Candy Land was created for kids in the hospital with polio.
Candy Land has been adored by preschoolers, tolerated by older siblings, and dreaded by adults for generations. The simplicity of its play makes it perfect for young children, and the colorful candy-themed game has endured as an activity the whole family can do together.
Even for the grown-ups who find it mind-numbing to play, there's some sweet nostalgia in traversing the Peppermint Forest and avoiding the Molasses Swamp that tugs at us from our own childhoods. There are few things as innocent and innocuous as a game of Candy Land, but many of us may not know the dark reality behind how and why the game was invented in the first place.
Candy Land has been a family favorite for decades, but it was originally created for kids with polio.m.media-amazon.com
Candy Land was invented by retired schoolteacher Eleanor Abbott while she recovered from polio in 1948. She was convalescing in a San Diego hospital surrounded by children being treated for the disease and saw how isolating and lonely it was for them. The game, which could be played alone and provided a fantasy world for sick children to escape to, become so popular among the hospital's young patients that Abbott's friends encouraged her to pitch it to game manufacturer Milton Bradley. The post-World-War-II timing turned out to be fortuitous.
“There was a huge market—it was parents who had kids and money to spend on them,” Christopher Bensch, Chief Curator at the National Toy Hall of Fame, told PBS. “A number of social and economic factors were coming together for [games] that were released in the [post-war era] that has kept them as evergreen classics." Candy Land soon became Milton Bradley's best-selling game.
Since the game doesn't require any reading or writing to play, children as young as 3 years old could enjoy it when they were feeling sad or homesick in the polio ward. As the polio epidemic ramped up in the early 1950s, the game gained even more popularity as parents often kept their kids indoors during polio outbreaks in their communities.
The polio vaccine changed the game—both for the disease and for Candy Land. Jonas Salk’s inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) was licensed in the spring of 1955 and a widespread vaccine campaign was launched. By 1961, polio cases had dropped from 58,000 to only 161. The disease was considered eradicated from the Americas in 1994, and, as of 2022, the only countries in the world to have any recorded cases were Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Vaccine GIF by World Health OrganizationGiphy
In the 70 years since the polio vaccine came out, Candy Land's connection to the disease has been lost, and it's now just a classic in the family board game cabinet. The fact that polio has so successfully been controlled and nearly eliminated makes it easy to forget that it used to be a devastating public health threat that spurred the need for the game in the first place. Children are routinely vaccinated for polio, keeping the disease at bay, but anti-vaccine messaging and fear threatens to impact the vaccination rates that have led to that success. Vaccination rates took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, and with the appointment of one of the most popular vaccine skeptics as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, public health specialists are concerned.
There is no cure for polio, so the vaccine is by far our best weapon against it. According to infectious disease experts, it's not impossible for polio to make a comeback. “It’s pockets of the unimmunized that can bring diseases back," Patsy Stinchfield, former president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, told Scientific American. "If you have a community of people geographically close to each other and they all choose not to vaccinate, that community immunity is going to drop quickly. And if a person who has polio or is shedding polio enters that community, the spread will be much more rapid.”
Without herd immunity, vulnerable people such as babies who are too young to be vaccinated and people with compromised immune systems are at risk in addition to the unvaccinated. And since up to 70% of polio cases are asymptomatic, there can be a lot more disease circulating than it appears when symptomatic disease is detected. No one wants the serious outcomes that can come with polio, such as paralysis, the inability to breathe without assistance, or death, especially when outbreaks are entirely preventable through vaccine-induced community immunity.
The fact that kids have been able to enjoy Candy Land for decades without thinking about polio at all is a testament to vaccine effectiveness, but it's also a reminder of how easy it is to take that carefreeness for granted.
Beaver in water. Photo by 
An actual beaver dam on the now-thriving Price River
Not just coworkers—family, friends, strangers, kids…
Imagine having to go so badly but being out of euros. 
Anything hobbit-esque can't be wrong. 
But what if you need pain meds AND mascara?!
Imagine how this would affect childcare.
Honestly…where's the lie?
A brown buddha statue sits near a green mountain. Photo by 
Urgent dash to the bathroom! 🚪🏃♂️
Ladybug unexpectedly found during colonoscopyPhoto credit: 
Close-up of bottom of ladybug found in colonPhoto credit: 
There's a reason why some people can perfectly copy accents, and others can't
Turns out, there's a neurodivergent link.
A woman in black long sleeve shirt stands in front of mirror.
Have you ever had that friend who goes on vacation for four days to London and comes back with a full-on Queen's English posh accent? "Oooh I left my brolly in the loo," they say, and you respond, "But you're from Colorado!" Well, there are reasons they (and many of us) do that, and usually it's on a pretty subconscious level.
It's called "accent mirroring," and it's actually quite common with people who are neurodivergent, particularly those with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). According Neurolaunch, the self-described "Free Mental Health Library," "Accent mirroring, also known as accent adaptation or phonetic convergence, is the tendency to unconsciously adopt the accent or speech patterns of those around us. This linguistic chameleon effect is not unique to individuals with ADHD, but it appears to be more pronounced and frequent in this population."
Essentially, when people have conversations, we're constantly "scanning" for information—not just the words we're absorbing, but the inflection and tone. "When we hear an accent, our brains automatically analyze and categorize the phonetic features, prosody, and intonation patterns," writes Neurolaunch. For most, this does result in copying the accent of the person with whom we're speaking. But those with ADHD might be more sensitive to auditory cues. This, "coupled with a reduced ability to filter out or inhibit the impulse to mimic…could potentially explain the increased tendency for accent mirroring."
While the article explains further research is needed, they distinctly state that, "Accent mirroring in individuals with ADHD often manifests as an unconscious mimicry of accents in social situations. This can range from subtle shifts in pronunciation to more noticeable changes in intonation and speech rhythm. For example, a person with ADHD might find themselves unconsciously adopting a Southern drawl when conversing with someone from Texas, even if they’ve never lived in the South themselves."
People are having their say online. On the subreddit r/ADHDWomen, a thread began: "Taking on accents is an ADHD thing?" The OP shares, "My whole life, I've picked up accents. I, myself, never noticed, but everyone around me would be like, 'Why are you talking like that??' It could be after I watched a show or movie with an accent or after I've traveled somewhere with a different accent than my 'normal.'
They continue, "Apparently, I pick it up fast, but it fades out slowly. Today... I'm scrolling Instagram, I watch a reel from a comedian couple (Darcy and Jeremy. IYKYK) about how Darcy (ADHD) picks up accents everywhere they go. It's called ADHD Mirroring??? And it's another way of masking."
(The OP is referring to Darcy Michaels and his husband Jeremy Baer, who are both touring comedians based in Canada.)
Hundreds of people on the Reddit thread alone seem to relate. One comments, "Omfg I've done this my whole life; I'll even pick up on the pauses/spaces when I'm talking to someone who is ESL—but English is my first language lol."
Sometimes, it can be a real issue for those around the chameleon. "I accidentally mimicked a waitress's weird laugh one time. As soon as she was out of earshot, my family started to reprimand me, but I was already like 'oh my god I don’t know why I did that, I feel so bad.'"
Many commenters on TikTok were shocked to find out this can be a sign of ADHD. One jokes, "Omg, yes, at a store the cashier was talking to me and she was French. She's like 'Oh are you French too? No, I'm not lol. I'm very east coast Canada."
And some people just embrace it and make it work for them. "I mirror their words or phrase! I’m 30. I realized I start calling everyone sweetie cause my manager does & I work at coffee shop."