Somehow I missed the media blitz around the new Monopoly: Here and Now board game when it was introduced last fall, so my introduction happened while doing a little pre-holiday browsing through the game store at the mall. It's not often that I laugh out loud when I look at the back of a game box, but I think this one actually elicited an audible "ha!" What tickled my funny bone wasn't that the game had been updated to reflect slightly more contemporary prices and properties. No, it was the tokens. And the realization that my friends and I are much more mainstream than I thought...
The first thing I noticed was the replacement of my favorite Monopoly token, the Scotty dog, with a labradoodle. When some friends were dog-hunting a few years ago, they seriously considered a
labradoodle, but ended up going with a "golden doodle" instead. At first we thought it was pretty novel. Then we started seeing doodles everywhere...the dog park, downtown, driving by hanging their heads out of Priuses. Which brings me to the next token I noticed: the Toyota Prius, one of which was purchased by some other friends a while back. They've taken us on test drives and we've considered getting one. Now we see Prius' everywhere. And while I do travel on airplanes, carry a laptop, own running shoes and buy espresso drinks a bit too often, I'm proud to say that I turned down the Motorola RAZR phone (which they were really pushing) and went for a less stylish, but very nice Samsung. I wear another brand of running shoe and I tend to frequent the locally-owned espresso places rather than Starbucks (most of the time). As for the McDonald's fries? Only on road trips.
The first thing I noticed was the replacement of my favorite Monopoly token, the Scotty dog, with a labradoodle. When some friends were dog-hunting a few years ago, they seriously considered a
labradoodle, but ended up going with a "golden doodle" instead. At first we thought it was pretty novel. Then we started seeing doodles everywhere...the dog park, downtown, driving by hanging their heads out of Priuses. Which brings me to the next token I noticed: the Toyota Prius, one of which was purchased by some other friends a while back. They've taken us on test drives and we've considered getting one. Now we see Prius' everywhere. And while I do travel on airplanes, carry a laptop, own running shoes and buy espresso drinks a bit too often, I'm proud to say that I turned down the Motorola RAZR phone (which they were really pushing) and went for a less stylish, but very nice Samsung. I wear another brand of running shoe and I tend to frequent the locally-owned espresso places rather than Starbucks (most of the time). As for the McDonald's fries? Only on road trips.It was a bit sobering to see just how significant all of these things are to modern day life and to realize just how entrenched I am in it. It also makes me think about a time when a wheelbarrow was actually an icon of the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment