By Sam Schaust
Murphy News Service
Hasbro’s ever-popular Monopoly board game is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year with the commemoration of a new fan-voted edition of the game, titled Monopoly Here & Now.
Through a partnership with social news site Buzzfeed, votes are being tallied to determine the ranking of city placement via property spaces on the upcoming Here & Now release. Currently, Minneapolis is ranked first in the nation — placing it in the coveted Boardwalk spot.
“We deserve to have Boardwalk,” said Kristen Montag, marketing communications manager for Meet Minneapolis. “This is great news and we should all be trying to get Minneapolis the number one spot on the Monopoly board.”
Voting began at the end of February and will continue into March, until the official unveiling for the board placements is announced on March 19.
At the moment, “Wild Card Week” is in place, meaning voters can type in any city – even their hometown – to be in the running. The top two submissions will be featured as the brown-colored property spaces.
Hasbro’s Vice President of Global Marketing, Jonathan Berkowitz, said he’s thrilled to see Minneapolis in the top 10, urging that people continue voting so it doesn’t drop in the ranking.
“We have seen the rankings amongst the top 15 cities fluctuate from day-to-day,” Berkowitz said. “We’ve seen great engagement with campaigns like this. We hope to continue keeping the Monopoly brand relevant by inviting our fans to get involved and help make changes to the game.”
Hasbro has a history of reaching out to Monopoly players for their input. In 2008, a similar release of Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition premiered. Montreal and Riga, Latvia took home the top honors that year.
Last year, Hasbro crowd-sourced a new set of “house rules” from players during the Great Monopoly “House Rules” Debate. Before that, a “Save Your Token” campaign also determined a cat to be the newest game piece, as voted by fans.
“Every year, my family would buy a unique-themed Monopoly for family game night,” said Allan Moore, a 20-year-old digital media arts major at Hamline University. “Communally, we all love playing it. My favorite board was the Beatles one, and I’d only play as the walrus [token].”
Moore estimates his family owns about 16 Monopoly game sets and will likely get the newest Here & Now edition if Minneapolis wins.
Hasbro touts that Monopoly is the world’s favorite family board game, being played by more than 1 billion people worldwide.
A Monopoly World Championship event is scheduled this year to further celebrate the popular retail-stockpiling games 80th anniversary. The competition will take place from Sept. 7-9 this year at The Venetian in Macao, China.
The fan-chosen Monopoly Here & Now: U.S. Edition will hit store shelves this fall for an approximate retail price of $19.99.
Reporter Sam Schaust is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.