This is just one bridge too far. From NEWSMAX:
Classic Board Game Monopoly Alters Community Chest Cards for ‘Woke’ Times
Toy maker Hasbro is changing the time-honored classic board game Monopoly by altering the Community Chest cards, saying they ”are long overdue for a refresh.”
Without specifying which events, Hasbro pointed to the ”tumultuous year of 2020” as the inspiration for dropping ”You’ve won second place in a beauty contest,” ”a tax refund,” and ”bank error in your favor.” Fans of the game will get to vote on new options. [The horror.]
”Coming out of the tumultuous year of 2020, the term ‘community’ has taken on a whole new meaning,” the company said on its website. ”Hasbro is counting on their fans to help reflect what community means in their real lives, into the Monopoly game, by voting for new cards like ‘Shop Local,’ ‘Rescue A Puppy,’ [?!?] or ‘Help Your Neighbors.”’
All 16 Community Chest cards will be replaced by the fall.
”The world has changed a lot since Monopoly became a household name more than 85 years ago, and clearly today community is more important than ever,” said Eric Nyman, Chief Consumer Officer at Hasbro. ”We felt like 2021 was the perfect time to give fans the opportunity to show the world what community means to them through voting on new Community Chest cards. We’re really excited to see what new cards get voted in!” [Craven traitors.]
Options for voting on the Monopoly website will include voting between ”You rescue a puppy — and you feel rescued, too! Get out of jail free” and ”Your friends video chat after a tough day. Get out of jail free.” Other voting options include ”Just when you think you can’t go another step, you finish that foot race — and raise money for your local hospital. Advance to Go. Collect $200,” or ”You shopped local ALL week. Advance to go. Collect $200.” [Ooooh tempora!]
Other scenarios include rewards for visiting with an elderly neighbor, patronizing [oooops!] the school bake sale or donating blood.
The game, originally sold in 1935, is based on the buying and selling of properties, developing them and collecting rent from players landing on them with the intent of monopolizing the board and driving the other players into bankruptcy.
The properties are all based on streets in Atlantic City, New Jersey, although specialty versions also exist. A Ms. Monopoly version was released by Hasbro in 2019 in which girl and women players begin the game with $1,900 and boy and men players start with $1,500. Additionally, women and girls get $240 for passing go, while boys and men receive only the standard $200. [And… they still lose. What sort of lesson is that?]
Other changes include the properties being replaced by inventions by women and mascot Rich Uncle Pennybags removed in favor of a young woman character described as his niece. [His ‘niece’… riiiiight.]
I think it would be appropriate to make up a Monopoly set and perhaps produce it for readers here. Maybe Semper and I and few others can come up with something serious un-woke. Church history, and pilgrimage routes, shrines. Hovels and castles. Excommunications. Burn Giordano Bruno, advance to the Port of Genoa. Go on crusade, gain 50 scudi. Take a pilgrimage on the Via Francigena.
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Why stop at Monopoly? Why n0t Redo All the Classic Board Games?
-Sorry! – Where any white players have to always lose their turn and apologize to all the players of color for supporting white supremacy
-Connect More! – Don’t let Racist Math ruin your game! Connect 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or however many – each player can decide for him/her/xer self.
-Chutes & Ladders! – In this secure and fair and balanced and completely-above-board board game, any player who promotes liberalism, LGBTQ+ ideology, transgenderism, socialism, is a BLM or Antifa member, or voted for Biden (regardless of how many times) is completely immune to all chutes, while for any other player if they land on either a chute or a ladder they lose the game, lose their job, get banned from speaking out loud, and get to have an angry mob surround their home and possibly try to set it on fire.
-Risk! – Whatever player controls North America, allow any opposing army to invade from the Southern Borders, and allow the player that controls China tell you where, when, and how to use your pieces. Also, be sure to paint at least half your army the colors of the transgendered flag, while putting the other half in maternity suits. And the North American player MUST maintain at least 3/4 of their troops in Washington DC at ALL TIMES!
-Life! – Don’t ever leave the home. Don’t get married. Don’t get a job. Put a mask on your icon and lock it in a house. Collect UBI of $30 each turn. Die.
Hasbro should simply say it: The Community Chest will soon “evolve” into Community Credit.
Instead of $200 for “helping your neighbor clear their yard after a storm” (note that Hasbro’s new cards undermine Christian charity), the card will eventually read “200 community credit points for helping your neighbor clear their yard after a storm and reporting their Bible and U.S. flag to the local BLM office.”
Hasbro should have cards reflecting the real world such as: “Your football, basketball and soccer teams take a knee. Lost revenue. Pay $200.” Or: “Antifa torches one of your hotels and occupies another. Lose two hotels, no three, because city government decides to build another Amazon warehouse.”
Fr. Z, a St. Joseph Terror of Demons and Leftists Game is a fine idea. Replace hotels with virtuous schools and churches. Community cards now read: “Eucharistic Procession, 50 souls get to Heaven.” Or: “The Fishwrap increases circulation in your neighborhood, 20 souls are Damned.”
Money would still be part of the game. “Bookeeping error not in your favor. 2+2 does not equal 5. Pay $100.” “Gregorian chant mellows everyone’s mood and reduces crime. Receive $100.”
WVC: You took things to another level, that is some 4D chess there.
Those games will eventually rebrand: Sorry as Struggle Session, Connect More as Malcontent More, Chutes and Ladders as Shoot Your Neighbor, Risk as WW III, and Life! as C’mon Man! (or C’mon Mxn!)
” something serious un-woke. ”
Reminds me when the gang of Bloom County played a Heavy Metal record backwards and got the messages “Saaaay you praaaayers, gooooo to Chuuurch, tithe, tithe!”
I cannot resist making this comment: chess is the ultimate racist game, since white always go first :-)
How about
Collect $,1400 and a 100” TV from anyone with property because your governor has passed an eviction ban so you don’t have to pay rent anymore but can use any money you get for frivolous extravagant purchases that don’t benefit the economy only Walmart.
Not too long ago, I suggested a game for the year 2020 to my wife. I’ve forgotten what I had come up with, but I think the rules went something like:
1. Before starting the game, all players must put on a cloth mask.
2. Everyone votes for who they want to go first, but it doesn’t matter because the first one who declares himself the winner just starts playing. Everyone prefixes his name with “President-elect”.
3. Most of the “Chance” type cards result in the closure of your properties, the toppling of your pieces (which look like statues), or losing a term and being forced to remain in the home square, while people in jail get set free.
4. The “money” in the game is toilet paper. I suppose the object of the game wold be to collect as much toilet paper as possible.
I don’t want my cynicism to get the better of me, so I’d better stop now :-) .
I never liked that game and now I have a good reason for it.
This gets more ridiculous by the day. I will be sure to keep the Monopoly game I had as a kid, as well as my Dr. Seuss books, in an undisclosed location until (or if ever) this all blows over.
@Semper Gumby – thanks. I have a Muse, but alas she’s a sarcastic misanthrope. Did you hear about the new rules for Solitaire the Vatican posted on the doors of St. Peter’s? Now you have to share the cards with no less than 4 other people at a time, and because the original was so difficult you have to play with a deck where at least half the cards have been replaced with Jokers!
What a world we live in! Or, as a good Marine friend of mine says on a regular basis, “Lord, how I hate the 21st century.”
All joking aside, a Catholic monopoly would sell well for sure. You could simply make the properties into relics, the premise being that you’re a Catholic monarch buying them for your kingdom (think St. Louis acquiring the crown of thorns).
There is a Catholic version of some virus fighting board game called Anathema Sit—you’re eliminating a heresy instead of a virus.
Unrelated, but posters interested in the most Catholic video game ever made should look up “Darklands.” It’s a medieval RPG where your characters learn about and pray to saints, go to mass and confession, and learn Latin!
*sniggering* …and so what’s the first thing I do? Confirm I still have one!
Oddly, I don’t recall ever completing a game of this. I recall we got a laugh when I–as a boy–won a beauty contest. I think we usually went around the board several times, then, …um, lost interest.
I don’t think I even had an idea of what this game really intended we do until I caught a snippet of Patriot Games in college. Oops.
Another reason why I can no longer give away stuff because I never know now what might get “cancelled” or “woked”. I’m just waiting to find out what letters of the alphabet are not woke enough and must be banned.
They’ll have to drag the Park Lane/Mayfair card from my cold, dead capitalist hands………
but not before they pay the $2000 rent.
Isn’t Hasbro the company that ‘woke up’ to the indignity of Mr. Potato Head and decided to change it to reflect the many gender identities being being presented as something authentic?
This is what happens when the children take over the board room.
I imagine that for true Socialists this must be like putting lipstick on a pig because the whole theme of Monopoly is pure unrestrained free market capitalism. Maybe they need to modify the game rules so that anyone having more than say 2 monopolies has to turn one of them over to the player with the least amount of property. I guess I’d better not give them any ideas.
Close, but no cigar. The game that everyone here would buy is “Roman-opoly.” Replace the Atlantic City streets with Roman vias and restore churches.
The chance cards could be fun. “Jesuits sneak a pagan idol into one of your churches. Go to Castel Sant’Angelo. Do not pass the Urbi et Orbi blessing. Do not obtain a plenary indulgence.”
Fr. Z, you could call your game “The Economy of Salvation”.
While I could see the old “Careers ” game having a section for millennials to collect “student loan forgiveness ” and “live in parents basement until age 30”, I was sad to find out that “Sesame Street” (which I liked as a young kid in the early 1970s ) discontinued Roosevelt Franklin’s character circa 1975 due to complaints. I liked him as a kid and remembered some of his songs. He was a teacher and voiced by the man who played Gordon.
Reading comments from Semper Gumby, WVC, and others, MAD magazine would satirize things like this when I was a kid, and those mentioned by WVC and Semper Gumby were good.
Not only was MAD magazine humorous at times, but normally good points that made people think were made in these comics. I wouldn’t be surprised if MAD magazine (if it’s still around) will be put on a target list for censorship – that’s backwards.
Being a kid in the seventies and eighties
– remember the days of riding a bike without a helmet, jumping off the high dive at the community pool, and launching model rockets from either a vacant soccer field or an open golf course. It’s probably a Class C Misdemeanor today in several jurisdictions for an 11 year old boy to launch model rockets.
@hwriggles4 – sorry to break the news to you, but there’s no way it could have existed in the humorless world we’ve created anyway. I’m afraid Weird Al is probably next. That, for me, will be “The Day the Humor Died.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/mad-magazine-shutting-down-855767/
@hwriggles4 – but at least we still have the Babylon Bee!
I find it utterly astounding that Hasbro hasn’t explicitly targeted the manifestly capitalist underpinnings of the game: the object is to acquire property and charge ruinous rents on others, forcing them into bankruptcy. No amount of changing the community chest cards will affect that prime goal; they would have to remake the game totally AND re-name it something other than “Monopoly” to get rid of the capitalism in it. Let’s see: a game with totally different rules AND a totally different name, being billed as the “replacement” for Monopoly. I love it: the new game would not sell, but OLD copies of Monopoly would sell at a premium on Ebay, thus proving once again that free enterprise is valid and wokeness doesn’t sell, it has to be forced on people.
Great ideas above about a Catholic version of the game. Maybe a medieval version: change out the railroads for “guild” squares, and “Go!” with “Confession and Sunday Mass”: Go to confession and Mass, collect 200 days partial indulgence and $200. “Get out of Jail Free” card would be replaced with “confession with perfect contrition and plenary indulgence” card.
A couple years ago they made a version of Monopoly called “Monopoly Socialism Board Game Parody Adult Party Game”. Hasbro pulled it from their site but you can still find it on eBay and other sellers on Amazon.
The most woke version would be a “mostly peaceful” looting and rioting version. As per Dan’s examples the player would get the $1,400 and would five finger discount the 100″ TV as an act of social justice reparations. They would also get a get out of jail free card that would dismiss all the charges from the looting and the rioting. There would be the obligatory autonomous zone as well.