We all knew the iron had it coming. Who was going to vote out the Scottie dog, or the sweet race car, or the thing I always thought was some kind of chariot but was in fact a wheelbarrow? The iron was always the least fun, and the last to be picked — or else assigned to the problem child.
Yet, when I woke up Wednesday morning, still feeling my cognac, hit with the news that this smooth, anonymous feline will be replacing the trusty old iron, it was devastating.
Hundreds of thousands of Monopoly fans flooded the game's Facebook page to vote for the new token, which was revealed earlier on TODAY.
Some people will say that the cat is a symbol of the feline-obsessed Internet era, and its usurpation of the iron's slot in the ubiquitous Parker Brothers box is representative of the world's transition from Industrialism to a glorious new Information Age.
But the truth is, people just like cats.
Even a tacky cat charm, as smooth as soft serve and as catlike as a baboon, with a big medallion around its neck, suggesting it is either a retro hip hop cat or that they couldn't get the neck to look right in the 3-D model some intern cobbled together for this contest. And why is it looking to the left? Does that have some kind of sinister significance? Shouldn't a Cat-ptain of Industry look straight forward, towards riches?
True, it's better than the robot (symbolizing humanity's end at their hands), the helicopter (symbolizing government conspiracies), or the ring (symbolizing nothing), but I still don't like it. Luckily, I still have an old iron in our set from the '60s. My grandchildren may not recognize it (because in the future, like the present, no one in my family will iron their clothes), but it's better than them playing with that dumb cat.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
