Say Goodbye To The Thimble Monopoly Piece

In January, board game lovers had the opportunity to vote for a new lineup of Monopoly pieces. Now, the first casualty of “Monopoly Token Madness” has been announced: The classic thimble Monopoly piece has been voted off the island. Is anyone safe in this Monopoly game piece shakeup? The Scottie dog had better watch his back.

This latest Monopoly news proves that seniority won’t protect you: The thimble has been a standard player on Monopoly boards since the game was first released in 1935. Back then, the thimble was one of ten pieces, which also included an iron, purse, lantern, race car, shoe, top hat, battleship, cannon, and rocking horse. Many of these original pieces, including the battleship, top hat, race car, and shoe, remain in the current lineup — for now.

The thimble is the second classic token to be taken off of the Monopoly board in recent years. In 2013, players voted to replace the iron token with the cat piece. (Was anyone sad about that? I’m kinda bummed about the thimble, but the iron? Pfft.)

In January, Hasbro launched voting for the Monopoly Token Madness campaign, in which voters got to select their favorite eight tokens from both the current token lineup and a pool of 56 new tokens. The full results of the vote — which could replace any or even all of the current tokens — won’t be announced until March 19, but we do know that the thimble is out. “We were a little bit surprised that the thimble got among the lowest votes because it's been in the game for so long,” Jonathan Berkowitz, senior VP of marketing for Hasbro Gaming, told CNN.

The response to the announcement has been… mixed:

We don’t yet know what piece will replace the thimble or if other classic pieces will be eliminated. (Although, I’ll say right now that you will pull the Scottie dog from my COLD, DEAD HANDS.) The new line up could be very different, however. Among the 56 new proposed tokens are examples of retro technology like a rotary phone, gramophone, and a blocky Zack-Morris-style mobile phone. There are also more up-to-date options like a winking-face emoji and a hashtag. My favorite of the new class is the T-Rex — although I recognize that gaining a T-Rex would require sacrificing one of the classics. Would anyone be very torn up if Monopoly ditched the wheelbarrow? I feel like it would be well worth it for a dinosaur.

Images: Lynne Cameron - PA Images/PA Images/Getty Images; Fotolia