As good exercise to improve your buying and selling skills in English. I recommend this game as a good tool in Conversation classes.
History
Today, MONOPOLY is the best-selling board game in the world, sold in 103 countries and produced in 37 languages including Croatian. But where did the MONOPOLY game come from? How did this phenomenal pastime get its start?
MR. MONOPOLY tells the legend of MONOPOLY best.
It was 1934, the height of the Great Depression, when Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania, showed what he called the MONOPOLY game to the executives at Parker Brothers. Can you believe it, they rejected the game due to "52 design errors"! But Mr. Darrow wasn't daunted. Like many other Americans, he was unemployed at the time, and the game's exciting promise of fame and fortune inspired him to produce the game on his own. With help from a friend who was a printer, Mr. Darrow sold 5,000 handmade sets of the MONOPOLY game to a Philadelphia department store. People loved the game! But as demand for the game grew, he couldn't keep up with all the orders and came back to talk to Parker Brothers again. The rest, as they say, is history! In its first year, 1935, the MONOPOLY game was the best-selling game in America. And over its 65-year history, an estimated 500 million people have played the game of MONOPOLY!
- Over 200 million MONOPOLY games have been sold worldwide.
- More than five billion little green houses have been "built" since 1935.
- A MONOPOLY game made by my friends at Alfred Dunhill, with gold houses and silver hotels, sold for $25,000.
- The longest MONOPOLY game in history lasted 70 straight days.
- The longest MONOPOLY game in a bathtub lasted 99 hours!
The game of MONOPOLY is so much a part of today's popular culture that my lawyers have trademarked many of the game's graphic elements. The MONOPOLY tokens, Railroad, COMMUNITY CHEST, CHANCE, and Title Deed designs, as well as BOARDWALK and all four gameboard corners are legally protected.
www.hasbro.com/monopoly/
