Because nothing says “family game night” like rolling a pair of dice to see who gets to dissolve who in a bathtub full of acid, Breaking Bad Monopoly is now apparently a thing. Published by official Hasbro licensee USAopoly—of such must-buy board game hits as Yu-Gi-Oh Monopoly, BoJack Horseman Monopoly, It Monopoly, and many, many more—the game allows you to live out your fantasy of being a drug kingpin whose only distinguishing characteristic is his very dapper hat. (Or barrel of money. Or blown-up Teddy bear. Or little ringing bell. We’ll be honest: The tokens are probably the best part of this whole package.)
As with many of USAopoly’s adaptations of the classic board game/family argument generator, the company appears to have spent upwards of six seconds deciding how to alter Monopoly’s elements for the AMC license. Hotels are now “Superlabs,” for instance, while Chance and Community Chest have been changed to “Walter White” and “Heisenberg” cards. (Everyone knows Chance is a pathetic, middle-aged burnout, while Community Chest is the one who knocks.) Still, they did manage to get a few things right; we can’t imagine anyone arguing that Walter “Flynn” Jr. doesn’t deserve to be on the smallest denominations of bank notes, and the unintentional parallels drawn between meth manufacturers and rapacious landlords are certainly a welcome fit. And to be fair, given Walter’s aspirations to be in the “empire business,” Breaking Bad is a better fit for Monopoly, than, say, Golden Girls. (Not that the thought of seizing Rose’s beloved St. Olaf and crushing it beneath our economic boots doesn’t hold a certain appeal, too.)
Still, though: It’s incredibly difficult to visualize the person who this particular product is for. You can’t play it with kids, really, unless you want to use a lot of euphemisms like “candy,” “hit-friend,” and “picked up a box cutter and hugged his employee like a pig.” Meanwhile, it’s hard to imagine that there are any adult fans of Breaking Bad who are quite this desperate to play another game of Monopoly with whatever loose time they have left in their lives—especially when the high-action spectacle of Dragonball Z Monopoly is already right there in arm’s reach.