todd board is on display in the Forbes Gallery in New York City.

It was not until 1995 that Parker Brothers acknowledged this mistake and formally apologized to the residents of Marven Gardens for the misspelling.[6] Another change made by Todd and duplicated by Darrow, and later Parker Brothers, was the use of South Carolina Avenue. North Carolina Avenue was substituted for this street on the board.

Atlantic City's Illinois Avenue was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in the 1980s. St. Charles Place no longer exists, as the Showboat Casino Hotel was developed where it once ran.[7]

Short Line is believed to refer to the Shore Fast Line, a streetcar line that served Atlantic City.[8] The B&O Railroad did not serve Atlantic City. A booklet included with the reprinted 1935 edition states that the four railroads that served Atlantic City in the mid 1930s were the Jersey Central, the Seashore Lines, the Reading Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. The actual "Electric Company" and "Water Works" serving the city are respectively Atlantic City Electric Company (a subsidiary of Pepco Holdings) and the Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority.

The other versions of the game have different property names, and the prices may be denominated in another currency, but the game mechanics are almost identical.

UK version

The original income tax choice from the U.S. version is replaced by a flat rate in the UK version, and the $75 Luxury Tax space is replaced with the £100 Super Tax space. The same is true of current German boards, with a €200 for the Income Tax space on the board, and a €100 Add-on tax in place of the Luxury Tax. An Australian version, released by Parker Brothers/Hasbro in 2001, does allow for the 10% or $200 for Income Tax and has a $100 Luxury Tax. The choice of London main line stations is that of the four stations within the London and North Eastern Railway group. Starting with the September 2008 release, the U.S. Edition now also uses the flat $200 Income Tax value and the upped $100 Luxury Tax amount.

In the 1930s, John Waddington Ltd. (Waddingtons) was a firm of printers from Leeds that had begun to branch out into packaging and the production of playing cards. Waddingtons had sent the card game Lexicon to Parker Brothers hoping to interest them in publishing the game in the United States. In a similar fashion, Parker Brothers sent over a copy of Monopoly to Waddingtons early in 1935 before the game had been put into production in the United States.

The managing director of Waddingtons, Victor Watson, gave the game to his son Norman (who was head of the card games division) to test over the weekend. Norman was impressed by the game and persuaded his father to call Parker Brothers on Monday morning - transatlantic calls then being almost unheard of. This call resulted in Waddingtons obtaining a license to produce and market the game outside of the United States. Watson felt that in order for the game to be a success in the United Kingdom the American locations would have to be replaced, so Victor and his secretary, Marjory Phillips, went to London to scout out locations. The Angel, Islington is not a street in London but an area of North London named after a coaching inn that stood on the Great North Road. By the 1930s the inn had become a Lyons Corner House (it is now a Co-operative Bank). Some accounts say that Marjory and Victor met at the Angel to discuss the selection and celebrated the fact by including it on the Monopoly board. In 2003, a plaque commemorating the naming was unveiled at the site by Victor Watson's grandson who is also named Victor.

The standard British board, produced by Waddingtons, was for many years the version most familiar to people in countries in the Commonwealth (except Canada, where the U.S. edition with Atlantic City-area names was reprinted), although local variants of the board are now also found in several of these countries (see Licensed and localized versions of the Monopoly game).

In the cases where the game was produced under license by a national company, the £ (pound) was replaced by a $ (dollar) sign, but the place names were unchanged.