How Polio Inspired the Creation of Candy Land
How Polio Inspired the Creation of Candy Land
How Polio Inspired the Creation of Candy Land
By Alexander B. Joy
July 10 2020
Summary
For a child of the 1940s or '50s, polio meant the same thing whether you contracted it or not: confinement.
The Milton Bradley executive Mel Taft said that Abbott, the inventor of Candy Land, was "a real sweetheart" whom he liked immediately.
According to Walsh, the toy historian, the two met when Abbott brought Milton Bradley a Candy Land prototype sketched on butcher paper.
According to some accounts, she gave much of the royalties she earned from Candy Land to children's charities.
There is reason to believe that Abbott was ideally suited to consider polio from a child's perspective.
Abbott recuperated in the polio ward of a San Diego hospital, spending her convalescence primarily among children.
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.
From today's perspective, it's tempting to see Candy Land as a tool of quarantine, an excuse to keep kids inside in the way Shepherd remembers.
"The point of Candy Land is to pass the time," she writes, "Certainly a virtue when one's days are spent in the boring confines of the hospital and an appealing feature as well of a game used to pass the time indoors for children confined to the house." For Kawash, Candy Land justifies and extends the imprisonment of the hospital, becoming another means of restriction.
Reference
Joy, A. (2019, July 29). Candy Land Was Invented for Polio Wards. Retrieved July 13, 2020, from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/07/how-polio-inspired-the-creation-of-candy-land/594424/