Born: 9 September 1910, Canada
Died: 1 December 1988
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
Retired schoolteacher Eleanor Abbott invented Candy Land in a San Diego hospital in 1948, where she was recovering from polio and surrounded by children with the disease. She was inspired to create a game to entertain children during difficult and lonely times. Candy Land became so popular among the young patients that she decided to pitch it to toy manufacturer Milton Bradley. First distrubuted in 1949, it quickly became the company’s best-selling board game and continues to sell around 1 million copies each year. The Toy Industry Association named Candy Land the U.S.’s most popular toy of the 1940s and it was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong Museum in Rochester, New York in 2005.