Candy Land, or Candyland is a simple racing board game. It has become a cultural icon in the United States, where it is among the first board games played by children because it requires no ability to read and only minimal counting skills.
The world’s most crooked street got a makeover to honor the 60th anniversary of a classic board game Candyland for one day only. About 20 workers started at 4am “sugarcoating” Lombard Street setting up purple, yellow, blue, orange, green and red blocks along the 1/4 mile path creating a larger-than-life version of the game including recreations of “Candy Cane Forest” and “Gum Drop Mountain.”
The street will be closed to traffic as children from the University of California, San Francisco Children's Hospital participate in the game as colored game pieces and interact with life-sized game characters, according to organizers.
The event will end with a 60th birthday celebration and cake.
Players take turns removing the top card from a stack, most of which show one of six colors, and then moving their marker ahead to the next space of that color. Some cards have two marks of a color, in which case the player moves his or her marker ahead to the second-next space of that color. The deck also contains one card for each named location, and drawing such a card moves a player directly to that location's space on the board. This move can be either forward or backward in the classic game; backward moves can be ignored for younger players in the 2004 version of the game.
Before the 2004 version of the game, there were three colored spaces marked with a dot. A player who lands on such a space is stuck (all cards are ignored) until a card is drawn of the same color as the square. In the 2004 version, dot spaces were replaced with licorice spaces that prompt the player landing on it to simply lose his or her next turn.
The game is won by landing on or passing the final square; the official rules specify that any card that would cause the player to advance past the last square wins the game, but many play so that one must land exactly on the last square to win. The 2004 version of the game changed the last space to a rainbow space, meaning it applies to any color drawn by a player, thus clarifying any remaining controversy about how one exactly wins the game.
The classic game takes longer to complete than one might expect, because the location cards can send players backwards. Also, the dot spaces could force players to exhaust several turns without moving.
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. For example, they market Candy Land puzzles, a travel version, a PC game, and a handheld electronic version.
A December, 2005 article in Forbes magazine analyzed the most popular American toys by decade, with help from the Toy Industry Association. Candy Land led the list for the 1940-1949 decade.
Giant Candyland on Lombard Street in San Francisco
The world’s most crooked street got a makeover to honor the 60th anniversary of a classic board game Candyland for one day only. About 20 workers started at 4am “sugarcoating” Lombard Street setting up purple, yellow, blue, orange, green and red blocks along the 1/4 mile path creating a larger-than-life version of the game including recreations of “Candy Cane Forest” and “Gum Drop Mountain.”
The street will be closed to traffic as children from the University of California, San Francisco Children's Hospital participate in the game as colored game pieces and interact with life-sized game characters, according to organizers.
The event will end with a 60th birthday celebration and cake.
Game play
The race is straightforward, woven around a simple story line about finding the lost king of Candy Land. The board consists of a winding, linear track made of 134 spaces, most of which are red, green, blue, yellow, orange or violet. The remaining few spaces are named locations such as Candy Cane Forest and Gum Drop Mountain, or characters like Queen Frostine and Gramma Nutt.Players take turns removing the top card from a stack, most of which show one of six colors, and then moving their marker ahead to the next space of that color. Some cards have two marks of a color, in which case the player moves his or her marker ahead to the second-next space of that color. The deck also contains one card for each named location, and drawing such a card moves a player directly to that location's space on the board. This move can be either forward or backward in the classic game; backward moves can be ignored for younger players in the 2004 version of the game.
Before the 2004 version of the game, there were three colored spaces marked with a dot. A player who lands on such a space is stuck (all cards are ignored) until a card is drawn of the same color as the square. In the 2004 version, dot spaces were replaced with licorice spaces that prompt the player landing on it to simply lose his or her next turn.
The game is won by landing on or passing the final square; the official rules specify that any card that would cause the player to advance past the last square wins the game, but many play so that one must land exactly on the last square to win. The 2004 version of the game changed the last space to a rainbow space, meaning it applies to any color drawn by a player, thus clarifying any remaining controversy about how one exactly wins the game.
The classic game takes longer to complete than one might expect, because the location cards can send players backwards. Also, the dot spaces could force players to exhaust several turns without moving.
History of Candy Land
The game was designed in the 1940s 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. For example, they market Candy Land puzzles, a travel version, a PC game, and a handheld electronic version.
A December, 2005 article in Forbes magazine analyzed the most popular American toys by decade, with help from the Toy Industry Association. Candy Land led the list for the 1940-1949 decade.