Ages 3 and Up
April 26, 2013 1:44 PM   Subscribe



 
I am actually less worried about the sexing-up as I am that Queen Frostine's eyes are tracking really poorly. It's like she has suffered serious head trauma or had a stroke or something. At any rate, I hope Candyland has a reliable hospital system.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:54 PM on April 26, 2013 [8 favorites]


Wow, I never noticed that. Then again, I never get a chance to play the damn thing because our eldest is fairly careless about putting away... anything, and our youngest takes great glee in mixing up board game pieces with Lego, toy cars, severed Ultraman torsos, bits of lint and string, socks... Basically I have to hide board games and card decks so they stay all together, but that means we never play the damn things.
posted by KokuRyu at 1:55 PM on April 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


And yet they left Grandma Nut more or less alone?! How come the plump older lady isn't entitled to teh sexay?
posted by phunniemee at 1:55 PM on April 26, 2013


There are interim Candylands. One at least, because the one we had had the same kids as 2010, more or less, but Queen Frostine and lollipop girl were not as bedazzled. I would have bought it in about 2005.

Regardless, however, I have never hated playing a game more than I have hated that one. I regretted buying it for my kid almost immediately. She, of course, adored it.
posted by looli at 1:58 PM on April 26, 2013 [3 favorites]


Here it is. So it wasn't a straight leap from 1983 to 2010, there was a gradual transformation.

Actually and I just remembered looking at that image, that I eventually threw away the gingerbread and gumdrop cards so that the game would be less interminable. And then just straight up took to stacking the deck so the first card my kid picked was the ice cream that takes you to 9/10 of the way through the game. SUCH A HORRIBLE GAME. I was so happy when she got into Uno at 4.
posted by looli at 2:01 PM on April 26, 2013 [13 favorites]


The thing frightens me most about Bratz and thiS by extension is not the sexiness but the noselessness. But the girl on the Utz label survived it, so I could be wrong.
posted by jonmc at 2:04 PM on April 26, 2013 [4 favorites]


There should be an ad showing Bratz eating Utz chips and drinking Schlitz. It's be an onomontopoeic good time.
posted by jonmc at 2:05 PM on April 26, 2013 [9 favorites]


And yet they left Grandma Nut more or less alone?! How come the plump older lady isn't entitled to teh sexay?

I am so so sorry to have to inform you that Grandma Nut has been vajazzled in the Brazzers edition of the game :(
posted by Foci for Analysis at 2:06 PM on April 26, 2013 [3 favorites]


There's a scene from the movie Thirteen where the girl who has "grown up too fast" has her edgy clothes on and she meets her friend who is the same age by a tree. Her friend stands beside her in a green sweatshirt, with a reindeer face and a button nose sewn on to the front. It may have had ribbons.

The juxtaposition was striking, I think about it all the time.

It's sad in a way, all of this. But the earlier kids become older, the more profit there is as the marketplace grows to accommodate all those needs unfulfilled.
posted by four panels at 2:07 PM on April 26, 2013 [3 favorites]


The last time I played Candyland it was with my young cousin, who would cheat like mad. At first I made her play it right, but eventually I just let her cheat because then the game would be over faster.

Of course, if you do play by the rules, then the entire game is encoded in the deck before you even start and nothing you do actually matters, which I'm sure is a metaphor for something.
posted by ckape at 2:12 PM on April 26, 2013 [11 favorites]


Christ, graphic design fucking sucks these days.

I'm surprised Operation hasn't been given the histrionic obesity epidemic treatment and reworked with abs.
posted by sonascope at 2:13 PM on April 26, 2013 [6 favorites]


Candyland was how I learned at a very young age that stacking the deck was a winning strategy.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 2:14 PM on April 26, 2013 [3 favorites]


Candyland was how I learned at a very young age that stacking the deck was a winning strategy.

Yeah, Candyland was my gateway drug to "siiiiiigh, well, I guess--if no one else wants to do it--I guess I'll be the banker."
posted by phunniemee at 2:23 PM on April 26, 2013 [6 favorites]


Christ, graphic design fucking sucks these days.

Much like anything else, board games at the store are either expensive ($40 in Canada) or cheap ($<10) with nothing much interesting in the middle, and the the graphic design for the cheap stuff is... cheap.
posted by KokuRyu at 2:25 PM on April 26, 2013


My daughter recently got our copy of 'Candyland' out of the game closet when a friend came over and they were looking for something to play.

They set it up, played for about two minutes, and then I heard her say "This is terrible!"

They entered the living room, and we had a brief conversation:

Daughter: That game really sucks
Me: Yeah, it really does
D: But you played it with me all the time when I was really little
M: Yeah, I did
Friend: Your dad must really love you, because that's the worst game EVER.

On topic; yeah, that's all a bit creepy. But they have links to the beaded/macrame version, and a few others...it really does seem like Hasbro is trying to keep it current, style-wise.

It still sucks though.
posted by das_2099 at 2:27 PM on April 26, 2013 [5 favorites]


Christ, graphic design fucking sucks these days.

Yes. Yes it does. Perhaps a palliative?
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:41 PM on April 26, 2013 [9 favorites]


I used to love reading Alfred Hitchcock books as a kid - they had great covers, and the stories were awesome. This was perhaps my favourite as a kid, because of the story Slime.
posted by KokuRyu at 2:53 PM on April 26, 2013


I just checked, and Candyland is currently ranked #8787 out of 8791 on Board Game Geek. The only games ranked worse are War, Bingo, Snakes and Ladders, and Tic-Tac-Toe.
posted by ckape at 2:54 PM on April 26, 2013 [8 favorites]


Drunk Candyland.
posted by Artw at 3:05 PM on April 26, 2013


When I was reading about the studies mentioned at the end of the article, I was reminded of the fourth grader I tutored last year who would only choose a book if the main character on the cover was pretty. I was so beyond frustrated by this because the material in the books was way below her level and didn't leave us with much to discuss. My biggest accomplishment was reading a book with her that had a boring cover but featured a multidimensional character that she could actually relate to.
posted by themoonfromthesea at 3:17 PM on April 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


It really makes me nuts when people talk about Candyland as an awful, dumb, or boring game. If that is what you think of Candyland you are not its intended player. Candyland is a beginner's game. It is a game for people whose previous game experience includes "where's my foot now?" and "sock on the dog." It teaches you to pick a color/player and stick with it. It teaches you to take turns. It teaches you that sometimes luck is involved and you can lose even if you're winning, or come from behind to first place by a lucky draw. And all that goes together to teach you how to win and lose gracefully (assuming your parent allows you occasionally to lose). These are all crucial skills for playing games, and if you're any type of game player, chances are you learned them playing either Candyland or tic tac toe or checkers or some other very basic, simple game. Candyland is the equivalent of training wheels on a bike or fluoride-free toothpaste: you don't really need it, it serves no purpose on its own - but helps you learn the things you need to learn in a way that doesn't put you off the whole thing on the first try.

Having said all that, I clicked through this expecting to be disgusted by wasp waists and boobage, but the truth is, I mostly felt 'meh.' Candyland has always been known for freakish-looking people that are a little scary in the same way as the dolls and walking fruit from The Little Engine That Could (okay maybe that's just me) - cutesy in a way that grownups think kids can relate to, but that actually give the heebie jeebies if you spend any time looking at them.

I have to go wash my brain now. I hated those red-cheeked apples.
posted by Mchelly at 3:42 PM on April 26, 2013 [40 favorites]


I'd never even heard of Candyland until a few years ago and the internets... it's like one of those American things that never really made it over here to the UK like twinkies and roller derby, but even more under the radar because I'd never even heard of it (and like roller derby I'm still not entirely sure it actually exists)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:43 PM on April 26, 2013


fearfulsymmetry, from here in America I feel the same way about "Chutes and Ladders" and cricket. I'm also trying to figure exactly what the heck is going on when characters in Waugh novels play "Happy Families".
posted by benito.strauss at 3:46 PM on April 26, 2013


Here it is.

Wait, they had a phase where they renamed her "Princess Frostine"? Talk about missing the point.

For some reason my kids wanted to play this game long after they were too old for it to be fun. So we made a version where we dealt hands of five cards and played Go Fish with them. "Do you have any blue?" Then you'd hand over your blue cards and if the person then had 5 blue cards, she could move forward five blue spaces. The game went much faster that way.
posted by straight at 3:53 PM on April 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


What about Cribbage? Man, that game is boring. We used to play that game all the time in the 3rd grade for some reason.
posted by pravit at 3:54 PM on April 26, 2013


I'm also trying to figure exactly what the heck is going on when characters in Waugh novels play "Happy Families".

Do you have Mr Bun, the Baker?

(The last time I can remember playing Happy Families was in Primary School when you were allowed to take in games on the last day of term)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:02 PM on April 26, 2013


To me, the big shock when I saw a modern Candyland set for the first time was that it had characters at all. The Candyland I remember is the 1978 one, where the various districts hadn't grown mascots yet. I could only figure that it was a marketing move -- that someone at Hasbro had realized that their ability to exploit the candyland IP was hampered by its lack of identifiable characters that they could exploit in cartoons and costumes and so forth.
posted by baf at 4:16 PM on April 26, 2013 [3 favorites]


What about Cribbage? Man, that game is boring.

I will fight you.
posted by BrashTech at 5:04 PM on April 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


Yeah, my reaction was similar to Mchelly's: "meh." I dislike Bratz dolls and have visceral uncomfortable reactions to tons of stuff I see walking past the girls' toys at the store, but none of this particularly bothered me. I don't really see that anything was particularly "sexed up," even Frostine. I guess she sort of looks like a Bratz doll, but honestly she just looks like Barbies have looked for decades. I didn't see any female characters showing legs or boobs really or anything else objectionable.

The link that tried to make a big deal about nearly every single fat character being 5% less fat now seemed to be reaching. None of the characters except the fairy, who is, you know, a fairy, seemed too thin. They were all normal or fat still. Mostly the characters just got more detail as the game got older. That's sexing up Candyland? I mean it's interesting to see how the game has changed, but I felt like a lot is being read into not much of anything.

The only thing that struck me was Mr. Candy Cane being gone and replaced by a generic Prince Charming type, just because the thing that I liked about Candyland as a kid was all the weird shapes and colors.
posted by Nattie at 5:27 PM on April 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


(1) Cribbage is a good game.

(2) Given the fact that it has no strategy or decisions and is essentially equivalent to flipping a coin, War is surprisingly not all that bad.

(3) "2010. Note how his ice-cream is twice the size of his not insubstantial head.": Awwwwwwww, yeah.
posted by Flunkie at 5:33 PM on April 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


Man, I've had some weekends when there's just no way I would win at a game of "Where's My Foot Now?"
posted by webmutant at 5:35 PM on April 26, 2013 [10 favorites]


from here in America I feel the same way about "Chutes and Ladders"

Chutes and Ladders was one of my favorite games as a kid after I outgrew Candyland. I think it's called Snakes and Ladders in the UK.

Though I always remember being much more obsessed with the pictures of candy than with pictures of the characters, reading this part from the Jezebel article made me sad:

The researcher let them choose one of three character pieces to move around the board: a thin character, an average figure, or an overweight one. “Their comments really surprised me,” Harriger recalls. “A lot of the 3-year-olds said to me, ‘I hate her; she’s fat.’ Or, ‘her stomach is big; I don’t want to be her.’ That was really concerning to me, that children so young already had such strong beliefs about what it means to be overweight.”
posted by triggerfinger at 5:35 PM on April 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


I have this game for my grandkids....my daughters commented about how they'd changed the characters from when they themselves were the target demographic.

It's kind of ridiculous how EVERYTHING must be sexy these days.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 5:59 PM on April 26, 2013 [3 favorites]


I find it not so much sexed up as creeped out; reminiscent of Mark Ryden's art. Sheehat's gonna give kids nightmares.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:03 PM on April 26, 2013


Candyland early game skills are totally important, but it is kinda dull and the current board is just eye-searing; I can hardly find the path. So in my house we now play "Monster Dice Fight" (an Eyebrows original), where we all color pictures of monsters and then we take turns rolling D10s to see which monster wins the fight. We make a little scoreboard and write down all the numbers and circle the biggest one and count up who wins the most fights. Coloring, turn-taking, numeracy! The almost-two-year-old scribbles on his monster and shouts his number at the top of his lungs; the almost-four-year-old writes the letters for his monster's name, declares who rolled the biggest number, and makes up back story about his monster.

Plus it makes my husband really happy that he is priming them for D&D.

It would be stellar if I could find slightly-less-choking-hazard-y D10s, however, so I don't have to spend twenty minute of every Monster Dice Fight session on my knees under the sideboard looking for a thrown-off-the-table die.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:56 PM on April 26, 2013 [25 favorites]


Good point about the skills Candyland teaches, mchelly, but I think some adult grousing about Candyland is okay at this point because kid's games have come a long ways in recent years. In my former life as a game store worker, my usual recommendations for kids just beyond the "where's my foot now?" stage were things like Go Away Monster or The Little Orchard. Both teach the essential skills like turn-taking and losing gracefully while also playing out in a much shorter time frame than Candyland. Also no creepy quasi-sexual imagery. I agree that the Queen Frostine linked here is nowhere near as awful as lots of toys aimed at young girls, but still. You could have her, or you could have a game with adorable monsters under the bed. Just saying.

The best next step after Go Away Monster et al, imho, is Chicken Cha Cha Cha. That one was on our store short list of kid's games that also make good adult drinking games.
posted by ActionPopulated at 7:43 PM on April 26, 2013 [4 favorites]


Tonight was game night! There was the solemn opening-of-the-cupboard ceremony, and the purposeful Conveying of the Popcorn Kernels to Daddy march. I dutifully measured out two scoops, and then handed back the bottle to the Popcorn Kernel Bearer, who returned the plastic bottle to the cupboard with a solemn Closing of the Cupboard Door.

While the air-popper was at work, the little one was unfolding all four game-boards, dutifully bending them backwards at the spine so they'd all lay flat. All of the cardboard pieces were placed within the sack, and we began the Reading of the Fructions. Once the fructions were read, or at least the pictures gazed upon, we began, a bowl of popcorn each at our elbows... fingers seeking inside a white linen sack... is it a bed? Draw it forth and see...

AAAAHHHH! GO AWAY MONSTER!

Candyland really, really needs to be reserved for 5 year olds. Don't get me started on the neverending preschool hell that is Chutes and Ladders.

Go Away Monster with a bowl of popped-right-now popcorn will completely fulfill every expectation a 3yo has from life.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:05 PM on April 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


I've been playing Candy Land incessantly for the last year and I had never noticed the creepy new Princess Frostine until reading this article. This is because the new board is so bewildering that you can't even really look at it directly, you have to sort of squint at it out of the corner of your eye while you grope along for the next blue square.

I think maybe this is a secret strategy to equalize the game performance of toddlers and grownups. They're not so good at knowing their colors, but their eyes are young enough to find the path.
posted by gerstle at 8:09 PM on April 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


While I generally agree, I think finding popsicles (in an ice palace in Candy Land!) "phallic" is probably more a matter of the author's interpretation than anything else.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 8:23 PM on April 26, 2013


Yeah, the problem inherent in Candyland is that if you want your kid to learn those gaming skills, you yourself have to play, regardless of whether you are their target demographic at all.

And don't even get me started on Chutes and Ladders. I played Snakes and Ladders growing up, and I remember it as solely a turn taking game with ups and downs. So I was totally bummed out when I bought Chutes and Ladders and it turned out to have all this crappy moralizing in it. "If you land on the square that shows you ate too much candy--Ouch!--you get a tummy ache and slide down a chute to a square a few numbers below. But if you end your turn on a good-deed square, such as helping sweep up a mess, you'll be rewarded by a ladder-climb up the board. " Bah.

Even Old Maid with just two people is more fun. I especially enjoyed, as a single mother in my thirties, losing and getting to say "AW, I'm the Old Maid." Only slightly less good was when my daughter would say "Ha, you're the Old Maid, mom. See, the picture on the card? That's you, you are old. The Old Maid. Haha." Good times.
posted by looli at 9:04 PM on April 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


Yes. Yes it does. Perhaps a palliative?

Ooh that looks terrific. dreamy sigh

I just checked, and Candyland is currently ranked #8787 out of 8791 on Board Game Geek.

Monopoly's a mere nine spots above it. Which is a bit odd -- I'm no fan of Monopoly, not anymore, but there are still some interesting ideas in it. I mean, it's four slots below Pachisi, and five beneath Battleship. It's probably the result of BGG's userbase's extreme negative reaction to Monopoly being so damn ubiquitous.

Candyland is a beginner's game.

Indeed it is, and it should be given a pass for that, at least if the players don't yet realize it's kind of shallow. For very slightly older kids, Hey, That's My Fish doesn't require any language skills to play, and is a lot of fun, but is also pretty clever, so parents can enjoy it with their kids, and probably even lose to them sometimes.

It's kind of ridiculous how EVERYTHING must be sexy these days.

I don't think I've ever agreed with St. Alia more. I loathe Frostine's makeover, such a vapid expression. A friend looking over my shoulder says "I love the 'if she was life-size two inches between her eyes' look, it really gets across that whole 'I'M NOT HUMAN' thing."
posted by JHarris at 9:10 PM on April 26, 2013


Do you know what really pisses me off?

The new Brothels & Beer Halls expansion for Settlers of Catan.
posted by R. Schlock at 9:47 PM on April 26, 2013


More fun than learning that there is a game called "Hey, That's My Fish" is finding out all the different language variations on the name:

Ei! Čia mano žuvis!
Halfogócska
Hej! To je moje ryba!
Hej! To moja ryba!
Hey, Danke für den Fisch!
Ψαρεύοντας στους πάγους
Эй! Это моя рыба!
それはオレの魚だ!
オイそれはオレの魚だぜ!
嘿!我的魚!
¡Pingüinos!
posted by benito.strauss at 10:15 PM on April 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


Eyebrows McGee: "It would be stellar if I could find slightly-less-choking-hazard-y D10s, however, so I don't have to spend twenty minute of every Monster Dice Fight session on my knees under the sideboard looking for a thrown-off-the-table die."

35mm (1.3 inch) dice here.
posted by barnacles at 10:24 PM on April 26, 2013


It's not that they're sexed up, because they don't follow the boobs and ass thing you see on stuff like Bratz and Barbie, it's the fact that they're all skinny and, apparently, older. Or, I should say, more teenage, since the queen got demoted to princess.

Everything is starting to look like the Lisa Frank stuff did when it stopped being about rainbow tailed unicorns and puppies and got a bunch of fairies and other humans and humanoids all over everything.
posted by NoraReed at 11:46 PM on April 26, 2013


Hey, That's My Fish is a very nice little game, well thought of, quick to play, and easy to learn. There's also an iPad version with computer opponents that's not bad. You don't even have to be a kid to enjoy it.

Everything is starting to look like the Lisa Frank stuff did when it stopped being about rainbow tailed unicorns and puppies and got a bunch of fairies and other humans and humanoids all over everything.

Fairies aren't particularly happy about it either, as it caters to a certain image they've been trying to distance themselves from for years. It seems being fixated upon by young girls has its drawbacks.

(Their opinions of: Froud -- not super great. Disney -- set back their cause fifty years. Tinker Bell -- Barrie did a good job, but in recent years they think of her as a sellout.)
posted by JHarris at 2:02 AM on April 27, 2013


Forget about the characters - teh candy has been sexed up! Do they think children these days wouldn't find a Molasses Swap, a Crooked Old Peanut Brittle House, Gumdrop Mountains and a Gingerbread Plum Tree absofreakinglutely delicious? No?
posted by peagood at 7:32 AM on April 27, 2013


What ever happened to the candy hearts?
posted by Sys Rq at 8:09 AM on April 27, 2013


We are insufferable parents who only buy our children handmade toys from indie toy shops, no character or TV tie-ins (2 notable exceptions: Star Wars, because, well duh it's Star Wars and Cars, because with toddler boys it cannot be stopped). Our instructions to family about gifts: no batteries, no plastic, no Disney (see Cars exception above). We literally purchase their toys with the primary consideration that we are going to be looking at and tripping over piles of this crap all over our house for years to come and I will be goddamned if I'm gonna be buried in ugly cheap crap that's going into a landfill in a couple years.

Every once in a while, something seeps through. A birthday gift from Target. Something bought at an airport gift shop so Whiney Son will stop crying and get his ass on the plane. The kind of crap that's out there for kids is frankly shocking. As mentioned above, it's not necessarily the oversexualization, or the tie-ins with TV shows, or the violence and militarism of most boy toys, although those are all important issues. It really is the graphic design -- the busy-ness, the wacky-in-your-face loud colored overstimulating images that leave no room for kids' imagination. I hadn't seen the heinous Candy Land update, but we recently ordered Chutes and Ladders and its the same thing -- I can't get my son to focus on playing the game because he's so distracted by the images. "I wanna play baseball with that kid!" "What is that girl baking?" "I want to go down a slide and break the bowl!"

There's definitely a uniform aesthetic to the bad toys and Candy Land suffers from it.

Now, I'm off to teach my son to play the cigar box guitar we made together. As I said, I am insufferable.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 12:42 PM on April 27, 2013 [4 favorites]


I spent several years working on computer versions of Candy Land. It's a child's first game in that it teaches you HOW to play games. But it's not a very good game in that there is no strategy involved, just chance. You are just a tool of King Candy's manipulations and have no agency of your own. Draw a card. Eat some candy. Repeat. (We did cheat for the player a bit to keep it from being too dreary--if you were stuck on a dot square we'd automatically draw a double for you that would get you out.)

The first version I remember playing when I was a wee tot didn't even HAVE characters, just locations, so it was a bit of an adjustment to see those characters. But these new ones... Ugh. When I was working on those games I used to have nightmares about Mister Mint chasing me through the forest while chucking hand grenades at me (was playing a lot of Metal Gear Solid at the time), but that's not nearly the nightmare fuel that is the Botox-ified, demoted Princess Frostine.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 1:32 PM on April 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


I wrote up a little description of how we play Monster Dice Fight (self-link, ignore the terrible website I just started putting together today). I also serendipitously stumbled across an indiegogo for giant foam dice where you can get just one die.

Checked that both these links were okay with mods.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:18 PM on April 28, 2013


Monopoly's a mere nine spots above it. Which is a bit odd -- I'm no fan of Monopoly, not anymore, but there are still some interesting ideas in it. I mean, it's four slots below Pachisi, and five beneath Battleship. It's probably the result of BGG's userbase's extreme negative reaction to Monopoly being so damn ubiquitous.

There are some good reaons to dislike Monopoly - and some really good reasons to dislike Family Monopoly. Seriously, Monopoly is one of the two boardgames that has a reputation for destroying friendships (the other being Diplomacy and that because it's a game of pure calculation and backstabbing). The reason Monopoly's a bad game is that the first fifteen minutes you're setting up, the next fifteen minutes you're playing a decent game (the auction phase if you have it, and the trading phase), and final hour and a half all players save one are slowly getting ground down into the mud and can't do much about it other than see the defeat coming and ragequit, or Kingmaker-ragequit to make someone other than the leader win. So for one and a half hours, you are slowly and inevitably getting crushed. Which makes mere deterministic games like Snakes and Ladders or Candyland feel like a fun experience.

Family Monopoly with rules like "Money for free parking" is worse. Because the main thing rules like that do is to take the already aggravating back end of the game and extend it.
posted by Francis at 5:05 PM on April 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


For rainy-day recesses at school, I keep a cabinet of games. I have four Twisters and could use ten more. Everyone from Grade 1 - Grade 6 loves Twister. Twister is for children whom I can trust not to come crying to me that somebody pushed, shoved, touched, stepped-on, looked at, glanced at, ignored, said something to, didn't do, did do, wanted to do or tried to do something to them. Twister is bestowed on certain groups of students who've earned it.

We have other games like checkers, chess, cards, Uno, and others - but only one or two of each. I have Where's Waldo books and art supplies and paper dolls. There are students that come and ask for these, and who will happily scoot off to play them and I won't hear from them for the half-hour they have until clean-up time.

I have four Candylands and will always buy more on sale or at thrift stores, because it's the only game the Grade 1 students can play without much supervision on a day when there are only so many adults and eighty kids to keep happy in a gym where every shrill little voice is like a rock hammer on my last nerve. Candyland is the game I assign groups of young children to play when they can't manage other activities during their recess time. I love it for that reason alone.
posted by peagood at 5:39 PM on April 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


Hah, someone else stacked decks? I used to do that while playing with my little cousins so that the "the perfect one" wouldn't win every single game and they wouldn't make me more crazy.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:17 PM on April 28, 2013


Damn it, now I'm going to have to buy the older version so my kids can also stare suspiciously at the characters, suspecting them of Stranger Danger.

And Monopoly is okay but my family like LIFE better. I now remember that I made it my goal to have only girls and to put as many daughters through college as possible.
posted by DisreputableDog at 8:25 PM on April 28, 2013


I don't know if I'm the only one bothered by this, but the older characters all had their mouths shut, and now the two "sexy" characters are the only ones without their mouths gaping wide open.

This seems to be the "kids mascot" aesthetic these days, like they are all, "How do I know they're excited unless I can see their tongue and bottom teeth?"
posted by RobotHero at 10:26 PM on April 28, 2013




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