In what may be one of Ukraine’s few international successes recently, Kyiv has landed a spot on the game board of the international Monopoly edition beating out Moscow in the process
In what may be one of Ukraine’s few international successes recently, Kyiv has landed a spot on the game board of the international Monopoly edition. It even beat out Moscow to do so.
If only joining NATO, the European Union and avoiding a showdown with Russia over Crimea were so easy, many of Ukraine’s problems would be solved.
The votes of Monopoly fans landed Ukraine’s capital on a magenta space. There it will share a color grouping with Istanbul and Toronto on the Monopoly Here and Now: The World Edition game board.
This is the latest version of the popular board game in which the object is to crush your opponents financially, a skill honed in real life by many of Ukraine’s oligarchs.
Dirk Lustig is general manager of Toy Toy Ukraine, which is the official distributor of Monopoly for the Hasbro company. Lustig is quick to talk up the worldly benefits to Kyiv’s inclusion.
“All officials of Ukraine think about what they can do to promote the positive image of Ukraine in the world,” Lustig said, “and now we have the most popular board game in the world played by 715 million kids, teenagers and adults [all seeking to be] owner the world. It’s a PR campaign free of charge for many years.”
The image chosen to represent Kyiv is the tall statue of the woman on Kyiv’s main square, Maidan Nezalezhnosti. She is the symbol of independence.
Monopoly fans got the ability to vote online and choose what cities should be included. There were some limits on voting, but not many, giving the advantage to organized campaigns.
Kyiv finished in 16th place in the voting. The top 20 cities among 68 in contention landed on the board, plus two “wild card” cities chosen by vote also. Voting started in late January and lasted for six weeks, with more than five million ballots cast.
Kyiv succeeded largely due to a campaign organized by people in Ukraine and Ukrainian Diaspora living abroad, including in the United States and Canada.
“We gathered a small group of active people who started a campaign on the Internet and later more people joined us, spreading information about the campaign among Ukrainians living in Ukraine and abroad,” said Mykola Malukha, a Kyiv journalist who headed the campaign.
Monopoly is owned by Hasbro, a leading company in children’s and family leisure time entertainment products and services including games and toys ranging from traditional to hightech. Players compete to acquire wealth through economic activity involving the buying, renting and trading of properties using play money, as players take turns moving around the board according to the roll of the dice.
Since 1935, more than 250 million copies of the Monopoly game have been sold in 103 countries and 37 languages. More then 200 different editions of the game have been published since its creation.
In this edition, the utility spaces have been updated to more renewable forms of solar and wind energy. Also, the new game version allows the purchase of not just real estate, but cities as well.
The new game version Here and Now edition is available for purchase now.
