Monopoly variants & facts

History of Monopoly

It was 1934, the height of the Depression, when Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania, showed what he called the Monopoly game to the executives at Parker Brothers.


Can you believe it, they rejected the game due to "52 design errors"!!! However Mr. Darrow wasn't daunted. Like many other Americans, he was unemployed at the time, and the game's exciting promise of fame and fortune inspired him to produce it on his own.

With help from a friend who was a printer, Mr. Darrow sold 5,000 handmade sets of the game to a Philadelphia department store. People loved it! But as demand grew, he couldn't keep up with all the orders and came back to talk to the Parker Brothers again. The rest, as they say, is history! In its first year, 1935, the MONOPOLY game was the best-selling game in America. And over its 65-year history, an estimated 500 million people have played!!!

• Over 200 million games have been sold worldwide.
  

• More than five billion little green houses have been "built" since 1935.
  

• A set made by my friends at Alfred Dunhill, with gold houses and silver hotels, sold for $25,000.
  

• The longest game in history lasted 70 straight days.
  

• The longest game in a bathtub lasted 99 hours!

Did you now that:

• Mr. Monopoly is the name of the MONOPOLY® man.
  

• George Parker issued a memo in 1936 that was to halt the productions of the MONOPOLY® game. He later withdrew the instruction and the rest is history!!!
  

• Parker Brothers rejected the MONOPOLY® game when it was first presented to them in 1933, citing 52 fundamental playing flaws.
  

• Over 5,120,000,000 little green houses have been “constructed” since the MONOPOLY® game was introduced in 1935.
  

• World records are maintained for the longest game in a treehouse (286) hours, underground (100 hours), in a bathtub (99 hours) and upside-down (36 hours).

• The longest MONOPOLY® game ever played was 1,680 hours long. That is 70 straight days!
  

• Escape maps, compasses and files were inserted into MONOPOLY® game boards smuggled into POW camps inside Germany during World War II. Real money for escapees was slipped into the packs of MONOPOLY® money.
  

• In Cuba, the game had a strong following until Fidel Castro took power and ordered all known sets destroyed.
  

• Over 200 million sets of the MONOPOLY® game have been sold worldwide.
  

• The total amount of money in a standard MONOPOLY® game is $15,140.

• The MONOPOLY® game is published in 27 languages, including Croatian and licensed in more than 81 countries. Thai edition of Monopoly is the newest edition, introduced at the Toys R Us store in Bangkok, in December 2005.

• In the 1970’s, a Braille edition of the MONOPOLY® game was created for the visually impaired.

• Parker Brothers once sent an armored car with one million dollars of the MONOPOLY® game money to a marathon game in Pittsburgh that had run out of funds.

• In 1972, the Atlantic City Commissioner of Public Works threatened to change the names of the real Baltic and Mediterranean Avenues, but public outcry vetoed the bill.

• At the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, all six sets of the MONOPOLY® game that were on display mysteriously disappeared.

• Over 20 tokens have been cast since the MONOPOLY® game was introduced in 1935 such as the horse, dog, car, elephant, purse and lantern.

• A set made by Alfred Dunhill, that included gold and silver houses and hotels, sold for $25,000.

• In 1978, the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog offered a chocolate version of the game priced at $600.

• The three most-landed-on properties are Illinois Avenue. “GO” and the B&O Railroad.

• The 1983 Italian National Champion, Emilio Maltoni, learned to play the MONOPOLY® game alone by taking on the role of five players.

• The character locked behind the bars is called Jake the Jailbird. Officer Edgar Mallory sent him to jail.

• When a player lands on an unowned property and decides not to buy it, the property goes to auction.

• There are 22 properties that can be built upon.

May the force be strong in you (deep breathing muffled by a face mask)

Ja neh!!!