Parker Brothers originally planned for the Monopoly mascot to be "Pennywinkle," an anthropomorphic, moneybag-toting Dalmatian wearing a mink coat. They had to scrap the idea when the owner of a large pet store on Oriental Avenue sued the board game creators for stealing their logo: a greyhound wearing a top hat. With patent law being in its infancy in the early 1930s, George Parker believed that he would easily win the case if he could collect enough money to hire a lawyer.
Unfortunately, his ailing father had just been thrown in jail for swindling a casino out of tens and thousands of dollars by playing craps with loaded die. He circumvented the house advantage and tipped off the casino pit bosses by finding a way to roll doubles with a startling regularity. Parker had to decide on whether to use his savings to bail his father out of jail or to save the mascot of his dreams.
Parker gave up on fighting the lawsuit, used the money to bail out his father from jail, and replaced "Pennywinkle the Dalmatian" with "Mr. Monopoly". It was also because of this difficult decision and his frequent visits to his father in jail that Parker made three important gameplay changes to Monopoly:
1) Implementing the "Get Out of Jail Free" card
2) Creating the rule that rolling doubles 3 times consecutively lands the player in jail
3) Adding the "Just Visiting" pathway to the jail square.
©Factopolis - Daily Fun Facts
is this true?
ReplyDelete