YOU LUCKY DEVIL

Candy Land’s Lord Licorice is sexy

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but not all Lord Licorices from all iterations of Candy Land are EQUALLY sexy!

last month, i saw a Candy Land board game in an op shop and nearly bought it, but it was the post-2002 Candy Land design, where they killed off Plumpy and removed all the raw sex appeal from Lord Licorice, so i left in disgust. i made a Mastodon thread about it (which this post is expanded from) but this is a better format to keep it forever, and obviously i want to do that.

To back up slightly, when i was younger i had the Candy Land Adventure computer game on CD…

Screenshot of the title screen from Candy Land Adventure. Lots of cartoon candy stuff, nauseatingly colorful, not much else to say.

…it wasn’t very good, but i got very attached to it. A fact about me is that when i get attached to something, i may in fact get fixated on it, and the ordinary limits of good taste cease to apply, so when i was around six years old there was a period of many months in which i played Candy Land Adventure every single day! Every day I played this mediocre piece of kids’ shovelware for early Macintosh and Windows 3.1 computers! Every day I gazed into Plumpy’s eyes as I sorted plums for him or whatever this minigame was!

A screenshot from the Plumpy minigame in Candy Land Adventure. Plumpy is a weird green yeti type guy. There's some smiling trees with plums growing on them. A gormless gingerbread cookie man is sorting the plums into baskets.

actually, i sat down pretty recently and re-played Candy Land Adventure on my steam deck (sure, as you do) at a friend’s house. It’s still fine. Lord Licorice is still sexy.

Photograph of a steam deck plugged into a television. You can see a low resolution colorful shovelware game on the screen.

WHY do i think Lord Licorice is sexy? completely impossible to describe, i suspect. i have a “type” of lumpy little men that ordinary people find intolerable and i adore. there are limits (Cicero from Skyrim will never be sexy to me) but there are also unusual cases that put me on the fringes of society (Tommy Wiseau is quite sexy). I am certain this will come up again. i’ve added the “wives” tag to keep things organized.

anyway, Lord Licorice! i decided to go track down a bunch of different versions of him and share them here.

Photo of the illustration of the 1984 Lord Licorice design. He's sort of an evil foppish man with a braided red licorice cape and hair, a red bodice, black tights and red and black shoes. He's surrounded by evil angry candy rocks or something and has a castle in the background.

that’s the original Lord Licorice from the 1984 edition of Candy Land and he’s pretty sexy. the braided red licorice hair is cute, and the castle is fairly tasteful, but the roofs and the little rock minion guys are giving me unpleasant and different types of poop emoji feelings. still, a great Lord Licorice overall.

Illustration of the 1999 version of Lord Licorice. He's posing rakishly like a pirate and wearing red gloves, a big black hat, and the braided red cape. There are bats around him. The castle behind him is now distinctly Arabian Nights.

lots to love about this 1999 Lord Licorice. ostentatious pose, saucy gloves, and the bitter chocolate bats are 1000 times better than the rock minions from the 1985 version. That said, he’s lost the braided hair already (BOOO! it made him look like a handsome pirate!) and the castle strikes me as a bit racist now, it’s gone all faux-Arabic and that’s a major downgrade even form the poop towers.

A blurry photo of the 50th Anniversary Edition Lord Licorice. He's much more human, with black hair, a regular pirate hat, and a white fur lining on his cape. He's also seated and not particularly evil looking.

I’m very intrigued by this, the 50th Anniversary Edition of Lord Licorice, but i can’t find any high-res images of him. he just looks like some guy. the castle design here is great, it looks very grounded in candy-reality and so does he. this would potentially be the sexiest lord licorice of all, but it needs WAY more bats.

An image from the Candy Land Adventures computer game. Against a pastel background is a cartoon pixel-art Lord Licorice. He's got black hair, a disgusting red and purple outfit, only 4 fingers and a very, very thin mustache.

as i said i was first exposed to Lord Licorice by the Candy Land Adventure computer game for Windows 3.1 and early Macs, which i played every single day because i was madly in love with Lord Licorice. i wish i was making this up. In retrospect, far from the sexiest lord licorice design, looks like he ties women to railroad tracks. there aren’t any bats either.

However, there is a scene where he gets menaced by a crocodile (just a regular crocodile, i’m not sure if it’s meant to be made of gummy or what as the animals in Candy Land Adventure seem real normal) and I remember wishing I was the crocodile. maybe i was recreating the Tick-Tock/Captain Hook dynamic?

Photo of the current design for Lord Licorice. He has a doughy face, hot pink hair and mustache, the gross red and purple color scheme has returned, and he has really huge floppy purple shoes for some reason.

anyway, all the modern Lord Licorices are dead to me. No sex appeal whatsoever. which is fine as it’s a board game for children, but as a weirdo in my early 30s i can’t say i approve. he looks like body dysmorphia packaged into a human being. just like the real thing, if i looked in the mirror and saw lord licorice i would get back in bed and go right to sleep.