May 02, 2024 05:00:00

What is the history of the battle between the popular board game Monopoly and its rival product 'Anti-Monopoly'?

Monopoly , a board game in which players move around the board in a Sugoroku-like manner to make real estate transactions and increase their assets, was born in the United States in the early 20th century. Monopoly has developed into a board game that is popular not only in the United States but also around the world, but behind this lies a history of fighting against copycat products called 'Anti-Monopoly,' created by Ralph Anspach , an economics professor at San Francisco State University.

Why thousands of board games are buried beneath Mankato
https://www.startribune.com/anti-monopoly-mankato-landfill-board-game-history/600279625/

Anti-Monopoly, invented by Anspach in 1973, was a game of sugoroku, just like Monopoly. However, unlike Monopoly, where you buy up assets such as real estate and charge other players rent, Anti-Monopoly requires you to prosecute monopolies to return a market dominated by conglomerates to a free market system. Players can earn rewards by prosecuting and breaking up conglomerates that violate antitrust laws.

Anspach came up with Anti-Monopoly because he felt that 'it was not possible to enjoy playing Monopoly while consumers were suffering due to the oil crisis of the early 1970s. In this social situation, Anti-Monopoly attracted the attention of the national media, and orders at Mankato Corporation, which produced Anti-Monopoly at the time, exceeded production capacity.

'There was a lot of anti-monopoly going on at Mankato Corporation at the time,' recalled businessman Glenn Taylor, who did business with the company at the time. 'They were excited to be able to produce this.'

However, Monopoly did not accept this situation.

Parker Brothers , which purchased the Monopoly trademark from creator Charles Darrow in 1935, became a subsidiary of the food company General Mills in 1968.

In early 1974, Parker Brothers, a subsidiary of General Mills, asked Anspach to change the name of the board game 'Anti-Monopoly,' but Anspach refused.

Parker Brothers then sued Anspach for trademark infringement in the U.S. District Court of California, and won a ruling that Anti-Monopoly infringed the Monopoly trademark.

By the time the ruling was handed down in 1977, Anti-Monopoly had sold approximately 410,000 copies, but on July 5, 1977, Mankato Corporation disposed of approximately 40,000 unsold copies of Anti-Monopoly in a landfill in Minnesota. The local newspaper, the Mankato Free Press, reported at the time that 'approximately 40,000 copies of Anti-Monopoly were delivered by truck, some already wrapped, some loose, unwrapped. The products were taken to the landfill and buried in a pile of rubbish by bulldozer.'

The litigation continued, and in 1980, the ruling against Mr. Anspach, which ordered the 'Anti-Monopoly to be destroyed immediately,' was overturned. To commemorate this, Mr. Anspach tried to dig up the Anti-Monopoly packaging that had been dumped in a landfill in 1977, but it was reported that 'after about six hours of excavation work in subzero temperatures, nothing was found.'

The reason for the change in the tide of the battle against Mr. Anspach was that the court recognized that 'Monopoly, which he purchased from Mr. Darrow in 1935, was heavily influenced by the 'Landlord's Game' patented by Lizzie Magie in 1904.' In the subsequent lawsuit, Mr. Anspach settled with Parker Brothers and won permission to use the name 'Anti-Monopoly.'

Mankato Corporation subsequently published a revised version called 'Anti-Monopoly II,' and at the time of writing, Anti-Monopoly is being sold by

University Games , based in San Francisco.