Happy Birthday, Monopoly!

Collect!

Today is a day that reminds us of the importance of fiscal responsibility along with the reward for investing wisely at just the right time. it was on this day in 1935 that the board game Monopoly was released for sale to the public. Since then, over 500 million people have played Monopoly in over 100 countries and in 37 languages.

Did you know that Monopoly was rejected the first time it was pitched to Parker Brothers? It was. So, the guy who invented the game started producing it himself and Monopoly was an instant success. The Hasbro website offers us this information about Momopoly: "It was 1934, the height of the Great Depression, when Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania, showed what he called the MONOPOLY game to the executives at Parker Brothers. Can you believe it, they rejected the game due to "52 design errors"! But Mr. Darrow wasn't daunted. Like many other Americans, he was unemployed at the time, and the game's exciting promise of fame and fortune inspired him to produce the game on his own. With help from a friend who was a printer, Mr. Darrow sold 5,000 handmade sets of the MONOPOLY game to a Philadelphia department store. People loved the game! But as demand for the game grew, he couldn't keep up with all the orders and came back to talk to Parker Brothers again. The rest, as they say, is history! In its first year, 1935, the MONOPOLY game was the best-selling game in America. And over its 76-year history, an estimated 500 million people have played the game of MONOPOLY!"

The toy giant's website also has a great section on Monopoly trivia including this morsel: over 5 billion of the little green houses used in the game have been produced over the last seventy-six years?  There's a ton of other cool facts about Monopoly at hasbro.com. Some of the information on the Hasbro site is outdated, but the facts about Monopoly are no less astounding.

From all of here at TexNetMaine, Happy Birthday, Monopoly!  Now, go straight to jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Because Toby said so.