FINALLY: Rolling Stones add Board Game to their Merchandise.

The Thimble is Now a Full-Sized Shot Glass.

It’s family game night, and the kids are far more engaged in kicking butt at Life than poor ol’ too-cool-for-school Dad, so fed up with being pulled further and further away from his dreams of being a rock star who is also a photographer for Playboy. One more night of dragged through the mire of this wretched family life, and he’s going to snap! If only there was a way to incorporate true Rock and Roll Excess into the dull world of family board games! Oh, well, too bad there isn’t. Guess you’ll play one more round with Junior before hitting the bar on the way home to your second family.

Hold up, Dad! Parker Brothers is proud to announce that they’ve found a way to mix your love of classic rock — the music and the lifestyle — with your obligations to family! It’s time for Rolling Stones Monopoly!

More details in what may already be my snarkiest post yet after the jump.

Pictured Above: A Band's Sense of Taste.

As the world’s best selling board game is about to celebrate 75 years of popularity, Parker Brothers is set to release yet another variation on their storied franchise by letting the Rolling Stones cover the board layout in their own mythology and simulacra. For example, the original play pieces (the choice of which usually begins a night of many Monopoly-related family brawls and feuds) have been altered to the iconic Lips logo, a wild horse, and a drum kit.

Likewise, properties have been altered from New York Ave. and Park Place to instead reflect one of the Stones’ many, many, many albums. Where players usually skip over the less expensive, much-maligned early properties at Mediterranean Ave. and Baltic Ave., you can now skip over the much-maligned and clearly inferior albums Sticky Fingers and Beggar’s Banquet (wait. . . what?!), leading up to the coveted deep blue properties A Bigger Bang and Shine a Light (okay, somebody screwed up here . . .).

The Community Chest and Chance cards have been replaced by Licks and Lyrics, while the Railroads are now named to recall the Stones’ more famous tours. No word on the Utilities board, or just how uncool it will be to be sent to jail (or, exiled, as it might be?), but I think we can assume that there is no Free Parking in Rolling Stones Monopoly.

All snark aside, it’s no surprise that such a game is coming out — after all, there’s plenty of other bands and intellectual properties that have jumped on the bandwagon, from the Beatles, to the Simpsons, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. — but if the above pictures are true to what the game will actually look like, it is a surprise that they’ve chosen to use more recent photos of the band in their advanced age. It’d be easy to immediately compare this to the Beatles’ own Monopoly layout design, but the Beatles quit being the Beatles after 1969, so there’s very little point in using photos taken during the Anthology release. Still, the Stones have seen better days physically, and it would seem that the same vanity that keeps them going on tour every year would also motivate them to tell Parker Brothers to strictly use images from the 60’s and 70’s.

Sweet! I managed to write this without resorting to a joke about “Tumbling Dice!” Even if I did try to make that lame joke about being ‘exiled,’ I’m proud of this.