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The Wikipedia article for Mouse Trap talks about some sort of game play involved in Mouse Trap, but we’re just not buying. All we remember was putting together all the little pieces and setting off the trap over and over again. Then we lost all the pieces and the metal balls became a projectile. That’s how we remember Mouse Trap.
While Chutes & Ladders, like Candy Land was devoid of any necessity for skill, it was somehow more entertaining to have your character climbing up and sliding down, rather than being arbitrarily sent to locations on the board. The spinny wheel was also far superior to the cards.
For such a simple game, Candy Land was, and is, an incredible amount of fun for young kids. As an added bonus it taught us how to recognize colors and more complex objects (remember the cards with the candy canes and chocolate bars on them?).
More importantly though, Candy Land taught us that life sucks and just isn’t fair. No amount of skill or maneuvering (unless you count the cheating kind) could save you from getting within steps of the end of the game and then get the plum card sending you back almost to the very beginning. Vice versa, early on your opponent would also get the Queen Frostine card and be catapulted within a few moves from the end of the game.
Oh look, it’s the angry board gamers from the Battleship post demonstrating an example of how we all felt, being at the mercy of fate in Candy Land:
Most kids weren’t allowed to play Perfection or it was quickly taken away because of the loud ticking noise followed by the squeeling and screaming that came after the game popped all your hard work out of place. Virtually impossible to win at unless you practice for hours on end, as this college student demonstrates…
The guy who invented this thing surely hated Perfection as a kid.