What The Hell Happened to Candy Land, or: When Did Queen Frostine Get Demoted to Princess/ Slash Turn Into Olivia Newton John?

I will preface this by saying I am not excatly what you'd call an "early adopter". I depsze change, especially when it comes hard and fast to things which I love. That being said, however, it was recently called to my attention that Candy Land, my most beloved childhood game, has undergone a bastardization so extreme that it is barely even recognizeable anymore. Here is the game which we all remember and love:





In it, Queen Frostine is a vision, with her crystalline blue hair and Ice Cream Sea. She was everything I wanted to be when I grew up. She was beautiful and had a cute little nose and a freaking sea of ice cream. In our beloved edition, Princess Lolly, adorable as ever curtised sweetly in her lollipop forrest, and Plumpy chilled beneath his Plum tree (I know the plum thing really random considering this is "CANDY land", but whatever, it's just something we all accepted as fact). So, all in all, everything was in place and right in the world. That is up until the 2002 edition came out and completely fucked us all over. Some bad changes have taken place. The once beloved Queen Frostine was demoted to "Princess Frostine" (WHICH DOESN'T RHYME) and turned from a beautiful fairy who watched over the land with love and grace, to some mere mortal looking a bit too much like Olivia Newton John for my taste who is described as spending her day "ice skating or having tea with visitors in her gazebo". Hm. Was it the implication of sex with King Kandy for the creation of Princess Lolly that made the folks at Hasbro demote her? We will never know for sure.







Some other travesties include, the adorable Princess Lolly being turned into a tawdry whore Bratz lookalike, and the axe-ing of Plumpy and his replacement by a "Mama Ginger Tree". Now if plums were silly, ginger is outrageous. What is ginger, really, besides something to saturate in soy sauce for the consumption of sushi? Ginger grows on trees? I thought it was a root. At least we understand plums.


I guess the only thing I actually agree with are the inclusion of 2 more characters as the "children" who go through Candy Land. They threw in a couple other races so it wasn't 2 little Aryan's skipping through anymore. I get that, okay racial diversity. Plus it makes sense because there could be four players all along and there were only two kids. So, whatevs to that. I'm not saying this makes up for the decimation of the game itself with the inclusion of crappy characters and fucking with the ones that were already there, though.