Candy Land

The game was designed in the 1940's by Eleanor Abbott, while she was recovering from polio in San Diego, California. The game was bought by Milton Bradley Company (now owned by Hasbro) and first published in 1949. Hasbro produces several versions of the game and treats it as a brand.

At least four different versions of the Candy Land board game were made. The first version, from 1949, and other early versions had only locations (Molasses Swamp, Gumdrop Mountains, etc.) and no characters. The next version showed a track layout different from the more modern versions. The next revision, from the 1980s and 1990s, had the characters such as Mr. Mint and Gramma Nutt, has the modern track layout, and ended with a purple square. The rules specified that any card that would cause one to advance past the purple square wins the game, but many people play in such a way that the winner must land exactly on it. In the most modern version, there was a rainbow-striped square at the end to make the official rule visually explicit.

The rules for the modern game also specify that a character card resulting in a backward move can be ignored, resulting in a much shorter game if desired. Some of the characters are renamed in the modern version - Queen Frostine is Princess Frostine, for example. Finally, the classic Molasses Swamp is changed to Chocolate Swamp, presumably because the children of 2002 are more familiar with chocolate than molasses.

There is no optimal strategy, or indeed any decision making, involved in CandyLand. The moves are wholly determined by the cards, which are drawn in order. The only random chance element comes from each shuffling of the deck. Every time the deck is shuffled, one of three outcome is pre-determined - one of the two players wins, or the deck will need to be shuffled again after it is used.