Thursday, March 12, 2009

Cash Out



The Money Bag:

Usability: The money bag has no easily-grippable handles and is wide at all parts. It is among the least ergonomic of the tokens.

Personality: I don't understand this piece in the slightest. It's money, which is an intrinsic component used to play Monopoly. When you play Sorry!, you get to pick Red, Blue, Green, or Yellow. You do not get to pick "Move Backwards 4." When you play Clue, you pick one of the suspects; you do not get to pick "The Envelope With the Answer." When you play Risk, you pick your army color; you don't get to be "The Red Dice." So conceptually, the piece is a little confused.

Humor: Uh, you could, pretend like you had all the money in the bag, maybe? Um, I'm a little lost. You could bribe your way out of jail, except everyone has to do that anyway. Perhaps every time you roll the dice, you could act like you're running away from the Beagle Boys. They always had bags of money. I don't know. You're on your own.

Verdict: Let's see, it's difficult to grip, utterly humorless, and doesn't make a lick of sense. I don't think this token has a single redeeming feature, but I still haven't gotten to its biggest drawback. The Bag of Money is the newest Monopoly Token, added in 1999 after a popularity contest was had. When terrible things get elected, it's usually because either the other choices were even worse, or a lot of people are just really, really dense. The other two choices were a bi-plane, which would've been awesome, or a Piggy Bank, which is something that can be used to store or transport money rather than the actual concept itself and thus more sensible. So truly, if you pick the Bag of Money, you are not only getting a horrible piece, but you're also the physical representation of the failure of democracy and a reminder that most people are much dumber than you'd think. Please pick something else.

Tomorrow (or Saturday): The Wheelbarrow

5 comments:

Kathy Rogers said...

These are cracking me up. And my Monopoly set must be older than 1999. No money bag.

Andy said...

And you don't feel at all the worse for it, do you?

Nick said...

So I take it that this piece is so unthinkably bad that even the picture you show couldn't bear for it to be seen in actual gameplay (so far each of the others was shown on a board)? Keep it up, bud. As the consummate Monopoly-loser I need all the help I can get.

Hope you're well.

BerryBird said...

This was an educational post -- I had no idea about the money bag game piece or the whole ill-fated vote. At first I was thinking the game sets I used must have been missing pieces, but now I see I am just out of the Monopoly loop.

Liz Miller said...

Nice series! I didn't know about the money bag, I would definitely have chosen a piggy bank.