The internet has ordered Hasbro to kill a Monopoly piece

Update: Although the final vote tally won’t be revealed until 19 March, Hasbro has announced one casualty of the internet vote: the thimble is no more. 

“We were a little bit surprised that the thimble got among the lowest votes because it’s been in the game for so long,” said Jonathan Berkowitz, senior VP of marketing at Hasbro Gaming. “There is a possibility other classic pieces were also voted out,” he added, trying to keep this song and dance going a little bit onger.

The original piece continues below.

Democracy is sure looking weak right now, as Barack Obama suggested in his farewell speech last night, but nobody told Hasbro. The board-game company wants to give the internet say on what new tokens should be introduced in the latest version of the game, despite plenty of evidence that it just leads to trouble.

Back in 2013, fans of the game used a similar vote to kick out the iron once and for all, and inexplicably bring in a cat named Hazel. Now is the chance to right that egregious wrong, although you’ll likely do some collateral damage in the process. Everyone who votes at VoteMonopoly will have to nominate eight tokens from a possible 64. The top eight will then feature in the next version of Monopoly, although purists unhappy that the game now features a hashtag, laughing emoji and a T-rex will still be able to source one of the approximately 20 gazillion previous editions on eBay, no doubt.

You’ve got until 31 January to vote, should you feel so inclined and didn’t get your fill of democracy in 2016. I won’t bore you with the full list of candidates, but suffice it to say it features no less than five emojis, eight animals, seven vehicles and seven items of clothing. And once again, yes, you can vote for a T-rex.

Hasbro describes the vote as “historic”, which is perhaps pushing the definition of the word to breaking point, but it’s mildly interesting all the same. The car, thimble, boot, top hat and battleship have been part of the game since its inception in 1935, while the dog and wheelbarrow only joined the cast in the 1950s. You haven’t heard of the cat because it only joined the game in 2013, and I don’t know anybody who has bought the game in about 25 years.

Still, it’s nice to vote in something to which the consequences probably won’t turn the world on its head for once. Not that the internet has a great track record when it comes to having its say. Not only did Boaty McBoatface top the public poll as the name of a polar research ship, but Greenpeace ended up with a whale called Mister Splashy Pants, North Korea got nominated for a Justin Bieber concert, the New York Mets’ stadium got Rickrolled and Mountain Dew almost ended up with a new flavour called “Hitler did nothing wrong”. The internet can be a bit blunt in its humour, but sometimes you do have to take your hat off to the creativity:

Monopoly’s contest should be pretty immune from this, given the options are already set in place, but if you open up a box containing eight T-rexes, you’ll probably know who to blame.