Monopoly
The history of the
board game Monopoly can be traced back to the early 1900s. Based on
original designs by the American Elizabeth Magie, several board
games were developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the
buying and selling of land and the development of that land. By
1934, a board game was created much like the version of Monopoly
sold by Parker Brothers and its parent companies through the rest
of the 20th century, and into the 21st. Several people, mostly in
the Midwestern United States and near the East Coast, contributed
to the game's design and evolution.
By the 1970s, the idea
that the game had been created solely by Charles Darrow had become
popular folklore: it was printed in the game's instructions and
even in the 1974 book The Monopoly Book: Strategy and Tactics of
the World's Most Popular Game by Maxine Brady. That same decade,
Professor Ralph Anspach fought Parker Brothers and its then parent
company, General Mills, over the trademarks of the Monopoly board
game. Through the research of Anspach and others, much of the early
history of the game was "rediscovered". Anspach confronted Brady
over the actual history of the game on Barry Farber's New York City
talk show in 1975. Because of the lengthy court process, including
appeals, the legal status of Parker Brothers' trademarks on the
game was not settled until 1985. The game's name remains a
registered trademark of Parker Brothers, as do its specific design
elements. At the conclusion of the court case, the game's logo and
graphic design elements became part of a larger Monopoly brand,
licensed by Parker Brothers' parent companies onto a variety of
items through the present day. Despite the "rediscovery" of the
board game's early history in the 1970s and 1980s, and several
books and journal articles on the subject, Hasbro (Parker Brothers'
current parent company) does not acknowledge any of the game's
history before Charles Darrow on its official Monopoly website, nor
in any other materials published or sponsored by
Hasbro.
International
tournaments, first held in the early 1970s, continue to the
present, with the next world championship scheduled for 2008.
Starting in 1985, a new generation of spin-off board games and card
games appeared on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In 1989, the
first of many video game and computer game editions was published.
Since 1994[4], many official variants of the game, based on
locations other than Atlantic City, New Jersey (the official U.S.
setting) or London (the official Commonwealth setting, excepting
Canada), have been published by Hasbro or its
licensees.
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