EVERYTHING WRONG WITH JAWS MONOPOLY

This was not a board-game accident...Jaws Monopoly is mostly a hot mess

Whenever a new Jaws product is announced, we are just like you. We get super excited and hope to have something special to share with our friends, family and Jaws fans.

Jaws Monopoly should have been laughing all the way to the fake money bank, but beneath the surface it is more of a missed opportunity for fans of the Steven Spielberg shark classic from 1975.

Whoever makes the most summer dollars wins Jaws Monopoly.

Jaws Monopoly, it's just like regular Monopoly, but with a Jaws themed board and pieces you get to move round the board with.

Which means that Jaws fans will buy it by the chum bucket load.

The cover of the box has the iconic shark art by Roger Kastel from the poster, but to the left we have Chrissie and to the right the title Jaws. Above the looming shark, Monopoly.

I'll admit, it kinda looks wrong having these three familiar elements all in an order we aren't used to seeing them. For the sake of the game, it is Monopoly which is the bigger brand, so that takes centre stage. It just looks odd and as if the shark's aim is off and he has surfaced early.

How do they Jawsify Monopoly? Instead of a top hat, that's some bad hat, you get the choice of the Orca, one of Quint's barrels, Quint's machete, Alex Kintner's lilo, a shark's fin and one of Hooper's scuba tanks. I'm going Orca or yellow barrel, every time.

Some look better than others, and there is a heavy weighting towards Quint. It's a shame there is nothing that denotes Chief Brody, his car being an obvious and iconic choice.

And could we not have had a shark's head instead of a not great looking fin?

Perhaps we should have had the option of playing as the Jaws victims, a silver Chrissie's arm, estuary victims leg (with trainer), Ben Gardner's head and Pipit's stick?

Either way, the playing tokens do look great and clearly some thought has gone into them, which is sadly less than can be said for the places you can buy.

Quite reasonably, you'd expect that you could buy some of the key landmarks from the film, like Amity Hardware, Amity P. D., the Brody house, Mayor's Office, Town Hall, Amity ferry and Quint's shack.

Nope. There's some there, like the beach but the rest are oddly the shark, Brody, Quint, Hooper and the Pond and Mike. It just seems a bit of a missed opportunity, and if I'm honest a bit lazy.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to buy the moments from the film, although that could make for an interesting Monopoly The Exorcist. Buy Regan masterbating with a crucifix.

It certainly doesn't seem to have the same attention to detail as say the Jaws game by Ravensburger. That looked wonderful, but was extremely complicated. Here's our initial unboxing of that game.

There's also questionable detail when it comes to some of the images, with a cardboard fin representing Mike. It just doesn't quite fit.

And where's Sean? It seems more like but bits of the film we can sort of remember, blow the rest.

There are boats on there you can buy, so it is great you can buy the Orca, Hooper's boat and Ben Gardner's. Although I'm not quite sure how Ben's boat can be worth more than Hooper's, with or without a hole in it? That makes a lot of sense.

As mentioned in the opening, this is Monopoly with just a few Jaws elements thrown in - as they do with any of their branded versions of the game - but it does seems something of a missed trick keeping Monopoly money and not having summer dollars.

House and hotels (surely hotels could have stayed) have been renamed as boats and workshops...but are still the same green houses and red hotels as in a normal edition. So, why even bother renaming them?

Utilities, please say they have renamed them as species of shark mentioned in the film, like great white, tiger shark, mako...almost. Almost.

We get great white shark and tiger shark. But then get er whale and...crab. FFS, did anyone designing this even bother watching Jaws?

We do get some more of the film though, in the form of dialogue on the Repairs and Reward cards. For example on a Reward card you get the likes of "three tons of him." Collect M200. And that's great, obviously they have to be read out on the style they are said in the film.

But, somewhat inevitabley, with the huge care that has been taken to give us a true Jaws Monopoly experience. They only go and get a quote wrong.

We get "I think he's come back for his noon feed." Instead, of course, of noon feeding. Sigh. And again, with a "25 footer" quote card.

Jesus H Christ, let's hope that if Pipit is mentioned it isn't Tippet or Pipin winning a dog show instead.

These are small errors, but are frustrating for a film that is so famous for its quotes, and fans who are so famous for quoting it.

Each error makes it feel less Jaws though, and more Flaws. Less great white and more not bad but must try harder white, then.

Being Jaws, and a limited edition game, it was still an essential purchase as a Jaws fan, but the lack of care has kind of taken the shine off that initial euphoria, which is going to bug me each and every time I play it.

Perhaps this lack of attention to detail to the film they are doing a product of is a one off, so maybe the likes of Monopoly The Godfather, Monopoly Back to the Future, Monopoly Ghostbusters and Monopoly Top Gun take more care.

Words by Dean Newman

If you would like to write for The Daily Jaws, please visit our ‘work with us’ page

For all the latest Jaws, shark and shark movie news, follow The Daily Jaws on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.