[MONOPOLY] Houston Ranks with Seattle, South Beach

Sept. 12, 2006, 5:30PM
Roll the dice and buy Houston in new edition of Monopoly

By LANA BERKOWITZ
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Houston's Johnson Space Center gets Tennessee Avenue's orange space on the Monopoly: Here & Now edition that goes on sale Thursday.

Johnson Space Center, with 79 percent of the online vote, beat out the Museum District and Kemah Boardwalk to represent Houston.

Buying Houston on the Monopoly board will cost $1.8 million — the same as South Beach, Miami. Rent with one house is $700,000.

That's a middle-of-the-road position on the game board. Not great, but better than Dallas on the traditional purple Baltic Avenue spot, which costs the least: $600,000.

The cities' positions were determined by 3.5 million online voters. Dallas and Cleveland (formerly Mediterranean Avenue) remained in the low-rent properties throughout the April 24-May 12 tally, according to Tracy Hogan, director of marketing for Hasbro.

New York's Times Square earns the top Boardwalk spot priced at $4 million, followed by Fenway Park, Boston.

The real-estate prices aren't the only changes for this game, which joins other special editions such as Pokémon, SpongeBob SquarePants and Disney versions. Monopoly: Here & Now money starts with $10,000 bills and goes up to $5 million. The little plastic houses are blue and gray. The Community Chest and Chance cards have been updated with items about computer-network viruses and such.

And — this is a biggie — the tokens have gone commercial. Rather than a comfortable shoe, race car or iron, players can choose a miniature New Balance sneaker, Toyota Prius or Starbucks cup.

The other metal game pieces are a labradoodle, which is not as cute as the Scottish terrier; a cell phone, referred to as a Motorola RAZR mobile handset; a no-name laptop; a generic airliner; and a carton of McDonald's french fries.

The companies didn't pay for their brands to be on the game pieces, Hogan said.

"The Monopoly team went through and questioned what would Monopoly look like if were created today. We brainstormed a list of companies and products we thought were extremely relevant to the here and now," Hogan said. They chose to leave brands off some of the pieces.

Of the new tokens, Hogan favors the labradoodle.

"It's just one of those things. I was always prone to pick the Scottish terrier in classic Monopoly, so it's kind of the here-and-now dog," she said.

If this version of Monopoly sounds too here and now for you old-schoolers, relax. The classic game from 1935 is still available.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4181492.html

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Excuse my ignorance, but how in the name of Tillman Fertita does Landryland...er...the Kemah Boardwalk make it onto the list of finalists for the landmark that will represent Houston on the Monopoly board???

In one year, Kemah makes it as a finalist to this list and Astroworld gets bulldozed. What the hell is wrong with us?