Tales from the Molasses Swamp


Leslie from Happily at Home
graciously let me post this image.
Check out her archived sale here
for more images of this game.   

A repost from 2012:

Did you play Candyland as a child?  

My first memory of this game was playing it at a cousin's house back in the 60's.   It might have been a version very like this one, made in 1962.  I'm not sure what brought that memory to mind, but I was driving around town and could picture myself sitting in my aunt's living room on the floor of the shag carpet playing the game with my cousin.  

I was thinking how life is a lot like Candyland.  You can be hopping right along through the Gumdrop Mountain Pass and BAM  a few turns later you find yourself stuck in the Molasses Swamp, hanging out until you draw a blue card.   Sometimes all you can do is wait for that darn card!  In real life, I've been waiting for a few blue cards.  Nothing catastrophic, but stuff that slows me down none the less.  

Sometimes when we're waiting in the Molasses Swamp, we can choose to do something other than focus on the fact that we're stuck.  That's what the creator of  Candyland did. The Hasbro site states:  
Once upon a time, in San Diego California, a woman named Eleanor Abbot created a game. Ms. Abbot, a recovering Polio patient, decided to create an activity that would entertain children affected with the disease. So she submitted her board game to MILTON BRADLEY, who enthusiastically accepted it for production.
And generations of kids have played this game, all from the mind of a woman who used her Molasses Swamp time effectively.  Soooooooooo....I guess it's time to follow Ms. Abbot's lead....

I wish you all BLUE CARDS.  ;-)  
But in the meantime, use your swamp time well.

Best,
Dixie

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love it Dixie, always inspiring...

Daisy Debs said...

Nope , we played "Snakes and Ladders" a similar board game in the U.K.
We did have the shag-pile carpet though ! LOL ! :)


"Do not let what you cannot do
keep you from doing what you can do."

John Wooden