The cat will replace the iron in new Monopoly game sets. Image courtesy Hasbro, Inc.
By Kim Kalunian, WPRO News
The cat’s out of the bag, and now it’s on the board.
Pawtucket-based Hasbro announced Wednesday that Monopoly will be getting a small facelift — the classic iron game piece will be replaced by a shiny, silver cat.
The decision comes after voters from 185 countries logged on to Facebook to decide which traditional gamepiece would be “sent to jail,” and which new piece would replace it. The polls opened in early January and voting closed late last night.
Jonathan Berkowitz, Vice President of Marketing for Hasbro Gaming, said the decision to replace one of the eight game pieces was aimed at making Monopoly more modern.
“The tokens that are in the game today represent household items from the 1930s when the game was first introduced,” said Berkowitz in a statement. “We wanted to introduce a new token to the game that’s more representative of today’s MONOPOLY players. An online vote seemed the best way to involve MONOPOLY fans in the process.”
In the second part of the poll, voters were asked to pick the new token, and could choose between a robot, helicopter, guitar, diamond ring or cat. In the end, the cat scratched its way to the top with 31 percent of the vote.
