On November 5, 1935, Parker Brothers began mass marketing the board game Monopoly, which became a huge commercial success.  Contrary to what many people believe, a guy name Charles Darrow did not invent the game.  Monopoly traces its roots all the way back to 1903, with “The Landlord’s Game,” which was created by Lizzie Magie and patented in 1904.  It was designed to show how bad real life monopolies are, not how fun it is to be a capitalist.

 

Magie’s game never was that popular.  Most folks probably never heard of it, even back then.  It was played on homemade boards mostly by left-wing intellectuals and the like in the northeast United States.  Then Charles Darrow got ahold of Magie’s game in 1933.  He used her basic design, called it “Monopoly,” and changed the names of the properties, basing them all on street names in Atlantic City.  Darrow tried to sell his game to Parker Brothers, but they thought it was too complex.  So Darrow made the game anyway and sold thousands of copies to his friends.  Only then, in 1935, did Parker Brothers change their mind. 

 

Monopoly has become the best selling board game of all time... well, if you don’t count checkers and chess.  275 million copies and counting of Monopoly have been sold worldwide, and Darrow made millions off the game.  Magie, on the other hand, got a grand total of $500, just a tad bit more than doodly squat.  Parker Brothers even claimed Darrow was the sole inventor.  Shame!

 

It is speculated that Monopoly is so popular because it lets us fantasize about being rich.  We even get to hold the money in our hands.  This was especially true during the Depression.  And the game was cheap.

 

Over the years, Monopoly has been banned in several communist countries, notably Cuba, the Soviet Union, and China.  There currently is no country that bans the sell of Monopoly.  There are, though, many informal bans.  Many families, like mine and the British Royal Family, refuse to play Monopoly.  Ever.  Most say it just gets too competitive.  I think it’s because they don’t want to lose.

 

OK.  Here’s the best Monopoly story ever.  In WWII, the Nazis, bless ‘em, allowed Red Cross packages to be delivered to prisoners of war.  These packages contained board games, including Monopoly, which British Secret Intelligence, as well as America’s Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA), used to smuggle in escape supplies, stuff like maps hidden inside the board, compasses disguised as playing pieces, and real money mixed in with the game’s money.  It’s estimated that hundreds, if not thousands, of these doctored games were delivered to POWs.  Though it’s uncertain if anybody actually used those things to escape, more than 35,000 prisoners did escape over the course of the war.  So it’s a pretty good bet that some of them got out with the aid of Monopoly.  Talk about a Get Out of Jail Free card.

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