Classic Monopoly Gets An ‘Update’; Sales Skyrocket

Call it a sign of the times. You can add Monopoly to the list of classic toys and games deemed outdated by some nebulous cultural police. A vote conducted on MonopolyCommunityChest.com, will determine what “socially responsible” cards will replace the timeworn favorites such as “you have won second prize in a beauty contest.”

In a trend we have repeatedly seen in recent months following the brouhahas over the erstwhile Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and the oeuvre of Dr. Seuss, this had immediate implications on the classic board game’s sales numbers. Instead of waiting for whatever millennial priorities end up in the rebrand, buyers have taken to purchasing the game’s original edition. On the day of the announcement, it shot up way up Amazon’s Best Seller chart in the Toys & Games category, at one point even giving the beloved reversible octopus from TikTok a run for its money.

Monopoly Classic Game — $19.92

This makes sense. Monopoly is a fun game, but its primary asset is nostalgia. Community Chest cards like “Xmas Fund Matures” may be foreign and unintelligible to anyone above the earth, but with a game that was first published in 1935, you know that you are playing the same game with your kids as you did with your parents and grandparents. No one expects Monopoly to be an accurate depiction of modern life. (If that were the case, it certainly would no longer take its property names from the now rundown but formerly glitzy Atlantic City.) In a perfect world, Monopoly would exist as Edmund Burke’s description of society: a “contract between those who are dead, those who are living, and those who are to be born.”

The main beneficiary of this run on nostalgia, of course, is Hasbro. The same company that put the kibosh on America’s favorite spuds also owns Monopoly, and it makes a profit whenever a game is sold, be it an old version or the new. In a way, “canceling” a dusty bit of intellectual property might be the best form of marketing. It is similar to how Disney used to only sell its movies at certain times, before then putting it “back in the vault.” If people know that something may soon not be available to them, it suddenly becomes much more appealing.