Last month we reported that the makers of Monopoly were holding an election to add a new piece to the game, and to get rid of one of the existing pieces. I was sure the robot would win, but the cat lovers stuffed the ballot boxes, likely cheating, to make sure the kitty won. No one is surprised that the iron was voted out. (Thanks, Amy!)

Read more in Family at Boing Boing

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

TAGS: family

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Mike Robinson

Damn it Reddit! Enough with the cats!
allotrope

I can haz get-out-of-jail-tree card? the cat wondered as it contemplated the barking Scottie dog beneath it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

Brilliant way to sell more copies of a uninspired game that almost everyone has a copy of already.

I think we need “Settlers of CATtan,” in which the roads are little carved pieces of yarn, and the buildings are cat scratching posts.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  How about Settlers of Caftan, in which all the players are late-middle-aged gay men and every playing piece is a cat?
  - Stooge
    
    …number 138 in an occasional series of Antinoid solipsistic reveries.
  - Frank Lee Scarlett
    
    Huh. I envisioned Settlers of Caftan as a brutal, but romantic, ornately decorated, onion-domed world of paranoid, epicurean, aristocratic Russian libertines of the pre-19th Century era. Traditional Russian aristocrats loved their caftans. And their muzhelozhstvo (men lying with men).
    
    Your version would, of course, have to include a late middle-aged version of Shelley Winters and her wardrobe of 12 fabulously swooshy psychedelic caftans. Including the one in which she performed her Olympic-length Swan Swim in the waterlogged Poseidon.
oldtaku

The robot was so, so, much cooler. But if you ask the internet you’re going to get cats. Or porn.
- Rich Keller
  
  I think you’re on to something. Monopoly pieces could be made from Kama Sutra poses. “Damn it! Why do you always get to be reverse cowgirl?”
m0nkyman

Boo. I always picked the iron, and proudly announced that I was going to flatten everyone else.
- http://profiles.google.com/winterseale Winter Seale
  
  Me too! =(
- James Penrose
  
  Carrying on the tradition of freedom of the Press.
Alex Riepl

Great. I knew they were going to get rid of my piece. I love the iron if only because of its charm and subtle menance (a hot iron is nothing to trifle with).

I might be more bummed out if there weren’t nowadays a massive proliferation of far better board games to choose from (Agricola, Ticket to Ride, Thurn and Taxis, Dominion, Few Acres of Snow, and yes Settlers of Catan).

I don’t know that I’ll ever be desperate enough to buy Monopoly these days.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

Coming up next:

Vote for which weapon will be replaced in CLUE.

I want to see the Lead Pipe replaced with a Chainsaw.

(Or a cat. Cats are underrated as murder weapons. And including a cat will sell thousands of copies to obsessive-completist cat fanciers.)
- Church
  
  “Mr. Meow in the Stairwell with a Jingly Ball.”
- DreamboatSkanky
  
  Maybe the Iron can find a home in your new edition of Clue. I always thought an iron would make a gruesome weapon.
10xor01

Now just replace the wheelbarrow with a cheezburger, and internet kittehs will want to play.
- Jorpho
  
  Oh! And the top hat with a bukkit!
  - That_Anonymous_Coward
    
    You already lost… the top hat is the bukkit in disguise…
http://arib.livejournal.com Ari B.

I can’t haz iron?
Senor Schaffer

THERE WAS A ROBOT AND IT DIDN’T WIN?!?

FUCK

THAT

SHIT!!!
- bzishi
  
  It wasn’t just a robot. It was a robot with a ‘stache! Apparently that was enough for it to cross over into the uncanny valley.
gwailo_joe

I am disappointed with this: what about the stupid thimble?! A blatant symbol of female oppression by the Patriarchy if there ever was one!

And not even a real thimble! The iron was useful (theoretically)…

While the Scottie dog looks straight ahead at Art Deco attention; its new Nemesis strikes a fey pose…with Monopoly branding. How…sweet.

It’s a Travesty I tell you! I am now going outside to shout random imprecations…
- DreamboatSkanky
  
  Stop right there. Thimble Forever!
  
  (Pssst! It’s really a baby dalek.)
Nash Rambler

“You hear that iron? Nobody likes you! Nobody! Now get out and stay out!”Of course, the iron grew up, became a major player on Wall Street, bought Parker Bros., dismantled the company and FIRED EVERYBODY.
chgoliz

I blame 4chan.
dculberson

From my hot, burnt hands!
- Cowicide
  
  Oh, the irony…
http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Agenbroad/100002463876063 James Agenbroad

Fundamentally, Monopoly was never INTENDED to be a fun game. Instead “the landlord game” was intended to teach Georgist economics. If everybody but winner is forced to continue to play for a long time in ever growing poverty and boredom while the leader amasses ever more money and resources…well that’s kind of the whole POINT.
http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

Boo!

BOOOOOOO!
http://www.z-cigarettes.com/ Kent

nice cat though.)
http://www.facebook.com/karanah.kelmeren Karan’ah Kel Meren

Works for me.

Dogs and cats make people happy. The thought of ironing, on the other hand….

Monopoly piece contest: kitty in, iron out

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