The music video reenacts a board game called Candyfornia, where she encounters a world of ice cream cones, cotton candy clouds and, of course, those bubble gum trees. Many Burl Ives, Tom Chapin and Brie Larson covers later, the tune morphed into a children's song with ' bubble gum trees,' soda water fountains and lemonade springs instead.įast-forward a few decades to Katy Perry's sugary pop hit, ' California Gurls,' and we're still fleeing reality for an idyllic alt-universe.

The unlikely 1920s Harry McClintock folk song, ' Big Rock Candy Mountain,' a story of a hobo's paradise where there are 'cigarette trees' and no 'axes, saws or picks,' proved to be an influential part of the bucolic candy world idea. Visions of sugarplums dance in our heads come Christmas Eve, and The Nutcracker is nothing but a long dream of classical ballet-trained treats coming to life. Something about an alternate universe of sugar fascinates us to the core, and a real-life candy palace where there's not a care in the world is what kids' dreams are made of-literally. If the enduring legacy of a board game that doesn't require even an ounce of strategy seems puzzling, consider everything we've learned from the world of Willy Wonka. Popular sitcoms like New Girl, How I Met Your Mother and That '70s Show have all peppered in Candy Land references throughout their runs, and no less than five special-edition versions of the board are available on Amazon. It's gained and lost characters, added an entire storyline, and inspired both a computer game and an animated movie. Since then, the game has evolved through multiple makeovers over 68 years.

She dreamed up a world of limitless sweet joy and sent the concept to then-fledgling board game company Milton Bradley, which loved the idea. A retired schoolteacher named Eleanor Abbott was hospital-bound in 1948 with polio, when it dawned on her that her co-patients-mostly children-could use a morale boost.

Beyond being merely a pleasant way to spend an hour, the sugar-filled game comes with a sweet history to match.

Old candyland pc game