The Anti Game

To most people, Park Place, Marvin Gardens and Baltic Avenue are just spaces on the Monopoly board--unlucky ones, to be sure, if occupied by money-gobbling hotels placed there by an opponent. But to Economist Ralph Anspach, those properties are part of a game that subtly encourages young minds to accept the evils of monopolization. "Some kids grow up not knowing that monopolies are illegal," he complains. In counterattack, Anspach and his 14-year-old son Mark have created Anti-Monopoly, a new, sophisticated board game that recently went on sale in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Players of Anti-Monopoly must be as canny and aggressive as the property tycoons in Monopoly. As "trustbusting attorneys," they move around a board populated by such corporate giants as Egson Oil, Nazareth Steel, Major Electric, and ITD I, II and III. Their aim: slapping paper indictments on offending companies. Now and then, the brash young barristers win trustbusting bonuses and collect supervisory payments from other attorneys who happen to land on corporations already indicted. So that no unlucky player need sit in the corner while others wheel and deal, Anti-Monopoly ends when the first player runs out of ready cash.

In its first week on the counters, Anti-Monopoly sold more than 2,000 copies at $8.75 each. After 15,000 sets are purchased, Anspach will channel 5% of all profits into a special legal aid fund that he has set up for small companies victimized by conglomerates. If the fund produces the desired effect, executives of large, errant corporations may some day be forced to obey a command on the Anti-Monopoly board: "Go to court. The judge has called an extra session." Still, that is preferable to Monopoly's "Go directly to jail."

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