Episode 222: Capitalism, The (Board) Game

In the final episode of 2024, Amanda is inspired by a conversation with her friend Janelle to explore board games that teach children (and adults) the “winner takes all” aspect of late stage capitalism and/or reinforce the message that success=stuff.

• We’ll take a journey through the history of board games, with a deep dive into the Game of Life.
• We’ll check out the shopping focused games of the 1980s and 90s, including Mall Madness.
• We will touch on some other games that just seem agonizing for adults to play, like Payday (too real).
• And we’ll explore the origin story of Monopoly, along with all of the other games that (accidentally or otherwise) seem to reinforce dumb ideas like the bootstrap myth.

Amanda also talks about what a "no buy year" means to her (and somehow ties into board games, because why not).

This episode also includes an audio essay from Eleisha of SHIFT, a refillery in Narberth, PA. Find SHIFT on Instagram: @mainlineshift

Learn more about board games:

"Why the game of Life used to have poverty, suicide, and ruin," Phil Edwards, Vox.
Ruthless: Monopoly's Secret History, American Experience (PBS)
"5 Wild Facts About Mall Madness," Jake Rossen, Mental Floss.

Join the conversation on the Clotheshorse Slack! Sign up here!

Get your Clotheshorse merch here: https://clotheshorsepodcast.com/shop/

If you want to share your opinion/additional thoughts on the subjects we cover in each episode, feel free to email, whether it’s a typed out message or an audio recording:  [e-mail]

Did you enjoy this episode? Consider "buying me a coffee" via Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/clotheshorse

Find this episode's transcript (and so much more) at clotheshorsepodcast.com


Clotheshorse is brought to you with support from the following sustainable small businesses:

Spokes & Stitches is a size-inclusive patternmaking and sewing studio based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Patternmaker Ruby Gertz teaches workshops for hobbyists and aspiring designers, so that anyone can learn the foundational skills of designing and making their own clothes!  Ruby also provides professional services such as pattern digitization, size charts, patternmaking, and grading services for indie slow fashion brands that want to prioritize inclusive sizing. You can find Ruby on Instagram as @spokesandstitches, and get in touch with her for professional services at www.spokesandstitches.com.

The Pewter Thimble Is there a little bit of Italy in your soul? Are you an enthusiast of pre-loved decor and accessories? Bring vintage Italian style — and history — into your space with The Pewter Thimble (@thepewterthimble). We source useful and beautiful things, and mend them where needed. We also find gorgeous illustrations, and make them print-worthy. Tarot cards, tea towels and handpicked treasures, available to you from the comfort of your own home. Responsibly sourced from across Rome, lovingly renewed by fairly paid artists and artisans, with something for every budget. Discover more at thepewterthimble.com

St. Evens is an NYC-based vintage shop that is dedicated to bringing you those special pieces you’ll reach for again and again. More than just a store, St. Evens is dedicated to sharing the stories and history behind the garments. 10% of all sales are donated to a different charitable organization each month.  New vintage is released every Thursday at wearStEvens.com, with previews of new pieces and more brought to you on Instagram at @wear_st.evens.

Deco Denim is a startup based out of San Francisco, selling clothing and accessories that are sustainable, gender fluid, size inclusive and high quality--made to last for years to come. Deco Denim is trying to change the way you think about buying clothes. Founder Sarah Mattes wants to empower people to ask important questions like, “Where was this made? Was this garment made ethically? Is this fabric made of plastic? Can this garment be upcycled and if not, can it be recycled?” Signup at decodenim.com to receive $20 off your first purchase. They promise not to spam you and send out no more than 3 emails a month, with 2 of them surrounding education or a personal note from the Founder. Find them on Instagram as @deco.denim.

Vagabond Vintage DTLV is a vintage clothing, accessories & decor reselling business based in Downtown Las Vegas. Not only do we sell in Las Vegas, but we are also located throughout resale markets in San Francisco as well as at a curated boutique called Lux and Ivy located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Jessica, the founder & owner of Vagabond Vintage DTLV, recently opened the first IRL location located in the Arts District of Downtown Las Vegas on August 5th. The shop has a strong emphasis on 60s & 70s garments, single stitch tee shirts & dreamy loungewear. Follow them on instagram, @vagabondvintage.dtlv and keep an eye out for their website coming fall of 2022.

Country Feedback is a mom & pop record shop in Tarboro, North Carolina. They specialize in used rock, country, and soul and offer affordable vintage clothing and housewares. Do you have used records you want to sell? Country Feedback wants to buy them! Find us on Instagram @countryfeedbackvintageandvinyl or head downeast and visit our brick and mortar. All are welcome at this inclusive and family-friendly record shop in the country!

Located in Whistler, Canada, Velvet Underground is a "velvet jungle" full of vintage and second-hand clothes, plants, a vegan cafe and lots of rad products from other small sustainable businesses. Our mission is to create a brand and community dedicated to promoting self-expression, as well as educating and inspiring a more sustainable and conscious lifestyle both for the people and the planet.

Find us on Instagram @shop_velvetunderground or online at www.shopvelvetunderground.com

Selina Sanders, a social impact brand that specializes in up-cycled clothing, using only reclaimed, vintage or thrifted materials: from tea towels, linens, blankets and quilts.  Sustainably crafted in Los Angeles, each piece is designed to last in one's closet for generations to come.  Maximum Style; Minimal Carbon Footprint.

Salt Hats:  purveyors of truly sustainable hats. Hand blocked, sewn and embellished in Detroit, Michigan.

Republica Unicornia Yarns: Hand-Dyed Yarn and notions for the color-obsessed. Made with love and some swearing in fabulous Atlanta, Georgia by Head Yarn Wench Kathleen. Get ready for rainbows with a side of Giving A Damn! Republica Unicornia is all about making your own magic using small-batch, responsibly sourced, hand-dyed yarns and thoughtfully made notions. Slow fashion all the way down and discover the joy of creating your very own beautiful hand knit, crocheted, or woven pieces. Find us on Instagram @republica_unicornia_yarns and at www.republicaunicornia.com.

Cute Little Ruin is an online shop dedicated to providing quality vintage and secondhand clothing, vinyl, and home items in a wide range of styles and price points.  If it’s ethical and legal, we try to find a new home for it!  Vintage style with progressive values.  Find us on Instagram at @CuteLittleRuin.

Thumbprint is Detroit's only fair trade marketplace, located in the historic Eastern Market.  Our small business specializes in products handmade by empowered women in South Africa making a living wage creating things they love like hand painted candles and ceramics! We also carry a curated assortment of  sustainable/natural locally made goods. Thumbprint is a great gift destination for both the special people in your life and for yourself! Browse our online store at thumbprintdetroit.com and find us on instagram @thumbprintdetroit.

Picnicwear:  a slow fashion brand, ethically made by hand from vintage and deadstock materials - most notably, vintage towels! Founder, Dani, has worked in the industry as a fashion designer for over 10 years, but started Picnicwear in response to her dissatisfaction with the industry's shortcomings. Picnicwear recently moved to rural North Carolina where all their clothing and accessories are now designed and cut, but the majority of their sewing is done by skilled garment workers in NYC. Their customers take comfort in knowing that all their sewists are paid well above NYC minimum wage. Picnicwear offers minimal waste and maximum authenticity: Future Vintage over future garbage.

Shift Clothing, out of beautiful Astoria, Oregon, with a focus on natural fibers, simple hardworking designs, and putting fat people first.  Discover more at shiftwheeler.com

Creators & Guests

Host

Amanda Lee McCarty

What is Clotheshorse with Amanda Lee McCarty?

Host Amanda Lee McCarty (she/they) decodes and demystifies the fashion and retail industries, and takes on topics like consumerism, workers rights, personal style, and why fashion is a case study in capitalism gone awry.
Your money is as powerful as your vote!
"If you wear clothes, you need to listen to Clotheshorse." --Elise
"If you are human and live in the world, you need to listen to Clotheshorse." --Individually Wrapped

This episode began at one of my favorite local thrift stores, Main Street Closet, on Willow Street in a town also called Willow Street. And only a few miles from my house.

I have such love for this thrift store. It’s where I found my barely used Cuisinart food processor. It was a great source of artificial fruit for the Clotheshorse Jamboree. And as an aficionado of flannel grandma nightgowns, I’ve found some good ones there.

Main Street Closet has a toy section in the back like any other thrift store, but they keep the interesting, often vintage, games and toys up front on shelves atop the clothing racks. And one day last summer, Dustin spotted a game called Bargain Hunter, aka (to quote the box) “The smart-shopping game with lots of fun in store for you.”

Dustin said, “this seems to align with your interests (meaning Clotheshorse).” I laughed, but ultimately I ended up buying it for $2, feeling confident that it would come in handy at some point.

Bargain Hunter was released into the world in 1981 by Milton Bradley. And the objective (per the box), is to “be the first player to complete your shipping list and owe nothing on your charge account.” Wow. Sounds thrilling. Sounds like the really exciting aspects of adulthood rolled into game format. Maybe add “trying to find a doctor that takes your insurance” and “waiting in line at the post office” to the list and you’ve got a game that really captures the tortuous moments of modern life…in game format? I thought games were supposed to be fun?

Well, TBH, if you’ve spent as much time reading about games as I have for the past few weeks, you would know that board games were originally intended to teach children important life lessons about morality, like the 1843 banger “Mansion of Happiness” whose rules explained, “WHOEVER possesses PIETY, HONESTY, TEMPERANCE, GRATITUDE, PRUDENCE, TRUTH, CHASTITY, SINCERITY...is entitled to Advance six numbers toward the Mansion of Happiness. WHOEVER gets into a PASSION must be taken to the water and have a ducking to cool him... WHOEVER posses[ses] AUDACITY, CRUELTY, IMMODESTY, or INGRATITUDE, must return to his former situation till his turn comes to spin again, and not even think of HAPPINESS, much less partake of it."

Wow, that sounds fun! But it does tap into something important that we will touch on again and again through this episode: how playing games can impact us socially and psychologically, really at any age.

But back to Bargain Hunter: now that you know the rules of Mansion of Happiness, this game sounds super fun in comparison, right? As a kid, I always felt like the most fun games had a lot of plastic pieces and bells and whistles. Raise your hand if you too fantasized about owning Mouse Trap, a game that involved building a Rube Goldberg style machine intended to trap mice? You know, let’s listen to the commercial for Mouse Trap, because why not?

Just want to say that I am surprised and low key disappointed to realize that I still know all of the words to the song, which is apparently taking up space in my brain that could be intended for solving climate change or curing cancer or whatever.

Anyway, Mouse Trap was just one in a series of board games that ultimately disappointed me as a kid. The machine didn’t work quite as well as promised. And the game itself was kinda boring. The real fun was playing around with the machine pieces. So as a game, Mouse Trap would get a tepid 3 out of 5 stars from me. But for ways one could fuck around and play with it outside of the game rules, it gets a 5.

I just loved a gimmicky game. And those geniuses at Milton Bradley–who made Bargain Hunter–knew that kids wanted a gimmick. A plastic doodad to play around with. So Bargain Hunter boasts (in all caps on the box) “FEATURING THE BARGAIN HUNTER PLASTIC CREDIT CARD MACHINE!”

This credit card machine was neither a tap nor an insert your card situation. Not even a decrepit old “slide the card” situation. Instead, it was the very old school version that maybe only some of you remember—strangely we were using this kind of card “machine” in the 00s at Urban Outfitters when our antiquated registers rejected a card–the imprinter style where you would put in the credit card, laying face up in a little slot, then place a carbon paper slip on top of it, the slide the top piece over it, literally imprinting the raised numbers and characters on the card onto the carbon slip.

That’s the kind of credit card machine Bargain Hunter includes.

Anyway, I brought the game home and put it on the coffee table in our living room. I wasn’t sure when I would get a chance to play it, but I didn’t want to forget about it.

Well, a few weeks later, Dani of Picnicwear and her family came for a visit. After plying them with grilled tofu and mocktails, I said, “hey, does anyone want to play a possibly boring board game?”

Fortunately Dani and her husband Jason were down, so we set up Bargain Hunter and got to work. The premise of Bargain Hunter is…oh, you know what? Let’s listen to the commercial first, okay?

Can we all agree that the commercial does not make the game sound very exciting? And that’s because it’s not. Basically you have a list of things you have to buy for your new home. And your goal is to get them as cheaply as possible. Prices change based on cards drawn by other players and where the roll of the dice lands you. If you’re out of paper money, you can charge it using your credit card, BUT (and this is the most exciting part of the game), the machine may decline your credit charge. Now that gets the pulse racing! If your card is declined, you are out of luck. You can wait until your next turn to try again. If you’re approved, you can make the purchase, but you have to pay back the charge plus interest. And like a lot of these games, you get a payday every time you pass a certain spot on the board, so you can (in theory) pay it back over time.

We ended up playing for an hour or so, before finally saying “okay, this is way too much like regular life and it’s getting kind of boring.”

I shared some photos of this game play on instagram, which led to a text conversation between my friend Janelle and me the next day. And we ended up kind of throwing up our hands in disgust, like, how fucked up is it that kids are being taught to shop and use credit cards as a fun family game (and to be clear, the box for Bargain Hunter indicates that this game is appropriate for ages 9 and up)? Are kids (including all of us former kids) being indoctrinated into capitalism and consumerism from a young age, with games like this being a part of it?

Well, SPOILER (but like, not really a spoiler): the answer is YES. We already know that consumerism is taught to us from a young age. We’ve been swimming in a sea of Saturday morning cartoon commercials, Barbie clothes, Garbage Pail Kids cards, Pokemon collections, sticker books, and so much more since we were so small. Eventually Barbie clothes were replaced by fast fashion, Pokemon turned into make up and skin care products, and sticker books turned into all the other stuff we are being sold every day.

But my conversation with Janelle got me wondering: how many other games were getting us comfortable with capitalism, teaching us the “winner takes all” aspect of late stage capitalism, or the message that success=stuff that fuels consumerism? I decided to find out. And that’s what we are going to talk about in this episode, the final episode of 2024.

Welcome to Clotheshorse, the podcast that still maintains that Scrabble is the best board game of all time.

I’m your host Amanda, and this week we’re talking all about Capitalism, the (Board) Game.
We’ll take a journey through the history of board games, with a deep dive into the Game of Life.
We’ll check out the shopping focused games of the 1980s and 90s, including Mall Madness.
We will touch on some other games that just seem agonizing for adults to play, like Payday (too real).
And we’ll explore the origin story of Monopoly, along with all of the other games that (accidentally or otherwise) seem to reinforce dumb ideas like the bootstrap myth.

Before we get started on all of that, we have one final small business audio essay for the year. And TBH, since I am not planning to do these next year, I am glad to be finishing up with this amazing submission from Eleisha of Shift, a refillery located in Narberth, Pennsylvania. Let’s give it a listen!

Thank you Eleisha for such a thoughtful and very true audio essay about the impact of small businesses on the community around them. I know Eleisha told you where and how to find Shift, but I will also share all of that information in the show notes.

Even if you are not as chronically online as I am, no doubt you have seen some mention of “no buy year” or “no buy 2025” on social media. And it’s been a source of concern for many small businesses out there. Like, are people really going to skip buying anything in 2025? And it would seem that the people who are most committed to a “no buy year” would also be the people who are most likely to prioritize shopping from small businesses. So it’s scary sounding, right? And when you hear about how much impact a business like Eleisha’s has on the community around it, well, you don’t want this whole “no buy” idea to end her work.

Like a lot of easy slogans, “no buy year” doesn’t really convey the spirit of its intentions (and TBH it feels a little “diet culture, but for shopping” to me). After all, the moment we are forced by life circumstances to end our “buy nothing,” we’re going to feel like shit and maybe even buy more stuff after that. Possibly feel wary of ever trying something so big in the future. Ask me about the year I had norovirus on Black Friday (I was trying to do a Buy Nothing day) and was beating myself up about having to order Pedialyte and other liquids for delivery. Even though I knew that this was kinda extenuating circumstances, I still felt like I was a failure who should never try to take a political stand ever again.

Here’s what a more sustainable 2025 means to me:

★ Buy less new stuff in the first place.
★ Think hard before you make a purchase.
★ Make the stuff you already have last as long as possible via care and repair (aka laundry and mending).
★ Shop secondhand first before buying something new, whether that’s a food processor or pair of jeans. It won’t always be possible to find something secondhand in the time frame you need it, but you will be surprised by how often it IS possible and pretty convenient!
★ Shop small (and ideally local) when you can. Skip the big brands and retailers when possible.

But most importantly: think less about buying and shopping...and more about learning, connecting, living, resting, sharing, and doing.

★ Find joy in activities that have nothing to do with buying stuff.
★ Learn new things by reading, exploring, going to museums, or even just talking to the other smart people around you.
★ Make time for rest and relaxation.
★ Spend time enjoying nature…and that can mean going hiking or on a picnic, or it can mean watching the birds from your window, staring at clouds and making up stories about them, learning more about butterflies, admiring a really nice tree.
★ Get involved with your community (whether that’s IRL or your virtual community).
★ Do things that matter to you.
★ Get creative, whether that’s crafting, sewing, writing, cooking, collaging, drawing, painting...making something is way better than buying something.
★ Tell the people that you love that well, you love them and you’re glad they are around.

On paper, this list sounds easy, but let’s be real: shopping and the acquisition of new stuff has been baked into us since childhood. Teen movies frequently include a shopping montage. Malls were once a social hub for teens (and they still are in Japan). There are entire television stations solely for shopping. The internet (including social media) is essentially a shopping center. And to be honest, “shopping” has been portrayed as not only a hobby and social outlet, but an essential part of a healthy, successful adult life. And for many of us, it started by observing our parents AND even maybe playing games that encouraged shopping.

I have always kinda loved the mall. When I was a kid, we would go there as a family once a week, usually on Fridays. Sometimes my grandma would join. We would walk around, I was–because apparently kids could just do whatever in the 80s and early 90s–I was allowed to go to certain stores by myself, specifically the book store and the toy store. This was a relief for me because watching my mom and grandma shop for clothing was as thrilling as watching paint dry. And if my grandma was along, she might slip me $5 to buy a couple of new books. The evening might start with dinner at Sbarro or the restaurant inside McCrory’s (which had tacos on the menu). Everyone seemed to have fun at the mall and it was kind of a happy place for me, because home was usually pretty miserable and full of volatility.

I loved the mall so much that my brother and I would occasionally build a mall for my Barbies using boxes and some leftover dowels and wall trim from the garage. My brother usually played two different roles with my single Ken doll: security guard busting shoplifters and the truck driver delivering the merchandise to the mall. The shoplifting incidents usually involved a high speed chase with my knockoff pink Barbie convertible.

So imagine my excitement when I saw a new game all about malls being advertised while I was watching cartoons one morning:

Ahh Mall Madness….if my brain were full of filing cabinets organizing all of my thoughts and opinions about different events and random memories from my life…well, the Mousetrap game would be filed under “Things that were disappointing, but not in a heartbreaking traumatic way.”

And Mall Madness would be double-filed under
“Things that were disappointing, but not in a heartbreaking traumatic way.” Lots of stuff filed there I guess, including that hair tool that had all of the different attachments for crimping ones hair in different shapes (including a triangle, wtf), the Hello Kitty restaurant in Mexico City, and many different dates over the years.
“the most overt interaction with consumerism and capitalism that I experienced as a child.”

Mall Madness was introduced by Milton Bradley in 1988. I didn’t play it for a few years because I was too young to be interested at that point, but it continued to be heavily advertised to tweens for years afterwards, so I kinda always wanted it. But I remember that it was a little on the pricey side and (according to my mom), it was also “stupid.”

In the 80s and 90s, Milton Bradley decided to develop more games for a mostly untapped market–tweens. And specifically, tween girls. And to be fair, games for tween girls had proven to be pretty lucrative, with titles like Girl Talk (I remember being a boring version of Truth or Dare), Girl Talk Dateline (about, yes, dating), another heteronormative dating game from Milton Bradley called Heart Throb, and The Babysitters Club game (also a little dry and disappointing).

Mall Madness and Dream Phone (another tween girl game) leveled up by adding electronic elements to the game play. Dream Phone would come later than Mall Madness, and it purported to combine the top interests of every 90s girl: crushing on boys and talking on the phone. The goal of the game (how you won) was to figure out which of the 24 teenage bachelors in the game liked you. Sort of like Clue, but you know, kinda dumb. But it had a phone in the center of the game board that you “dialed” to get recorded clues.

As I mentioned, Mall Madness arrived on the scene a few years earlier, in 1988. The board was a two-story shopping mall that players navigated. The goal–to spend all of your money to buy 6 items from your shopping list and return to the parking lot. Whoever did that first won.

Yeah, this sounds tedious as an adult, like “oh cool, a game about errands.” The center of the gameboard was a “computer” that allowed players to make credit card purchases and hear mall announcements about sales. You know what, let’s listen to that ad, too.

The game was intended for ages 9 and up. So um, yeah, let’s just get some 9 year olds playing with a credit card.

And on one hand, it’s fun because as a kid, you get to play at being adult, right? Adults have credit cards and that seems really cool and exciting (until you are an adult). But it also teaches us to be comfortable with using a credit card. It teaches us that the winner will be the person who buys the most stuff.

Later in this episode, we are going to talk about the granddaddy of capitalism games, Monopoly. And as part of my research for this episode, I watched an excellent episode of PBS’s American Experience called Ruthless: Monopoly’s Secret History. And in it, various game scholars and designers discussed the intellectual and social impact of playing games.

Lindsay Grace, a Gaming Scholar said, “The whole idea in playing a game is that you get to experiment with things you may not get to experiment without cost.”

And for kids playing Mall Madness, they get to try being the person who is trying to buy the most stuff without real world consequences. And perhaps, if you play Mall Madness enough, you fear the real world consequences of debt and overconsumption a lot less. It’s sort of like a dress rehearsal for consumerism.

Now, I finally got to play Mall Madness in junior high, when my friend Jessica’s parents bought it for her for Christmas. She and our other best friend Laura eagerly unpacked the box a few days after Christmas. Yes, using the loud speaker and credit cards was super exciting…but the game itself was kinda dull. And we never played it again!

However, I have to admit that some of the store names are kinda hilarious to me even now:
I.M. Coughin Drug Store
Novel Idea Books
Frump's Fashion Boutique
DingaLing Phones
M.T Wallet's Department Store

I also have to confess that this summer, I spent $75 dollars on the original Mall Madness game at Freedom Thrift on Route 30 here in Lancaster County. I have no regrets. I’ve actually been gradually sort of accumulating these “capitalism” games in hopes of having a game night, either at the next Clotheshorse Jamboree or somewhere else. Who wants to have a capitalism game night with me? If you have a place we can do it, let’s make it happen!

Unsurprisingly, this game format and winning by spending all your money on shopping…was a bit controversial. Kinda surprising considering it was the decade of malls and shopping! But yeah, people were appalled. Adweek reporter Fara Warner said Mall Madness “makes women out to be bargain-crazy, credit-happy fashion plates.” Other critics felt that it “cultivate[d] impulse shopping among young girls.” And many observers noted that no boys were shown in any of the commercials, further reinforcing shopping and overconsumption as a female behavior. Meanwhile, Milton Bradley PR Manager Mark Morris countered that the game taught players “how to judiciously spend their money.”

The game was a hit, inspiring other game companies to create shopping-themed board games like Let’s Go shopping and Meet Me at the Mall. The goal of the former was to create an outfit, while the latter tasked girls with buying as much stuff as possible before the mall closed. And yes, these also seem as insidious and gendered as Mall Madness and Dream Phone. While Mall Madness seems like such an 80s/90s invention, it has been “reborn” a few times in this century, with a Miley Cyrus version in 2008, followed by A Littlest Pet Shop version.

So a couple of months ago–when Dustin was on tour–I ventured to the Vintage Revival Market (a pop up that happens periodically here in Lancaster) all by myself. And I left with a copy of Meet Me At the Mall. And yes, I was very excited about it.

Made by Tyco, the object of Meet Me At the Mall (The Mall Shopping Game) is to “Shop til you drop! Be the one with the most stuff and win!” Intended for ages 8 and up. And yeah, basically late stage capitalism in a nutshell, if you add “and be sure to hate your job, too.”

If I were going to file my experience with Meet Me At the Mall in my mental filing cabinets, it would be tucked away in a folder titled “Check the box before you purchase.” Because while all of the pieces are there, the instructions are not! And this game was so unsuccessful, very little evidence of it remains on the internet: no commercials, no PDFs of instructions, only one person talking about it on YouTube. However, I did find a vintage game dealer (Don’s Game Closet) who is selling the instructions for $4. I have paid via PayPal just now and I will keep you abreast of any future developments. This is obviously an important purchase because we need to play this game at our capitalism game night. But also, I REALLY want to play this game (and so does Dustin). Unlike the fake stores found in Mall Madness, Meet Me at the Mall has legit stores of the 1980s: Express, B. Dalton, The Limited, Suncoast Video, Foot Locker, Sam Goody, Casual Corner, Wild Pair, Mrs. Field’s Cookies! It just needs a TCBY to make it complete! There are also little cardboard shopping bags. As far as I can tell, the object of the game is to make as many purchases as possible before the mall closes. At the end, everyone dumps out their shopping bags, and whoever has the most stuff, wins.

Which…ewwww…But once again, if we go back to this idea of games letting us practice behaviors and concepts, get more comfortable with them…well a game like Meet Me At The Mall makes us accept the paradigm of “the person who buys the most stuff is the winner,” and it kind of becomes a part of our beliefs and behavior outside of the game.

Don’t believe me yet? Just wait until we get to Monopoly.

By now you know I love a game with a lot of parts and gimmicks. Pretty much any game that said “Some assembly required” on the box. And The Game of Life had it all:
Fake Money
Little cars with little pegs that represented people
Three dimensional hills and bridges
A rainbow colored spinner

The Game of Life, for ages 9-adult, bills itself as a game of skill and chance. Players start off solo in their little plastic car, spinning the wheell and barreling down the highway of life. Along the way, they go to college (or not), get a career (or not), go into debt (or not), get married (or not), have kids (or not), and maybe, end up a millionaire (“retire in style”) or bankrupt (“retire to the country to become a philosopher.” Either way, there’s a cute house and some trees.

Let’s listen to the commercial.

In my mental filing cabinet, The Game of Life is in a folder called “Exciting as a kid, super boring and TBH unrealistic as an adult.”

Sure, there’s boring adult shit like taxes and insurance, along with loans and interest. FUN! But Life perpetuates a narrative that we all start out in the same place with the same resources (a car and $10K in cash) and it’s a combination of fate and alleged skill that determines our success.

As adults, we know that it is much more complex than that. I think I was in high school before I realized that a lot of people had more advantages than me (money, connections, supportive families, etc). And at the same time, I also saw for the first time that others had less advantages than me. While I hated to think that far ahead as a teenager, I could see that everyone didn’t have the same access to “success.” And to be honest, I think games like Life allowed me to believe as a kid that the playing field, er, game board, really was level. We know that’s not the case.

The interesting thing (or frustrating thing, you decide) about Life is that regardless of where you end in the game, both outcomes are not bad. Personally, I prefer the idea of being bankrupt and retiring to the country as a philosopher…and that means you LOST the game. But we know IRL consequences are much less cozy.

And actually, the original version of Life presented a somewhat more accurate series of outcomes.

Milton Bradley–a name we’ve already heard so many times in this episode–is synonymous with board games for many of us. He was born in 1936. He actually began his adult life as a printer. He owned one of the only lithography machines in Massachusetts. And this mini monopoly on printing made him very successful for a while.

But then disaster struck in 1860. He had invested a lot of money in printing thousands of portraits of presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. Now we know that Lincoln eventually became the president, so you might be asking yourself “how was printing all of those portraits a disaster?” Well, in the midst of his campaign, Lincoln grew his iconic beard. And the portraits unfortunately showed a clean shaven Lincoln. The portraits did not sell and Bradley was nearly bankrupted.

This loss inspired him to create a board game based on his own ups and downs: The Checkered Game of Life. The game was an immediate hit, selling 45,000 copies by 1861. In 1866, he patented the game, ensuring a life of fortune for himself.

The Checkered Game of Life is VERY different from the game of Life I played as a kid. Bradley was a deeply religious and conservative man. His passions were religion and education. So he created a game that would help people learn to live a more virtuous life.

Dr. Jennifer Snyder wrote her dissertation about Milton Bradley and how his games were created from a desire to educate about morality. She said, “Everything Milton Bradley published had a really strong moral tone to it when he was still in charge of the company. He viewed everything as an educational opportunity. It was an opportunity for people to be educated in the way he thought they should be. The game of Life is very much about taking the moral high road and walking the appropriate path.”

The original version of Life did not include cash. Rather players accumulated points for making good moral decisions and lost points for making poor moral decisions. The goal was a “happy old age.” And along the way, players could land on squares like Honor, Ambition, Industry, Bravery, and Honesty, while also risking landing on Prison, Idleness, Intemperance, Gambling, Disgrace, and Suicide. The “immoral” squares lead you on a path away from the “happy old age” square, while the “moral” squares lead you on a path toward it.

The game did not (and still does not) include dice because dice were associated with gambling, a bad thing from Bradley’s perspective.

After Bradley’s death in 1911, the game of Life began its transformation to its current incarnation, which prioritizes financial success (rather than happy old age, the goal is wealthy retirement), essentially the more modern, materialistic “American Dream.”

Does the current version still have the educational component that Bradley intended? It’s hard to say. Once again, I think it gets us comfortable with the idea that wealth is the goal.

Another game that focuses on wealth as the positive final outcome is PAYDAY, introduced by Parker Brothers in the 1970s. The board–which btw the 70s and 80s versions have amazing illustrations–is in the format of a month with 31 days, with each square representing a different day of the month. The object–like Life–is to have the most money at the end of the game, after dealing with expenses like home repairs, groceries, and even a new dress for the high school dance. Players can take out predatory payday loans, have a savings account, play the lottery, purchase insurance, etc. Once again, adult life is so fun. Let’s listen to the commercial for this thrilling game!

Have you noticed a recurring theme here–minus Mall Madness: most of these games were sold as “fun for the whole family” and while you can’t see these commercials, they often featured a nuclear family of father, mother, one son, and one daughter. One of the many ideas being sold to parents here is this opportunity for family togetherness. But in my experience, most games are played with other kids or maybe the cool babysitter.

Regardless, even today games like Payday are being marketed as a tool for family bonding. The Amazon listing for Payday asks “How about an entertaining family night in without electronics? Got your attention? The Game of Pay Day is the perfect star of the show!”

But the Amazon copy also guarantees education for kids via a few rounds of Payday:
PRICELESS LESSONS: It is never too early to start teaching your children about making money, paying bills, making investments, selling property - or about going into debt. It can all start here!
LIFE 101: By playing, kids will learn how to pay bills, how to make money, how to afford investments and entertainment and more. It's the perfect starter course for real life!

Hmmm…I’m not so sure about all of that. After all, Payday once again posits that we all start from the same place: with $325 in cash and a guaranteed job. It’s just fate and poor decision making that makes you lose at Payday!

Okay, well let’s get down to brass tacks here, the grand daddy of capitalist games, a game that I have never once successfully finished, despite playing it SO MANY times in my life…MONOPOLY!

Like a lot of these games, the object of Monopoly is to be the person at the end with the most money, perhaps even all of the money, after everyone else has gone bankrupt by giving YOU all of their money for rent.

Ahhh…LANDLORD THE GAME, right? Okay, well, that’s not too far off to be honest.

I’m going to start this by saying that there is an excellent episode of PBS’s American Experience about this called Ruthless: Monopoly’s Secret History. A great 52 minutes of television. I will link to it in the show notes. I don’t want to spend 52 minutes talking about Monopoly, so I’m going to give you the Cliff Notes of it all:

The story begins in the 1970s, with economics professor Ralph Anspach. He invented a game originally called Bust the Trust, that was intended to be a response to Monopoly (the game). Because ultimately, if you take a step back from the cute little hotels and the game pieces of Monopoly (I always like to be the little dog, followed by the car if the dog is not an option)...Monopoly is really about buying up all the property and utilities, about widening wealth inequality, about individualism over community. The winner is the person who has transferred everyone else’s wealth to himself. That happens by creating a monopoly of land ownership.

Anspach renamed Bust the Trust to Anti-Monopoly. And in the game, all of the utilities and real estate are formerly individual businesses that now exist under single ownership. You sort of begin Anti-Monopoly at the end of regular Monopoly. Game players are the federal case workers bringing federal indictments against these businesses in order to break them up into their original components.

The game was actually successful, so successful that a year later General Mills (the food company that also owned Parker Brothers at the time) sued Anspach over his use of “Monopoly” in the name of the game, claiming trademark infringement.

American Experience goes into the legal case (watch it to learn the rest of that story), but it turns out (and here’s the interesting part for me) that the key to Anspach’s case was proving who really invented Monopoly.

Now, for years the story of Monopoly was that a man named Charles Dallow (from Philadelphia, PA) had invented Monopoly after losing his job during the Depression. After two years of really strong sales, Parker Brothers buys the game from Darrow. That should be the end of the story, right? Except…that’s not the truth!

The true story of Monopoly begins in 1903, when political badass, progressive, inventor,feminist, writer, poet, actress, basically all around amazing person Lizzie Magie creates a game called…wait for it…wait for it…The Landlord’s Game!

Magie was not only a feminist, she was also a loud and proud activist for Georgism. Georgism–also known as the single tax movement– was popularized by Henry George in the late 1800s. Basically he (and the other Georgists) believed that land ownership was exacerbating economic inequality. If you owned land, you made money off of everyone else who didn’t via rent or selling that land. And it didn’t seem right since land wasn’t something made by people, it existed before people. Yet if you somehow had land, you had an instant economic advantage (often for life) over those who had never owned land. Notice how this is kind of the opposite of all of the “level playing field” lessons of the board games we have discussed? Furthermore Georgists were reacting to the era of the “robber barons” like Rockefeller and Carnegie, who were creating monopolies, while stomping on workers and the environment. A tiny group of people seemed to have it all, with the vast majority of people having almost nothing.

Georgists believed that rather than taxing income or having a sales tax, the government should collect taxes solely based on land ownership, assessing the tax owed on a piece of land based on its size, location, and usefulness. Any money leftover after funding the government, would be distributed to the people. This would redistribute wealth and allow all people to enjoy the benefits of the land, which once again, no single human had made. Land should be a communal property.

The Landlord’s Game was intended to show players why these land monopolies were bad for society and demonstrate the single tax as a good solution.

The Landlord’s Game could be played two different ways:
In the first version of the rules, it was played essentially like modern day Monopoly: players competed to be the last person with money at the end.
But in the second version of the rules–which was the demonstration of the single tax–instead of paying rent to the landlords, the rent would actually go into the public treasury, where it would be reinvested in the community (aka the players).

In the American Experience episode, game designer Eric Zimmerman said, “It, perhaps, deemphasized our traditional pleasures: dominating other players, coming out ahead, being the winner in favor of critical points about how economy and the social fabric is structured and might be structured differently.”

And once again, Magie–like Milton Bradley–was using game play as a means of teaching players the values that mattered to her. Gaming scholar Patrick Jagoda said (in American Experience) “I get why Elizabeth Magie would have wanted to make the Landlord’s game to teach people about the Single Tax. Because games are such a powerful way of internalizing a new set of rules, of practicing it, of experiencing it in a hands-on fashion.”

Lizzie Magie actually patented The Landlord’s Game, the first patent by a woman for a board game in U.S. history.

Despite the patent, the game moved around college campuses and communities, where people created their own handmade versions of the game board, adapting it to reflect their own geographical landmarks. And over time, players stopped using the second version of the rules, focusing instead on the first version with its “winner takes all” objectives. In the 1930s, The Landlord’s Game became very popular with the Quaker community in Atlantic City, who renamed it with Atlantic City locations, like Boardwalk, Park Place, etc. These names remain a part of modern Monopoly. If you look at the street names and their prices today, they actually reflect the segregation of Atlantic City in the 1930s, with the lowest priced purple properties being the neighborhoods where the Black community lived, with the higher priced properties referring to more middle class, and then affluent neighborhoods.

In 1932, a friend had Charles Darrow over to his house. And with their wives, they played a version of The Landlord’s Game (the Atlantic City version). Strangely enough, the couple never hung out with Darrow and his wife ever again, but Darrow did reach out (kinda rudely) to ask for the rules of The Landlord’s Game….which he then turned into his own game and started selling as Monopoly.

And the rest is history. At one point, Magie and her husband took legal action against Parker Brothers, who placated her with $500 and the promise to release the original version of The Landlord’s Game, which they did, but only via a small and forgettable print run. And of course, they got her to sign away her rights to Monopoly.

The story of Monopoly in itself shines a spotlight on many of the dark sides of American history:
Wealth disparity
The erasure of women
Individuality at the expense of others
And just generally being shitty

All of these things feel relevant even now, with housing being unaffordable (I’ve kind of given up on ever owning a house). And SHEIN, Temu, and all the other fast fashion brands stealing from artists and designers every single day. And billionaire fuckboi idiots buying entire elections.

Furthermore, like the other games we have discussed, Monopoly reinforces the false idea that we all start off at the same place with the same advantages, and with the right combination of luck and skill (or hard work), we can end up rich, too. No one mentions of course that all of that wealth will come at the expense of other people (literally transferring what they own to yourself). But we do play this game over and over again (heck, there are even like Disney Princess and Peppa Pig versions of the game). Generations have played it at this point. And if games really do teach us about how life works and the values we should use to make decisions as adults, then maybe Monopoly isn’t such a great game for children to play. Is this the version of society we want everyone to accept as the “right” version?

In the American Experience episode, historian Bryant Simon mused, “It’s an interesting question if Monopoly creates a misguided view about the United States. And maybe the way to think about it is, what if the original game had caught on? Would that have paved the way for an alternative political vision of America? That puts a lot on a game, but I think capitalists have always wanted to tell a story about how, in America, some people get ahead and other people fall behind and that’s either luck, that’s the roll of the dice, that’s because they didn't play the game the right way…it’s just like Monopoly.”

Thinking about all of us, taking this journey through board games…well, it's no wonder that we have such complex–and sometimes destructive–relationships with shopping, clothing, and credit cards as adults. It’s no wonder that accumulating wealth and stuff is the goal, with those with the most being seen as heroes by many. And of course, in that version of the world, where we see capitalism as the only “right” operating system, we’re all worrying about money and how much we have or don’t have at any given moment.

It’s all inside our brains, dropped in there years and years ago, and it’s going to take a lot of work to untangle that. Recognizing it, naming it…that’s step one in making these changes. But we can’t give up and say “well, I can’t help it. This is bigger than me.” Because we can help ourselves and one another when we start talking about it.

In a weird–and totally accidental way–this takes me full circle to my conversation about “no buy year.” Because my version of that starts with untangling these things, of letting ourselves see a different version of happiness, and a society that functions differently.