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?

[L. A. Starks]

Haven't played CandyLand with my kids for a few years, but last time I did, no, there was no Land of Poison Toadstools. If there's a big-box store like WalMart or Target or ToysRUs near you, it would be easy to find the game that does.

[Batya Deene]

You can always email the corporate consumer relations people at Hasbro and ask them. If they don't know, someone there will---at least you'll get a definitive answer as to whether or not it was ever CandyLand.

Mushrooms are usually divided into three categories: safe, poisonous, and fatal. The poisonous category includes many that are hallucinogenic, not really "poisonous." Mushrooms are really easy to misidentify. Toadstools themselves are a subdivision of mushrooms; all toadstools are mushrooms, not all mushrooms are toadstools.

At least that's how I remember it all. From the early '70s. When I did some research and we were all curious.

---Batya Deene

[Anne Frasier]

Batya, that's an excellent idea. Thanks! And thanks for the mushrooms/toadstool info. I thought they were two different things -- i didn't realize all toadstools were mushrooms. I also thought all toadstools were poisonous, but maybe I'm wrong about that too.

[Ann]

Hi, I have Candyland still as I had a child who loved it. No poisonous substances of any kind have ever been featured on the Candyland board. I'm not able to recall any children's games that had poisonous toadstools but I might be wrong. Chutes and Ladders didn't did it?

[Anne Frasier]

Ann, does your board feature the original design from the forties?

I'm going to cruise the Target game section like L. A. suggested. Chutes and Ladders doesn't seem right, but I'll check that out.
But the designs have changed over the years, so I'm not sure that would be much help.

I think emailing Hasbro is probably the best idea. I haven't even sold this book, so getting in touch with them seems premature ... and yet it's become such a mystery!