Board Game Review: Monopoly - Disney Pixar Edition

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Lots of fun changes Pixar's fans will love

Cons: No real changes to game play

The Bottom Line: 

Themed Monopoly

Buy classic Pixar places

Lots of great touches

The Monopoly Version for Pixar Fanatics

I can't help it; when I find a version of Monopoly themed to something I love, I have to buy it.  Even if the rules are the same, it's a lot of fun if the small details are rethemed.  And that's the case with the Disney Pixar edition of Monopoly.  It's one of the better versions in my collection.

If you are familiar with the board game Monopoly, you already know how to play this version since all the rules are the same.  You still go around the board buying properties.  Once you get all the properties of a certain color, you can start improving the property, making your opponents have to pay you more rent when they land there.  The winner is the last person standing when the others have gone bankrupt.  Yes, this game is notorious for taking hours, but you can set rules to shorten things in you want.

So how does this one differ?  All the squares are themed to the first eight Pixar movies, the only ones that had been released so far when the game was released.  Each movie gets their own color monopoly.  A Bug's Life is the cheap purples.  Ratatouille, the most recent at the time, occupies the middle orange.  The Toy Story franchise gets two monopolies, yellow for Toy Story 2 and the most expensive blue for the one that started it all, Toy Story.  The four railroads?  The Incredibile, Dinoco Helicopter, Tow Mater Towing & Salvage, and R.C. (remote control car from Toy Story), of course.  And the utilities are Scream Power and Laugh Power from Monsters, Inc.

As is usually the case, the theme continues with just about everything else.  The Community Chest and Chance cards are now Bon Appetit and Piston Cup.  The rewards and penalties are the same, but it's a lot of fun seeing one of Flik's inventions work or getting a new utility belt for Buzz.  Heck, the fines can even be funny as the price of gas goes up again or you have to pay the Incredibles' dry cleaning bill.  The seven denominations of bills have different characters on them as well.  Toy Story only shows up once here, so each franchise gets to show up once.

There are six tokens, Buzz, Sulley & Boo, Lightning McQueen, Nemo, Remy, and Mr. Incredible.  Each token is a couple of inches tall (or long in the case of Nemo and Lightning).  That allows them to get some detail in them.  They aren't perfect pieces of art (the fact that they are all one color doesn't help) but they are fun.  Personally, I calls dibs on Sully & Boo.

So far, we haven't gotten anything you can't find in any other special edition of Monopoly.  My biggest disappointment is usually that traditional houses and hotels don't change.  Oh, they call them something different, but the plastic pieces look the same.  Not here.  Houses are replaced by Traffic Cones and the hotels are now Al's Toy Barn.  And the plastic pieces are actually orange traffic cones or a red barn shaped piece.  There isn't much detail on either one, but it is very fun to see them put those changes in there.

Of course, you don't really need this game if you already have Monopoly.  The rules are the same.  The prices are the same.  But who doesn't have fun playing a themed game every so often (or all the time in my case) based on what mode you are in?

Anyone who loves Pixar's first eight movies will absolutely love getting their hands on Disney Pixar edition of Monopoly.  The rules may be the same, but the changes make it seem much more fun, even if you lose.