The Babble Review: Monopoly G.I. Joe Collector’s Edition

Yo Joe! While I’ll spare a review of the new live-action G.I. Joe flick here (short story: save your money), the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon remains a classic — a fact clearly not lost on USAOpoly, the makers of the new Monopoly G.I. Joe Collector’s Edition board game. With a playing board straight out of the animated series and a few twists that help bring the battle to the space formerly known as Boardwalk, the game takes you from G.I. Joe Headquarters to the sinister Cobra Island in a quest to have it all. I recently had the chance to play the game with my kids, and here’s our experience in a nutshell.

What’s New: As you might expect, the pewter tokens have changed to fit the theme: Players can choose from Cobra Commander’s battle mask, Duke’s dog tags, Snake Eyes’ wolf Timber, the U.S.S. Flagg aircraft carrier, the Dreadnoks’ four-wheeled Thunder Machine, and a coiled Cobra Snake. All the money is G.I. Joe-branded (the original dollar amounts haven’t changed), and the Chance and Community Chest cards (renamed Yo Joe! and Cobra here) are cleverly designed to look like those fact files you may remember from the backs of G.I. Joe action figures. Of course, it’s the board itself that gets the biggest makeover, with properties ranging from the Cobra hangout The Snake Club (the $60 space) all the way up to G.I. Joe Headquarters (the $400 final space). Jail, Just Visiting and Go are all unchanged, as are the house and hotel pieces that’ve been re-branded as howitzers and defense systems — a mild bummer, as it could’ve been cool to have actual howitzer- and defense-system shapes instead.

What’s Not: Gameplay is the same as it ever was (a good thing), with one exception: New G.I. Joe Custom rules give you the option to build massive defense systems when you gather all pieces of a certain color — though the action is short-lived, you do get the option to zap or destabilize fellow players for a turn, which makes for a fun twist on the old rules.

Is It Worth It? I’m a little biased here — all three of my kids are Monopoly nuts (we own five different editions of the game and play them all regularly) as well as G.I. Joe fans. If your family fits either of those criteria, then the answer is a resounding yes — the new rules alone add long-term playability to the game, and there’s enough respect paid to the original game that even Monopoly purists will have fun.

$15.98 (regularly $34.95) from Amazon.