Save The Iron! Monopoly To Retire A Token

By Amy Cavanaugh in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 12, 2013 8:00PM

Is nothing sacred? Hasbro, which makes Monopoly, is retiring one of the classic tokens (Scottie dog, iron, battleship, thimble, race car, shoe, top hat, and wheelbarrow) and introducing a new one (cat, robot, diamond ring, guitar, and helicopter). The worst part? It's being decided by a fan vote, which means your die-hard battleship-loving roommate could be keeping your favorite thimble from showing up in the next edition of the game.

But now that we know the history behind the tokens, we're totally rooting for the iron. Like many great things, Monopoly tokens were made in Chicago. Neil Steinberg reports at the Sun-Times:

Ole Odegard was born in Norway. He came to Chicago, and in 1896 opened a laundry, eventually located at 3629 N. Halsted.

Chicago was a center of the laundering profession — the National Laundry Owners’ Association was in Joliet, where it had an institute of laundering (the Coin Laundry Association is still here, in Oak Brook). On the West Side was the National Laundry Journal, run by brothers Sam and Charles Dowst.

Sam Dowst, like much of the city, attended the 1893 World’s Fair, where he saw the Mergenthaler Linotype machine, which creates type by shooting hot lead into molds. He realized that not only could it make type, but also buttons — of use to laundry owners.

So the Dowsts bought a machine. One journal subscriber, Ole Odegard, wanted to win the loyalty of his customers’ children by giving them small prizes. He asked the Dowsts if they could whip up some kind of charm for his business, the Flat Iron Laundry. Something ... like ... a ... little flat iron.

They did, as well as small die cast cars, which they called Tootsietoys. Nor were they the only Chicago company making charms; a company called Cosmo turned them out, too, selling to another local business, Cracker Jack. The two companies merged in 1926, becoming Strombecker Toys.

Parker Brothers rolled out Monopoly in 1935, using wood dowels as tokens; it decided to include six made-in-Chicago metal tokens in 1937: a thimble, cannon, top hat (hooray!), shoe, battleship and that original flat iron.

Only one token has ever been replaced—a cannon disappeared in the 1950s, when the Scottie, car, and wheelbarrow were introduced. As the vote stands now, the Scottie dog has a large lead, the race car is in second, and the battleship and top hat are tied for third. The wheelbarrow is in last place at 4 percent, but the iron only has 6 percent of the vote—go vote now and save a bit of Chicago history!