Monopoly’s New Pieces Completely Change the Game’s Tone

Monopoly just dropped three new pieces to replace three retirees as per an online poll. In doing so, they’ve dramatically changed one of the core ideas behind the game.

About a month ago, I did a piece pondering potential new Monopoly pieces for the year 2017 in light of the news that the dated thimble game piece was retiring. In it, I proposed illustrious, modern ideas like a coffee cup, a telescope, or a Pussy Hat. The driving theme of the proposals were ideas emblematic of our current society, just as pieces such as the horse and rider, iron, thimble, and old shoe were representative of a working culture.

But you know, who needs the themes? We’ve got three new ideas and they represent, um, the animal kingdom, I guess. Sure. Monopoly announced its three new pieces today that were voted in by an online poll I somehow missed, and they are a penguin, a rubber duck, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

These pieces beat out things like a smiley face emoji (okay, fine) and a cell phone (even better), likely because the Internet voted and the Internet loves its animals, rightfully. Monopoly already includes the beloved Scottie dog from the ’40s and, more recently and correctly, a cat. They replace the thimble, the shoe, and the wheelbarrow. That makes five animals, a car, a boat, and a hat. So, okay, it’s Animopoly now, or something. Whatever.

I’m not especially attached to Monopoly in any way, but I can’t help but blink curiously at the choice here. It has done away with any possibility of the game’s central theme that you’re somehow playing as a working person slowly buying up real estate with your paltry starting cash and either becoming a tycoon or having everything handed to the bank by your richer, more economically savvy friend. Because that’s a realistic situation, yes.

It’s almost as if someone realized that pulling yourself up by your bootstraps (heck, they even ditched the actual boot) was very quickly turning into an antiquated, nigh-impossible idea in a society overburdened with college debt, saddled with low minimum wage jobs, and soon to be drowned in medical debt when insurance goes out the window. So they just said to hell with it and let the Internet decide what’s happening, an act which, if the results aren’t exactly emblematic, basically sums up the culture anyway.

Hasbro didn’t decide, of course. The public did, with various groups advocating for their favorite pieces, like poor Singer Sewing Machines for the thimble. We apparently had a whopping pile of 64 total options (including returning pieces) to vote on. The Internet then did what it does and picked two cute birds and a T-Rex. If we could have voted in a second cat, we probably would have done that. There’s no way any of the symbolic context of Monopoly as a game played a meaningful role in what we picked, but the end result is what it is nonetheless.

Practically, of course, the penguin and the duck are cute as heck but really weird as game pieces. What do they have to do with anything in Monopoly? The T-Rex, though, might be the best idea anyone ever had for a board game piece. Just imagine slamming that sucker from space to space, devouring the competition in your massive, toothy jaws, and roaring with all your might whenever you hand over a wad of bills for a new railroad with your tiny, pointless, lizard hands.

Next: 10 New Monopoly Game Pieces for the Year 2017

Does anyone actually care? Well, probably not. Monopoly is what it is, a somewhat tired staple at family gatherings where you don’t have much else in common or an occasional classic revisit for those of us who engage in regular board game nights. I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to playing this new and apparently more modern version of Monopoly; though if I do, you can bet I’ll stomp the T-Rex around the board like I own the place. Because let’s face it, as out of place as a T-Rex may be in real estate, the idea of a big, scary dinosaur wearing a tie and withdrawing money from a bank is the kind of delightful we need in a social climate like this one. The more ridiculous images associated with unrestricted capitalism this year, the better.