The booms and busts behind Monopoly

DOWN MEMORY LANE

The booms and busts behind Monopoly

The Sunshine Coast now has its own version of Monopoly following its launch on 17 September. Mayor Rosanna Natoli said, “who hasn’t dreamed of owning the Big Pineapple or even the Ginger Factory? This is such a fun twist on a family favourite”. Buy, sell or trade places along the coast from the Original Eumundi Markets to Kenilworth, Mooloolaba, Caloundra and the Glass House Mountains.

The game that became known as the capitalist board game was first created by American Lizzie Magie in 1903 as The Landlord’s Game. The story of it going to market had a few turns around the board of its own.

From its inception, the Landlord’s Game aimed to seize on the human instinct to compete, but Lizzie created two sets of rules: an antimonopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents. Her goal was to highlight the ills that would prevail for most workers should monopolies gain a stranglehold in the economy. She dreamt of equality prevailing and wanted to use the game to show players the pitfalls of market dominance by a few landlords.

The wealth distribution aspect of the game never caught on, though its popularity spread amongst intellectuals and small groups until the 1930s and became known as Monopoly. Enter Charles Darrow, who was shown how to play the game in 1934 by some Quaker friends. Darrow was totally taken with the game and despite the fact Lizzie Magie had a patent, he claimed it as his own when he sold Monopoly to games manufacturer Parker Brothers.

It was not until the 1970s during a court case involving Parker Brothers and Ralph Anspach, the inventor of the game Anti-Monopoly, that Anspach accidentally discovered it was Magie, not Darrow, who was the inventor of Monopoly. Parker subsequently bought the rights from Magie but did not credit her as the inventor.