If you find the notion of buying Boardwalk for $400 or railroad companies ruling transportation to be ever-so quaint, if not downright dated, get ready to place your vote for Monopoly: Here and Now.
In this upcoming edition of the popular board game, the places on spaces are up to you.
Hasbro is conducting an online poll that marks the first time consumers will have a hand in the board design of Monopoly, in which players get a feel for what it's like to make deals like Donald Trump, acquiring real estate and wealth, while the losers go broke.
The new-wave Monopoly will say goodbye to the Atlantic City, N.J., streets of the classic game, which has morphed into 200 different editions and sold more than 250 million copies in 80 countries since Parker Brothers, now a division of Hasbro, introduced it in 1935.
For Here and Now, fans can vote at www.monopoly.com for landmarks from 22 cities, including New York's Times Square, Chicago's Wrigley Field, Honolulu's Waikiki Beach, Beverly Hills' Rodeo Drive and San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
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Voting will close May 12, with winners to be announced in August, and the new game is expected to be in stores in the fall.
Cities were picked for population, popular tourist destinations and "suitability for the game board according to the designers," said Hasbro spokeswoman Pat Riso.
The city with the most votes will have its landmarks occupy the most prestigious spaces, with the top vote-getter landing on the site now held by the clasic board's most expensive property, Boardwalk.
Tim Walsh, author of "Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them" (Andrews McNeel Publishing, $29.95), sees Here and Now through the eyes of a historian, one who doesn't believe Monopoly — old or new — would ever make it if it had been released today instead of during the Depression.
"It would fail miserably because it's so complicated and it takes so much time to play," said Walsh, who adds that the long playing time and handling of even fake money were among its attractions back when.
Another thing the original game had was the identifiable markers from Atlantic City. "The fact that this one particular city had a universal feel, and streets named after U.S. states or after seas like Baltic and Mediterranean, gave it a sort of universal appeal," Walsh said.
To up the ante of the updated game's appeal, rents will rise in accordance with recent rates, there will be new game tokens, airports will replace railroads, and utilities will change as well. A United Kingdom version of Here and Now is already available, with landmarks such as Wembley Arena and Covent Garden and tokens such as cell phones and double-decker buses.
Hasbro has had national polls for Monopoly before. In 1999, a sack of money became the first token to be added to the game in more than four decades. The money bag beat out a biplane, with 29 percent, and a piggy bank, with 20 percent.
As long as the orginial game is also available, "real fans will not be irked at all, and this is another (edition) for collectors," Walsh said.
Riso said Hasbro has no plans to ditch plain ol' Monopoly, because "that will never go out of style."
