New Monopoly Game Heralds the End of Civilization As We Know It
Who doesn't remember playing a nice game of Monopoly? Passing Go and collecting $200, zooming around the board represented by a thimble and buying up Park Place? Alas, those days might soon be just a fond memory if the new Monopoly game catches on.
The familiar tokens from the Monopoly board game are getting a modern — and, some might say, mercenary — makeover.
An updated edition of the venerable game, scheduled to be introduced on Thursday, will include tokens that are styled after name-brand products. Five of the eight tokens in the new Monopoly Here and Now edition will be branded, offering game players the chance to be represented by miniature versions of a Toyota Prius hybrid car, an order of McDonald's French fries, a New Balance running shoe, a cup of Starbucks coffee or a Motorola Razr cellphone.
Those who consider playing games to be too serious to be commercialized need not fret. The maker of Monopoly, Hasbro, says that toy stores, discount stores and other retail outlets will continue to sell the original edition of the game, based on the classic version brought out by Parker Brothers in 1935, alongside the new edition.
The 11 tokens in the classic version — including the battleship, cannon, iron, shoe, thimble and top hat — will remain unchanged.
The branded tokens are part of a reinvention of Monopoly that Hasbro executives hope will offer consumers modernized references more relevant to them than the elements of the game that date to the Great Depression.
For instance, rather than collecting $200 each time Go is passed, in the new edition the player collects $2 million. The four railroads on the Monopoly board — B&O, Pennsylvania, Reading and Short Line — will be supplanted by the country's four busiest airports: Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, Kennedy in New York, Los Angeles and O'Hare in Chicago.
And the properties of Atlantic City that compose the game board will make way for real estate from Boston and Washington to Las Vegas and Hollywood.
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Until now, there has been relatively little evidence of commercial trappings in traditional board games like Monopoly. The arrival of such elements worries some experts.
"It's part of the insinuation of the commercial culture into every aspect of our lives," said Gary Ruskin, executive director at Commercial Alert, a nonprofit organization in Portland, Ore., that seeks to curtail what it deems to be creeping commercialization.
The coming of branded tokens "turns Monopoly into a giant advertisement," Mr. Ruskin said. "It's a shame Hasbro has chosen to go this low road."
We were always either the top hat or the thimble. We don't want to be french fries! We like owning railroads no one has ever heard of! It's not fair!
And if you think that's bad, wait until you hear about the British version: it -- gasp -- has no money, but instead gives everyone a Visa debit card. And Hasbro may inflict this horror on the American version as well. It's just too horrible to contemplate.
Who doesn't remember playing a nice game of Monopoly? Passing Go and collecting $200, zooming around the board represented by a thimble and buying up Park Place? Alas, those days might soon be just a fond memory if the 
