In the first episode, the teams “drew cards,” which I put in scare quotes because Kristin Chenoweth handed them giant, oversized cards, basically telling them what station the producers had pre-assigned them to. You could eat bags of candy, puke on the Candy Land game board, and you’d still have less of a sugary mess than this show. The contestants are in teams, and their captains randomly assigned, and they’re eliminated as teams, but there are only five teams? For a seven-episode series? Is there going to be a merge? Will it become an individual game? They’ve even recycling contestants from other Food Network competitions, including Reva Alexander-Hawk and Jordan Pilarski. (Photo by Food Network)Ĭandy Land’s production company Super Delicious says on its website that they’ve produced “HUNDREDS of episodes of Food Network hits ‘Cupcake Wars,’ ‘Cake Wars,’ ‘Halloween Wars’ (now in season 10), ‘Holiday Wars.'”Īnd now they’ve produced more-gathering teams of cake and sugar artists to create themed builds. Kristin Chenoweth on the set of Candy Land with some of its contestants. It’s very clear Candy Land is only interested in borrowing the board game as a support, over which its producers have thrown the tasteless and overused piece of fondant that is the Food Network “Wars” franchise. The teams who aren’t eliminated do have oversize game pieces, but they just picked up them up and walked around and did nothing with them while looking as confused as I was. But no, Candy Land the reality competition doesn’t care about replicating or adapting the game. That’s such a simple format it offers so many opportunities to be translated to television, perhaps with players moving their game pieces or themselves down the path. The board game itself is simple: draw a card, move to the next space of that color, and try to be the first player to get to Candy Castle. There’s an even more-detailed behind-the-scenes special, hosted by David Bromstad, that’s far more watchable and engaging than the actual show.īecause there’s a raging pandemic, and this was produced in the middle of it, and because I appreciate attention and time being given to the craft required to produce reality television, I’ll ignore that the edible set is actually just inedible set pieces with some bowls of candy strewn around-and that 2020 has already given us a reality competition in a similar space that was much more elaborate and immersive (Netflix’s Crazy Delicious, an imperfect but GBBO-ish cooking competition where the pantry was the set).Ĭandy Land’s designers have done a decent job of recreating the aesthetic of the game board, which in the version from my 1980s childhood was relatively sparse, a multi-colored path weaving through and past colorful vignettes and sugary characters: Gumdrop Mountain, Lollipop Woods, Queen Frostine.
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Making It winner Justine Silva is one of the many craftspeople who took 650 pounds of candy, 170 pounds of chocolate, lots of inspiration from the board game.
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The first few minutes of Candy Land were dedicated to showing us how 120 people created the “interactive, sugary set,” a version of the Candy Land game board. It absolutely is insane: that Food Network combined the magical ingredients of Chenoweth and Candy Land and produced this monstrosity that they should have revealed by yelling, Nailed it! They didn’t. It’s going to be insane!” Kristin Chenoweth said at the start of Food Network’s Candy Land. “The most magical board game has come to life.