Here's some interesting history of Monopoly.
The five sets of the board game
Monopoly depicted here show the evolution of the game's artwork and designs in the United States from 1935 to 2005.
The
history of the board game Monopoly can be traced back to the early 20th century. The earliest known version of Monopoly, known as
The Landlord's Game, was designed by an American,
Elizabeth Magie, and first patented in 1904 but existed as early as 1902.
[1][2] Magie, a follower of
Henry George, originally intended
The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic consequences of
Ricardo's Law of
Economic rent and the
Georgist concepts of economic privilege and
land value taxation.
[3] A series of
board gameswere developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the buying and selling of land and the development of that land. By 1933, a board game had been created much like the version of
Monopoly sold by
Parker Brothers and its related companies through the rest of the 20th century, and into the 21st. Several people, mostly in the
Midwestern United States and near the
East Coast, contributed to the game's design and evolution.
At the start of World War II, both Parker Brothers and Waddington stockpiled materials they could use for further game production. During the war,
Monopoly was produced with wooden tokens in the U.S., and the game's
cellophane cover was eliminated.
[111] In the UK, metal tokens were also eliminated, and a special spinner was introduced to take the place of
dice. The game remained in print for a time even in the Netherlands, as the printer there was able to maintain a supply of paper.
[112] Elizabeth Magie's second patent on
The Landlord's Game expired in September, 1941, and it is believed that after the expiration, she was no longer promoted as an inventor of Monopoly.
[113]The game itself remained popular during the war, particularly in camps, and soldiers playing the game became part of the product's advertising in 1944.
[114]
After the war, sales went from 800,000 a year to over one million.
Read more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_board_game_Monopoly