The History of MONOPOLY

MONOPOLY, as we all know it, was developed in the early 1930's by the late Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Philadelphia, U.S.A. Born in 1889, he died in 1967 a millionaire.

The exact date was 1933 and Franklin Roosevelt is president of the United States of America and the U.S. nation was struggling to deal with the hardships imposed by the terrible Depression. Charles B. Durrow was an unemployed heating sales representative who lived in Mt. Airy in western Philadelphia.

Most people in Philadelphia loved to go on holiday to Atlantic City, which was the nation's most famous beach resort at that time and was only approximately 70 miles away and only took an hour by the fast high-speed train service.

Charles B. Durrow could no longer afford to go to Atlantic City, and due to the lack of money and enployment it inspired him to invent a game.

He placed a circular oil cloth on his kitchen table and sketched out a gameboard and on an old typewriter typed up rules, title deed cards, and play money and from a nearby lumberyard he brought scraps of wooden mouldings and free paint samples which made little houses and hotels. To this he added a pair of dice and some coloured buttons for tokens.

His family and friends loved it and they all wanted copies. So for $4 he made one copy a day by hand, but he could not keep up with demand so he started paying a printer friend to help with "production".

He was now producing six copies a day.

It seems that Charles B. Darrow is onto something big, so he copyrights the game and mails it to Parker Brothers, Salem, Massachusetts in 1934.

The executives of Parker Brothers liked the game but thought it was too complicated for the mass market, so rejected it. Mr. McDonald of Parker Brothers tells him that the game has a lot of playing errors, fifty-two in all.

Very disappointed, but not deterred, Charles B. Darrow decides to risk everything he has and to go into production himself.

He orders full printed copies of the MONOPOLY game from his printer (Patterson and White) who agree to extend his credit, and sells them in local shops and the big FAO Schwarz toy shop in New York.

The game sells well and news of the success reaches the executives of Parker Brothers and the company then licenses the game from Charles B. Darrow.

In 1935 the MONOPOLY game becomes America's best selling game and by 1936 Parker Brothers could barely keep up.

Charles B. Darrow retires a millionaire at the age of 46. Hasbro now own Parker Brothers and MONOPOLY is still being made with new versions every year.

In 1935 Parker Brothers were just about coping with domestic orders but demand was increasing from outside the United States.

In early 1935, Parker Brothers sent Waddingtons a sample of MONOPOLY.

Waddingtons (John Waddington Ltd.) started out as printers, but was starting to branch out into packaging and had started a small playing card division.

Because Waddingtons had sent Parker Brothers the card game Lexicon with a view of publishing it, Parker Brothers immediately thought of Waddingtons.

The head of Waddingtons, Victor Watson senior, handed the MONOPOLY set to his son, Norman asking him to "look this over and tell me what you think of it."

Norman played an imaginary game with himself all weekend and on the Monday morning persuaded his father to telephone Parker Brothers.

This was the first transatlantic telephone call ever made by Waddingtons and the first ever received by Parker Brothers from Europe.

This telephone call resulted in Parker Brothers granting John Waddington Ltd. a license to manufacture MONOPOLY.

Before putting the game into production, Waddingtons decided to change the names of the properties to give the game more appeal in the United Kingdom.

Victor Watson asked his secretary, Marjory Phillips to take a walk around London "to get the right names".

Therefore the railroads became stations, the dollars became pounds and British landmarks and streets were used.

There were no other alterations.

Nowadays, there are versions all over the world and this site hopes to show you most of them (eventually!).

In the 1980's Waddington's exported the British version around the world to many countries. These days, Parker Bros. (now part of Hasbro) prints the bulk of European / World MONOPOLY sets in Ireland.

Enter your search terms

Web World of MONOPOLY Submit search form

Contact Me

This site is optomised for Firefox 2.x, Firefox 3.x, Internet Explorer 7.x, Google Chrome, Safari for Windows, Hydra and Flock.