The company examined the layout, which Abbott had drawn on butcher paper, and decided to publish it in Before Candy Land was released, Milton Bradley was still primarily known as a maker of school supplies.
Their other big game acquisition, Clue , had just been released, but it had yet to fully take off. Candy Land distinguished itself because, unlike most board games, kids could play it by themselves—an important feature in a country still concerned with the spread of polio. As parents kept their children indoors, distractions like Candy Land became a way to keep them occupied. For decades, an anonymous boy and girl were the antagonists of Candy Land.
In , presumably with some consternation, Hasbro discovered that an adult website had registered the phrase "candy land" for its URL. In one of the first major domain name disputes, Hasbro argued that the website diluted the value of the board game.
An injunction was granted in the U. District Court of Washington. The polio epidemic of the first half of the 20th century created panic in the public and the hardships of caring for someone with the disease were only made worse by the fact that many cases were presenting in children. The poliomyelitis virus polio for short does not only affect children, but many adults who have already been exposed with no paralysis as children may not have ever known they had it.
The hidden immunity of the days before blood tests and modern medical care made it seem like the virus somehow targeted children. When infected with polio, victims can have abortive polio wherein the the virus ceases to act beyond a certain point.
Or, more tragically, patients with paralytic polio would lose muscle function in one or both legs on either a temporary or permanent basis. While many victims did recover the use of their legs, some did not. In other patients, the muscles of the lungs were affected, requiring the use of an iron lung to breathe — sometimes for years on end.
In all of the the above cases, victims needed prolonged and specialized medical care. Then as now, viruses cannot be cured and the medications they could give were limited. But, through physical therapy patients could learn to live with paralysis or learn to walk again after a period of inactivity. Because the care needed was lengthy and intensive polio wards were set up in many cities. The result was that inmates of the wards did not always have visitors on a daily basis. Children stuck in the hospital, with limited visits from family, would have been awfully bored.
Details about her life outside this interaction are scant. Among the few facts researchers have unearthed about her: A phone book containing her number exists in the collections of the San Diego Historical Society the only trace of her in its archives.
And in , when she was in her late 30s, she herself contracted the disease. Abbott recuperated in the polio ward of a San Diego hospital, spending her convalescence primarily among children. Imagine what it must have been like to share an entire hospital ward with children struggling against polio, day after day, as an adult. Kids are poorly equipped to cope with boredom and separation from their loved ones under normal circumstances. But it would be even more unbearable for a child confined to a bed or an iron lung.
That was the context in which Abbott made her recovery. Read: What America looked like: Polio children paralyzed in iron lungs. Seeing children suffer around her, Abbott set out to concoct some escapist entertainment for her young wardmates, a game that left behind the strictures of the hospital ward for an adventure that spoke to their wants: the desire to move freely in the pursuit of delights, an easy privilege polio had stolen from them.
The board game gathers all your children in one place, occupying their time and attention. But the themes of Candy Land tell a different story. In , when he was almost 70 years old, the polio survivor Marshall Barr recalled how only brief escapes from the iron lung were possible. As the historian Daniel J. Wilson explains , the wards provided little to occupy their young occupants.
Read: The invasion of German board games. It was a tall order. Images of polio wards depict a geometry even more rigid and sterile than that of typical hospital settings: row upon row of treatment beds and iron lungs.
Candy Land offered a soothing contrast. Even tracing it with your eyes is stimulating—an especially welcome feature if illness has rendered them the most mobile part of your body. In theme and execution, the game functions as a mobility fantasy.
It simulates a leisurely stroll instead of the studied rigor of therapeutic exercise. Every card drawn either compels you forward or whisks you some distance across the board. Each turn promises either the pleasure of unencumbered travel or the thrill of unexpected flight.
The game counters the culture of restriction imposed by both the polio scare and the disease itself. Read: How board games conquered cafes.
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