Bricks and slaughter

If you were travelling on the London Underground this summer, you might have noticed a prominent advertising campaign promising a once-in-a-lifetime escape from commuter-land. “Quit the Rat Race, Become a Property Millionaire,” screamed a series of 10ft-high posters. They sat alongside advertisements for foreign travel, video games, Jack Daniel’s whiskey - all products tempting you away from rush-hour and the clammy monotony of a 9-to-5 working life. It was not a subtle message, and its website, freedom2fortune.com, hammered home what must be the two strongest yearnings of the average wage slave: freedom and fortune.

Henry Tricks, FT - 24th September 2007

Almost 70 years ago, Londoners penned into the fast-growing commuter belt that stretched from Dagenham in the east to Rayners Lane in the west were offered a similar escapist fantasy, also centred on property. The board game Monopoly, invented in depression-era America, was designed to while away hours of penury and pre-television monotony by encouraging speculation and greed. Tim Moore, author of Do Not Pass Go, a celebration of Monopoly published last year, describes it as “a game that filled all those unemployed hours, and did it by pressing a satisfying wedge of fantasy dollars into your hand with the opportunity to develop this into a barely manageable mountain of cash through ruthlessness and wily investment”. It was, he says, an ideal way to forget the fallout of the 1929 stock market crash - full article