♪♪ "Thank you, thank you, thank you for saving Candy Land!" ♫

 

In 1996, Hasbro released a computer game called Candy Land Adventure. As you might imagine, it was based on the classic board game Candy Land.

(NOTE: I had always assumed it was just one word: "Candyland." Wikipedia suggests that spelling is acceptable, but officially it's two words: "Candy Land." They say you learn something new every day, and today this is my something.)

We had a CD-ROM copy of Candy Land Adventure for our Windows PC, one of dozens of computer games we bought for the kids when they were little. We often reminisce about these games and the fun times we had playing them.

The kids usually think back to their days playing one of several Harry Potter games we owned, but for me, Candy Land Adventure holds the most nostalgic value.

I would play Candy Land Adventure with one of the kids on my lap. When they were toddlers, they preferred having me control the mouse. Eventually, as they got older, they would take control themselves and I was only there to sit, watch, and laugh with them.

This was not, you understand, a game you could play for 5 or 10 minutes and then move on. It was a linear narrative game that always began the same way and ended the same away. To get from start to finish usually meant a good 45 minutes of game play.

I sometimes wished the game would go faster so I could move on to whatever was next on that day's to-do list.

Now, of course, I would give almost anything to have the chance to play that game again with a small child on my lap.

A classic case of not knowing what you have until it's gone.

I will say, though, that even then the Candy Land Adventure music (which for the time was very good) kind of got to me. There was at least a part of me that understood we were making memories, even if there were leaves to rake or dishes to wash.

Recently I found a YouTube walk-through of Candy Land Adventure that took me back a quarter century. It was fun watching game scenes I hadn't thought about in years.

I screen-recorded the last song in the game, when the various Candy Land Adventure characters would get together and thank you (musically) for saving Candy Land. Thus the title of today's post.

I sent that video to our family text chat. Elissa responded simply: "Thank you for that."

And I'm pretty sure she really meant it.