My sisters and I would argue over who got to be the Scottie Dog. My brothers would go to the mat over the Race Car.
But nobody wanted to be the Iron. The Iron was lame. In fact, Hasbro replaced it with a cat in 2013.
Now Hasbro is sponsoring Token Madness, a contest to come up with a new, more relevant set of Monopoly game tokens. In addition to the Scottie dog, top hat, car, thimble, boot, wheelbarrow, battleship and cat, there are 56 options that the public can vote on here.
As you can see, Hasbro has provided some "interesting" new options. I can just imagine making my way around the Monopoly board as a Bunny Slipper!
Or passing GO as a Sliced Bread token.
Have the Marketing geniuses at Hasbro lost their minds? Where's the wine glass? The Pop Tart? The tap dance shoe?
Come on Hasbro! Why do you have to pre-select the options anyhow? Why not let the public come up with ideas?
Oh. I know why.
Hasbro is afraid of the public. And their collective sense of humor.
Like when the public voted to name a Humpback Whale in a 2007 Greenpeace internet poll Mister Splashy Pants.
I happen to like that name.
Then there was that Dub the Dew contest in 2012 where an Italian restaurant launched a campaign to choose the name for their apple-green soft drink. They had to cancel the campaign when the winner was "Hitler did nothing wrong." The 1st runner up was "Diabeetus".
Yeah. I guess I'd have cancelled that campaign, too.
But my favorite public poll gone awry was the contest to name an expensive polar research vessel.
And I'm kind of bothered by the fact that they decided not to name the $300 million Antarctic boat Boaty McBoatface.
It won fair and square, right?
I suppose that's why Hasbro pre-selected the 64 tokens included in the Great Monopoly Token-Off.
But guess what, Hasbro Marketing Geniuses. There's a downside to your chicken-ass business decision.
We will probably never hear these words in an American Living Room.
"I want to be the tampon."
No comments:
Post a Comment