Feb. 6, 1935: Correcting a potentially disastrous mistake, Parker Brothers begins selling a board game called “Monopoly.” The company had initially rejected the game when its inventor, Charles Darrow, showed it to executives in 1934. Believing, rightly, that Depression-weary Americans would enjoy pretending to be real estate dealmakers, Darrow began selling the game on his own. His success convinced Parker Brothers, which was acquired by Hasbro Inc. in 1991, to overlook the 52 design errors the company had originally identified—for example, most economists believe that the $75 luxury tax should be eliminated with the revenue made up by charging a fee for parking—and begin marketing the game. Monopoly was an immediate hit and the strong sales helped Parker Brothers avoid bankruptcy. Hasbro now claims that Monopoly is world’s most popular proprietary board game, outselling such modern competitors as Oligopoly, Monopsony and Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.—Jeffrey Kanige
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