Monopoly Adding Cat Token, Axing Iron After 10M Vote Online (Video)

The results are in and the Internet has spoken: The new Monoply token will be a cat and the iron will cease to exist, Hasbro announced Wednesday.

More than 10 million people across the globe voted to save a token and introduce a new one in an online poll that ran from Jan. 9 and closed Tuesday. Fans of the beloved game took the poll on the game's "Save Your Token" Facebook page.

Monopoly fans saved the car, dog, battleship, shoe, wheelbarrow, top hat, and thimble tokens. The classic iron, which was voters' least favorite piece, will be scrapped from the set to make room for the new kitty token. The shoe and wheelbarrow pieces were also on the chopping block but were narrowly saved.

The cat triumphed over a diamond ring, a guitar, a helicopter, and a toy robot. In the final round of voting, the robot and the cat were in the top two. The cat won't be included in new game sets until later this year. Until then, players can purchase games with the original pieces.

Considering the popularity of cat photos and videos on the Internet, writers from The New York Observer, Gawker, and the Daily Beast all said that the feline had it in the bag.

"You already know the cat won," Neetan Zimmerman wrote at Gawker.

The announcement was made in a somewhat cheeky video starring the game pieces:




One Twitter user was incredulous:

Monopoly chooses a cat as its next game piece. Good luck with that. Ever try to get a cat to do what you want?

— Jason Gay (@jasonWSJ) February 6, 2013

Another user was not impressed.

So mad that Monopoly is replacing the iron token with a cat at the behest of all of us. A cat? How creative! Don't ask me to play. I won't!

— Caissie St.Onge (@Caissie) February 6, 2013

The original game tokens were introduced in 1935, except for the Scotty dog and the wheelbarrow, both of which were introduced in 1952. The iconic tokens were conceived when the niece of Charles Darrow, Monopoly's creator, suggested he use charms from her bracelet.