Monopolise the boredom! (Monopoly)

Member Name: Ophelia

Product:	Monopoly
Date:	30/08/01 (540 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No need to read the rules!

Disadvantages: Boring, Takes too long

Board game or bored game? Monopoly may be a classic but that does not mean that you have to pretend to enjoy it. Certainly we all enjoyed it as children but once you reach adulthood you find that your playing capabilities are on a par and, thus, games can last an eternity.

I am sure we are all familiar with the concept; you must travel around London, buying properties, building houses and hotels, collecting rent (also known as extortion), avoiding prison (isn’t that where racketeers belong?) and generally making money by forcing others to become bankrupt (thus instilling a sense of fair play and generosity towards humanity in the children who are brought up on the game!).

The playing tokens do not appear to have changed since 1985. Perhaps they could be updated to more adequately represent modern society:

A top hat – a baseball cap
An iron – a corby trouser press
A boot – a pair of DMs or Nike trainers
A thimble – n/a (who repairs clothes in today’s disposable society)
A wheelbarrow – a flymo
A charabanc – a Smart car
A man on horseback – a jetski
A heavy artillery gun – a nuclear warhead
A Scotty dog – a pitbull terrier
A cruise ship – a hovercraft

Other things have changed though. Flagging sales (after all, is there a single household in the country that doesn’t house this game?) lead the makers to come up with an ingenious strategy to encourage people to buy a second game to make their rainy afternoons complete. You can now purchase ‘Monopoly – Bristol Edition’ and, as I understand it, there are regional variations throughout the country.

Apparently they believe the general public to be stupid enough to rush out to the shop and spend an extra £30 for a board with different street names on it (for that is the only difference, after all you can still win £15 in a beauty contest or get
out of jail for £20) and, it seems that they were correct in their assumption, as I have purchased the game myself!

What is even more riling is that when you get the board out you realise that each location is plastered with advertisements for local businesses, which have obviously paid vast sums of sponsorship money to appear on the board. So, despite the game being so heavily subsidised are we still having to shell out a good thirty squids!

Rebel! Set fire to the houses in Old Kent Road, burn the gas works, boycott Kings Cross Station!

Oh well, one redeeming feature I suppose: a source of pub crawls for decades!

Summary: