Frankston version of board game Monopoly launches

A new edition of the iconic board game will immortalise Melbourne’s bayside suburb of Frankston — but not everyone is happy about who gets what square when the top hat lands.

A top real estate agent fears a Frankston version of the classic board game Monopoly might misrepresent the bayside city.

Monopoly: Frankston Edition, under license from global toy giant Hasbro, will be officially released on Wednesday.

The board game will feature Frankston equivalents of the classic London edition, which included iconic addresses like the posh Mayfair and Park Lane, and hotspots Regent St, Bond St, and Oxford St.

The Frankston version of Monopoly board game. Picture: Supplied

But Adrian Foster, of fosterfroling real estate, says some of the matches are misguided.

For example, Olivers Hill and Frankston Beach are the Mayfair and Park Lane the equivalents in the game’s Franga version.

And the low rent addresses, Old Kent Rd and Whitechapel Rd in the London version, are named as Ballam Park and Beauty Park in the Frankston edition.

Frankston Beach (right) stands in for London's iconic Mayfair district.

“No!” Mr Foster protested loudly. “Beauty Park is one of the prestigious places in Frankston. I’ve just put a ‘sold’ sticker on a property in Beauty Park for $1.4m — and it’s a townhouse.”

He said Frankston’s multi-millionaire strip, Gould St, should have been the Mayfair match.

“It’s the ultimate street in Frankston. There are not many places on Port Phillip Bay, or Victoria, where you get absolute beach frontage, and Gould St is it.”

For the uninitiated, the colours and locations on the London Monopoly board go from lower rent streets Old Kent Rd and Whitechapel Rd (brown), to Fleet St and Trafalgar Square (red), to Leicester Sqaure and Piccadilly (yellow) to up-market Park Lane and Mayfair (dark blue).

The lake at Frankston’s Beauty Park. Picture: Jason Sammon

In the Frankston version, the Fleet St and Trafalgar Square matches are Wells St Precicnt and Bayside Shopping Centre, and Leicester Square and Piccadilly are the Iron Rover and Fratelli.

Nathan Conroy, the seaside city’s mayor said: “Frankston is now one of only a small handful of destinations in Australia to have the privilege of being immortalised and celebrated with its own special edition board game. We’ve always been firmly on the map, but now we’re well and truly on the board.”

But Mr Foster said the board game’s maker should have consulted locals for better inside knowledge.

“It seems to me they’ve missed an opportunity to create something genuine and realistic that gets to the heart of Frankston,” Mr Foster said. “It’s like they’ve thrown a dart at a dart board to get the locations.”

He added: “Frankston is world unto itself. You’ve got mega-rich, mega-poor, industrial zones, universities, hospitals, town centres, beach, and parks. It’s easy to make a board game about Frankston, You could make a friggin’ miniseries, too, if you wanted.”