When you put something up to a vote on the Internet, how do you expect a cat not to win?
Hasbro decided it was time for a change in their classic board game Monopoly, so of course, they made a PR stunt out of it. In the "Save Your Token" campaign fans had the chance to vote for their favorite game piece, and in a separate poll, pick the new piece that would replace the one garnering the fewest votes. The lowly iron-- a symbol of housework and drudgery, not Park Place-style glitz-- garnered just 8% of the vote, which put it at the bottom. And among fellow replacement options of toy robot, guitar, helicopter and diamond ring, the cat easily won out with 31% of the vote. It will be in good popular company-- the classic Scottie dog won 29% of the vote in the poll for the existing tokens.
This election got way more heated than you might imagine for a board game. According to USA Today, a Harrisburg, PA tool manufacturing company Ames True Temper launched a YouTube campaign to save the wheelbarrow, which for a while was in a dead heat for last place alongside the shoe and the iron. I can't imagine what anyone has against the shoe-- it's so floppy and Tin Pan Alley!-- but the wheelbarrow also feels too much like work to have any place in a game as nakedly capitalistic as Monopoly.
The cat, alongside all the other options, will make its first appearance in a "Gold Token" Monopoly set arriving in stores this month, and that will also be the last appearance of the iron. If you want one last fight with your siblings over who gets to be the top hat and who gets stuck with the iron, now's your chance.
