I’ll miss the iron.  So functional, so humble, so unprepossessing.

Last week toy company Hasbro, the owner of Monopoly, announced the results of a Facebook competition to replace one of the game’s eight board tokens.  The race car, shoe, dog, thimble, top hat, wheelbarrow and battleship survived.

The iron didn’t.

It will be replaced by a cat.

Poor ole iron!  You asked nothing, and that’s what you got in return!

Well, at least a cat’s better than the other contenders for the iron’s slot: a robot, diamond ring, helicopter, guitar, coat hanger, sneeze guard, and carpet tack.  Well, maybe those last three weren’t in the official competition, but if a thimble made the cut, why not?

Cat lovers won the day with 31% of the votes.

And I have to admit, if you’re gonna replace our beloved iron with something else, a cat feels right.  Now at least we have parity among Monopoly pets.

And it turns out this wasn’t the first time Monopoly tokens have been on the chopping block: in olden tymes, the game included a lantern, purse, cannon and rocking horse.

How a thimble beats a rocking horse or cannon is beyond me, but hey, the masses have spoken.

The iron is dead, long live the kitty!