Dissent in the Ranks on Monopoly Rant

Turns out not everybody shares our opinion that the group Commercial Alert needs to get a life and stop protesting the commercialization of Monopoly.

Five tokens in the updated version introduced recently are branded products—an order of McDonalds French fries and a cup of Starbucks coffee, for example.

Commercial Alert, a self-proclaimed defender against “invasions of the commercial culture into our lives and families,” took offense.

“Shame on Hasbro for hawking junk food and caffeine to children,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, in a statement. “Hasbro is toying with the health of our children. Maybe it thinks that the childhood obesity epidemic is just a game, but parents know better.”

We, of course, don’t have a whole lot of patience for Commercial Alert activists and their ilk, so we used the controversy as a springboard to launch into a tirade.

Not everyone agreed:

“Dude-

“I have to disagree with you on this. Does everything have to be branded?

“At some point there is going to be an even bigger backlash against the never ending banging we as consumers get daily from every possible portal into our world.

“We need shredders to protect identity theft from direct mail credit card offers, security software for viral-laden spam (yes, I know the real criminals are the direct perpetrators of the crimes related to these things, but we've got to be proactive), and Tivo to protect our kids and ourselves from unwanted home invasion of messages we'd rather they not be exposed to.

“I've been in ‘the biz’ for 15 years (ad agency and media) and I would like to feel good about what I do at least 50% of the time, if possible. Advertisers need to be more creative than constantly looking for ways they can ambush the consumer when and how they would least expect it. Has it really come to that?

“Pat Marble
Southeast Advertising Manager
Experience Life Magazine”

Fair enough. From our perspective, though, we still love marketing and advertising and think it should be EVERYWHERE. Hell, we think football teams should be named after brands—the Chicago Wal-Marts, or the New York Best Buys, for example. Ooh, here’s one where the colors even match: the Cleveland Home Depots. Yeah? Yeah? Like it?

Oops. Sorry. We went a little insane for a minute there.

OK, point taken on the Monopoly game: Life doesn’t have to be one big commercial.

Sigh. No one will ever have any idea how difficult it was for us to write that last sentence.