One Monopoly token is going right to jail—permanently.
On Feb. 6, Hasbro announced the results of a Facebook contest that asked Monopoly fans which of its eight iconic tokens should be retired. After the votes were counted, it was decided that the iron would join the group of former board tokens like the purse, lantern, rocking horse, and sack of money.
Its replacement?
A cat.
Did Hasbro really expect anything different when it put the decision-making into the hands of Internet users?
The cat beat out four other contenders: robot, diamond ring, helicopter, and guitar. The wheelbarrow and shoe tokens, which were neck-and-neck for elimination along with the iron, are safe.
On Facebook, users have had mixed reactions to the iron’s elimination and the cat’s addition.
“Yay…..KITTY!!!!!” Susan Kathleen Nelson DiGiacomo commented.
“Yes, it’s a genius marketing plan. I hate that they got rid of my iron. I was ALWAYS the iron. I mean – a shoe????” Angela Major-Vaughan countered.
Minutes after the results were announced, the parody Twitter account @Monopoly_Iron surfaced. With its biography reading “Replaced by a cat,” the iron’s first tweet was, simply, “Screw you people.”
If the Internet continues to be tapped for future Monopoly changes, look for the shoe, wheelbarrow, and other classic tokens to ultimately be replaced with Psy, a horse mask, and perhaps even a “binder full of women.”
Photo via Kurtis Garbutt/Flickr
