Often considered the most recognizable icon of the game, the top hat is one of the things you might expect a Gilded Age railroad titan to wear. These are the backstories of each of the major pieces. From 1950 to 1988, the pieces stayed the same. While the origin story has more than its fair share of unfair plot twists, the original version of the game itself has been consistently popular with a long line of special editions with unique pieces. He continued to get credit for Monopoly’s creation for more than half a century until people started to shed light on Magie’s true story in the 2010s. In the 1930s, Charles Darrow took credit for the idea of the game and put forth a story about using small items from around the home as playing pieces. It was about as anticapitalist a game as they come - until a greedy capitalist of another sort came through and changed that. Monopoly was created by Lizzy Magie in the early 1900s as a way to demonstrate, in game form, the greedy land grabbing that robber barons were doing in the Gilded Age.
You’ve probably played more than a few games with the little racecar or thimble without ever stopping to think, “Why the hell am I a thimble?” While many board games use colorful little pegs as markers, Monopoly, the game with the unique power to unite and divide a family in the matter of an hour, has those odd tokens you’re no doubt familiar with.
