fact checking in land of poison toadstools

[Anne Frasier]

I'm doing some final fact checking, and I thought the board game Candy Land had a Land of Poison Toadstools, but online images show no mushrooms or toadstools. So have they changed the board and removed the shrooms, or am I thinking of another board game? Chutes and Ladders? Something else?

[D. C. Hawkins]

Wow, "Land of Poison Toadstools" sounds pretty scary for a pre-schol game. We recently moved ant the only pre-scholl gave that survived was Uncle Wiggly and it is not in that gane. I asked my wife, the trivia Queen, and she does not remember that in any of the games we had when our daughter was young. She is not totally infallible but I usually ask her before I Google. BTW, I did not find anything helpful on Google for "Land of Poison Toadstools" or 'Toadstools children's games'.

[D. C. Hawkins]

I love a research challenge. I have been bouncing around the internet and not finding much. I do have a possible clue (lower case since we are talking about games). I found that the Smurfs lived in a mushroom village and that the little blue creatures stared in a number of board games. No definite hits, but maybe this will jog a memory.

[Anne Frasier]

it's definitely not smurfs. i'm working on a memoir, and this is what i remember:

as a little kid i secretly ate a mushroom that was later declared poisonous. I didn't tell anybody I'd eaten it, because I was afraid I'd get in trouble. To get my mind off my imminent death, i went to a friend's house. she pulled out a board game, and my game piece ended up on something that was like the land of poison mushrooms or toadstools or something like that. i thought it was candy land, but now i'm thinking it probably wasn't.

i might have to just call it a board game and let it go as that. and it may have been some game that was only around a few years.

[D. C. Hawkins]

Intense memory. Sorry I couldn't be more help. Our collective memories are from our daughter's preschool days and she will be 21 this summer. I hope you nail it down (and post the results).

[Anne Frasier]

ah-ha!

the board has gone through 4 different designs, and the original 1940s board had shrooms. i found an image. i can see the toadstools, but i'm still not sure if it's called land of poison toadstools. don't know where i got that.

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[D. C. Hawkins]

I still have not found any references to mushrooms. At the risk of playing arm chair psychiatrist, is it possible that your experience caused you to see the gum drop mountains as toadstools? Even if not, it could make a terrifying fictional twist.

[Anne Frasier]

haha! you could be right. yeah, i wish i had a better image to post. looks like mushrooms or toadstools to me -- top center, just to the left of the candy land logo. but maybe i'm still seeing toadstools instead of gumdrop mountain. :D and maybe the board image isn't showing up. how did candy land become so sinister. pretty funny.

[Margot Renne Payne]

Here is the official Hasbro site--with the history, etc. Maybe it was a "magic" mushroom you took and took a trip to the Land of Poison Toadstools... I was never a Candy Land fan--but can't help doing the research!

http://www.hasbro.com/games/preschool-games/candyland/

[Margot Renne Payne]

I just did a search on the Hasbro site with the words "Land of Poison Toadstools" and nothing came up. Could have been another game. Maybe, "Pass Out" from your college days?!

[Anne Frasier]

no, but i used my easy bake oven to dry pot. kidding! although i've heard they're good for that.

[Margot Renne Payne]

Did you play Super Mario when it first came out? This is the only reference--so far--I have found to a Mushroom Kingdom.

http://www.mariowiki.com/Mushroom_Kingdom

[Anne Frasier]

sigh. i loved super mario bros. yeah, maybe i'm confusing some games.