Hasbro Celebrates 67 Years Of Clue By Adding A Female Scientist Character

Image courtesy of Hasbro

The board game Clue has been with us for a long time. America’s most accessible and enduring Family Fun Night whodunit first hit the market back in 1949, and since that time it has gotten a few facelifts, but the premise has remained the same.

(But let us never forget that weird period in the aughts when Hasbro tried to capitalize on the celebutante craze ushered in by figures like Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton and a beta-testing version of Kim Kardashian by adding a spa and guest house to the board and swapping out classic characters in favor of a tabloid-ready actress, a billionaire video game designer and a pro football player, among others. That version of the game, called Clue: Discover the Secrets, was introduced in 2008 but pulled from the market a few years later.)

So, after 67 years, now seems like a good time to shake the game up a bit and add some players that don’t look 100 percent like the cast of the 1985 movie based on the game.

Hasbro has announced that the beloved Mrs. White, played flawlessly on screen by Madeline Khan in the film, will be replaced by Dr. Orchid, “a biologist with a PhD in plant toxicology, privately schooled in Switzerland until her expulsion following a near-fatal daffodil poisoning incident,” according to Hasbro. That’s right. Stuffy old Clue will be getting a lady scientist in the Tudor Mansion. Some are speculating that Dr. Orchid might also be of Asian descent, but so far the only official comment from the game maker is about her vocation.

An interesting note about Orchid’s origin is that she was “home-schooled by the very woman she would go on to replace, the late housekeeper, Mrs. White." Which, to any thinking person, should mean that she is suspect number one in Mrs. White’s disappearance. So, will finding the buried body of Mrs. White now be a part of the game’s revised storyline? Only time and family infighting around the dinner table will tell.

Dream big, all you little girls aspiring to careers in biology and toxicology!