Pass Go, Collect $2 million.
Just when you thought it was safe to haul out a nice simple game of monopoly to play quietly on a rainy Saturday afternoon - BAM - they go all Wall Street on the thing and the subtle product placement strategy gets deployed.
Five of the eight tokens in the new Monopoly Here and Now edition have been 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.
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.
“So much of American pop culture today is represented by products that people use every day,” Mark Blecher, senior vice president for marketing at the Hasbro Games unit of Hasbro, said in a telephone interview yesterday.
“We thought, let’s try to get iconography that’s much more relevant to people today,” he added.
Monopoly is considered the most popular board game ever, with more than 250 million copies sold.
The Here and Now edition will cost about $30, Mr. Blecher said, compared with $12 to $20 for the original edition – which will still be sold with its 11 tokens — including the battleship, cannon, iron, shoe, thimble and top hat —remaining unchanged .
Five of the eight tokens in the new Monopoly Here and Now edition have been 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.
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.
“So much of American pop culture today is represented by products that people use every day,” Mark Blecher, senior vice president for marketing at the Hasbro Games unit of Hasbro, said in a telephone interview yesterday.
“We thought, let’s try to get iconography that’s much more relevant to people today,” he added.
Monopoly is considered the most popular board game ever, with more than 250 million copies sold.
The Here and Now edition will cost about $30, Mr. Blecher said, compared with $12 to $20 for the original edition – which will still be sold with its 11 tokens — including the battleship, cannon, iron, shoe, thimble and top hat —remaining unchanged .
posted by Lady_Marmalade at 7:13 AM
1 Comments:
It's amazing how [people will market anything anyway these days. I like the old Monopoly, whenthings were simple and adverts were not shoved down our throats! It should be banned!
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