Feb 3, 2015 3 min read

As brilliant marketing campaigns go, you have to hand it to Hasbro. To celebrate the 80th anniversary of its popular board game Monopoly, the toymaker shipped 30,000 specially branded units to France. Business as usual so far, correct? But here’s where the brilliance comes in: Eighty of the games contain real cash, to the tune of €20,580 ($23,348). Cabbage. Moola. Simoleons.

Younger readers might be familiar with the term “simoleons” from the video game “The Sims;” if not, they need only watch just about any episode of The Three Stooges to hear it used in its proper context. Theories have it that the term was coined in New Orleans by combining a slang term for money (simon) with the last part of the emperor Napoleon’s surname. Anything really can happen during Mardi Gras.

In addition to the cash cow boxes, Hasbro put out 10 sets containing €300 in twenties and fifties, and a single €100; 69 sets contain €150 in tens and twenties. Why include real money? Well, a Hasbro representative said, “We wanted to do something unique. When we asked our French customers, they told us they wanted to find real money in their Monopoly boxes.”

All we had to do was ask? Had I known that, I’d have been on the phone to Cracker Jack decades ago.

Since Parker Brothers first mass-marketed the game in 1935, Monopoly has appeared in more than 2,000 versions, including “The Simpsons,” “A Christmas Story,” “Star Wars” and even “Pittsburghopoly” (which, curiously, does not include streets with potholes).

Another history tidbit: During World War II, the British intelligence service MI9 developed a special kit for British prisoners of war in Germany. Disguised as a regular board game – permitted to prisoners under the Geneva Convention – MI9’s version included escape tools. Compasses and metal files were disguised as playing pieces; French, German and Italian bank notes were hidden under the regular Monopoly bills; and maps printed on silk were secreted in the board itself. And, of course, the game included the never-more-aptly named “Get Out of Jail Free” card. None of these clandestine versions exists today because, in order not to alert Nazis to the ruse, prisoners were instructed to destroy the games after they had taken out their escape kit elements. But had one survived, think what it would bring on eBay.

Hasbro may claim it was merely catering to consumer demand, but in reality what the company has done with the new commemorative Monopoly boxes is create heavy demand. Willy Wonka used the same trick by putting a golden ticket in his candy bars to hype sales of his chocolate. But the four winners of that contest received merely a tour of the Wonka factory. No matter how you slice it, €20,580 is a lot of bread.

The 80 special sets are distributed among classic, junior, electronic and vintage editions of the games but weigh the same as their regular counterparts. The only telltale sign that a box has legal tender is that it is slightly thicker.

Now, the French are Jerry Lewis crazy for Monopoly under normal circumstances, buying half a million regular sets each year. But – ooh, la la! – imagine the run on Parisian stores today as baguette bakers, accordion players and mimes abandon their trades to descend on retail outlets in search of hidden treasure.

Envision Black Friday at Walmart, but with everyone wearing berets.