Hope, and Ice Cream, Floats.

Really interesting article on The Atlantic site about the development of the game Candy Land (hat tip to Instapundit for the link). I knew the game was old when I was a child, because it had a kind of old-time look and sensibility. For one thing, very few games in my day were making a direct appeal to the visceral love children have for candy. That might make them want to eat some! They'll rot their teeth and get fat! Meanwhile, candy was a major sponsor of children's TV.

To give you the gist of the story, Candy Land was developed by a teacher who contracted polio in her thirties and was confined to the polio ward with a bunch of children, the most common victims of the disease. She had the brilliant idea to give the kids a pastime that would appeal on many levels, not just with the joy of candy, but also the action of a quest, of color and adventure, of quick movement and flight, of all the lovely things a sterile and scary hospital ward is not full of.

Candy Land was introduced in 1949 and never gone out of print. It was rightly inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, in 2005. It's been released as a DVD game and in Disney Princess and My Little Pony and Retro editions. I have a Candy Land ornament on my Christmas tree that I picked up somewhere along the way (I think during a stint on a family magazine). Many people remember it as the first board game they ever played.

Not me. I don't remember playing it until I was past the age recommended, for a laugh. We didn't want for games or toys in my childhood home, but we never had that one. Chutes and Ladders, either. Don't know why. My parents liked games. They preferred games that weren't entirely predetermined by the shuffle of the cards, the way Candy Land is -- there's no strategy or choices to make, not even the luck of the spin. I guess if you could ask for a hit, like in Blackjack, they would have been more interested. I didn't miss it, anyway; Peppermint Stick Forest and Gum Drop Mountains would have had limited appeal to me.

If they'd released a game called Beer Land when I was in college, I would have taken notice. Stroll through Ale Alley! Climb the Hops Heights of the Malt Mountains! Avoid the Bed Spinner! There are a number of beer-related games listed on the irreplaceable Board Game Geek site, but none that I saw combined the adventure of a magical journey with getting faced. Oh, well; those days are past anyhow.

But today we're focused on the kids, and we want to salute Eleanor Abbott, the creator of Candy Land. Anyone's who's ever been a bored child, or had to entertain one, can thank her for thinking of them. Being able to think like a little kid, to see what a child in a sad situation could really use, would really enjoy, and might even give them a glimpse of hope, gets a lot of credit in my book.