Good old Kiwi ‘can do’ has saved the day for thousands of Monopoly fans who voted for New Zealand to be part of the first ever world edition of the game, but missed out by the narrowest of margins.
Earlier this year, fans worldwide were asked to vote on their favourite cities to make the MONOPOLY Here & Now: The World Edition board. Loyalists in Auckland and Queenstown got voting in their hundreds of thousands, but in the end, Queenstown just missed the top 20 city cut off, finishing in the 21st position.
Thanks to good old Kiwi ingenuity, New Zealanders will still be able to play the game with Auckland and Queenstown on the board using a local innovation, the ‘Kiwi D.I.Y. Bonus Pack’. This allows local game enthusiasts to pass go and land on Auckland or Queenstown whenever they want by ‘upgrading’ their game with permanent or temporary place markers that include the two New Zealand cities.
“Despite going head to head against countries with up to 100 times our population, the Monopoly global team was really impressed by just how close New Zealand came to making the board. We think Kiwis have earned the right to play the new MONOPOLY World edition game with these great New Zealand cities included,” says Stephen Imm, NZ Product Manager Hasbro.
“In the spirit of the competition Hasbro New Zealand recalculated the world vote, adjusting the results to base them on per capita voting which showed that Queenstown would have come second in the main vote and Auckland would have topped the Wild Card vote. With true Kiwi D.I.Y. flair, Hasbro New Zealand came up with a great way to reflect this with the world first Kiwi D.I.Y. Bonus Pack and subsequently, other cities around the world that missed the cut have also adopted this unique Kiwi approach.”
Queenstown does feature on the official game board in another capacity as one of the Community Chest cards to be included in games worldwide, where it is touted as the ‘adventure capital of the world.’
The 22 cities that officially earned spots on the MONOPOLY Here & Now: The World Edition are as follows, listed in order of property groupings with the highest rent property listed first:
• Dark Blue :Montreal, Riga
• Green: Cape Town, Belgrade, Paris
• Yellow: Jerusalem, Hong Kong, Beijing
• Red: London, New York, Sydney
• Orange: Vancouver, Shanghai, Rome
• Magenta: Toronto, Kyiv, Istanbul
• Light Blue: Athens, Barcelona, Tokyo
• Brown: Taipei, Gdynia
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