The name of Donald Trump immediately brings to mind a lot of mental situations, and not all of them are precisely positive, from the Capitol Assault to Jimmy Fallon messing up his hair (in a strange but somehow effective political maneuver). However, some time ago, the business shark, cameo in ‘Home Alone 2’ and star of ‘The Apprentice’ tried to make a name for himself, from the top of his literal glass tower, in a board game.
A trumpazo was given
It wasn’t the first time that Trump put his name on something that had nothing to do with him: in the United States, they enjoyed his steaks (figuratively speaking: no one bought them) and his vodka, which, for now, is only being consumed in Israel. So, why not a board game? Legend has it that Jeffrey Beslow, a board game designer known for creating games based on absurd licenses like Donkey Kong or ‘Jaws’, had a meeting with him to propose ‘Trump: the game’ in 1988.
And we all know the former American president: few things he likes more than himself. So, without hesitation, he approved the project, which was developed with MB. Trump’s idea was to create a realistic Monopoly game, where the minimum amount to play would be ten million dollars. The manual ended up being so absurdly complex to explain something very simple that it took up 15 pages.
They released two million units to stores and barely sold 800,000 in total, of which the millionaire promised to donate 60% of the profits to charity (without the creators knowing anything). Later, in court, he had no way to prove that his promise was fulfilled. The promotional campaign was so intense that even Bob Stupak, director of a casino in Las Vegas, challenged Trump to a game of his own but with a million dollars at stake. Trump never accepted, not even when the bet became 250,000 dollars that Stupak himself would donate to the NGO of the winner’s choice.
It’s not surprising: in the ad, the big star only said two sentences (“My new game is Trump: the game” and “I think you’ll like it”) and practically doomed it to failure. Interestingly, in 2004, it was released again after the success of ‘The apprentice’ but in a much more simplified way, with a slogan announcing that you needed brains to win millions, but Trump to win billions. It was not a success either.
Ah, the game with Bob Stupak wouldn’t have gone anywhere: neither of the two millionaires had read the rules of the game because then they would have discovered that the minimum number of players is… three.
