For many children over the last several generations, one of their first exposures to the concept of a board game was with one colorful classic – Candy Land. Despite the fact that (or perhaps because) there is no strategy involved in the play, the simple game has managed to remain a family favorite since its conception in the 1940s.

Candy Land was created in 1948 by Eleanor Abbott, a schoolteacher who, at the time, was in a California hospital recovering from polio. Perhaps in part due to her career, Abbott understood what her fellow patients – many of whom were young children – would seek in a fantasy world. Candy Land was developed with those children in mind, and the kids at the hospital helped to test the game while Abbott was working on it. They’d eventually encourage Abbott to submit the game for publication by Milton Bradley; she did just that, and Milton Bradley published Candy Land beginning in 1949, billing it as “a sweet little game for sweet little folks.”

The first edition of Candy Land almost immediately became Milton Bradley’s bestselling game, quickly surpassing the company’s previous top game, Uncle Wiggly. This edition has some unique features about it that are worth noting – for example, the player pieces are made of wood (rather than plastic, as they have been since 1967), the track layout itself is a little different, and there are only marked locations instead of individual character spaces on the board.

Most editions of the game that have been published throughout the years focus on a simple story revolving around the missing king of the titular land, King Kandy. Players each choose a pawn to represent themselves and take turns drawing cards to advance on the multi-colored track. The track is primarily made up of spaces colored red, blue, yellow, green, orange, and purple; there are a handful of pink spaces that are named with either locations (such as Candy Cane Forest) or characters (such as Queen Frostine). When a player draws a card, that card is usually marked with a single colored square indicating what color space to next advance their pawn to. Some cards have two marks, allowing them to move ahead two spaces of that color.

Other cards show a picture of a character or location, which will warp them immediately to the corresponding space. Most editions of Candy Land also have three spaces marked with a dot, which represent either “cherry pitfalls” or the Molasses Swamp – in these cases, players who land on such a space are stuck and cannot advance until a card of the same color as the dotted space is drawn. As of 2006, dotted spaces were replaced with “licorice spaces” that simply lose the player’s next turn rather than keeping them stuck there for several rounds.

Because of how players advance linearly through the game’s track based on card draws, there’s no strategy or problem-solving skills necessary to win. The winner, determined by whoever reaches the end of the track first, is left entirely to the whim of a shuffled deck of cards. As of 2013, the cards were replaced by a spinner, though the spinner’s potential outcomes are the same as the cards.

Several editions of the game have been published since the inaugural version from the ‘40s. Hasbro has been Candy Land’s publisher since 1984, when they purchased Milton Bradley outright. Besides changing the deck of cards to a spinner, some other minor changes have occurred with some recent reissues of Candy Land, such as changing character names (Queen Frostine to Princess Frostine) and location names (Molasses Swamp to Chocolate Swamp). Due to its primary demographic being small children, some themed editions of Candy Land have also been produced with other kid-friendly characters, such as Winnie the Pooh and Dora the Explorer.

Candy Land has also seen success outside of the board game realm, with an animated film having released in 2005 (which in turn spawned a “DVD game” edition of the game itself) and some video game adaptations having been released as well.

For the full version of this article, pick up The Overstreet Guide to Collecting Tabletop Games, available now.