Troperville
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Some of the natives, along with the hereditary monarch (far right)
Travel Log, day 1: I have embarked on this journey to discover the mythical land of Sugar Bowl, beyond the singing mountains and in the country of tweeting baby birds, said to be full of strange people and creatures. I am excited and expect only the best!
Travel Log, day 5: Having entered the outskirts of this land, I've discovered that the wildlife is very... cute. There do not appear to be any predators, and they come up to me quite confidently and seek sweets or to play. Most amazingly, they all seem capable of speech! In the interests of science, I have also determined that they taste like chicken. The trees all appear to be perpetually in season and fruit-laden. The river, which I originally supposed to be contaminated with some white substance, is actually a river of... milk.
Travel Log, day 7: I have run across what appear to be some locals. They are short, pudgy, and high spirited, constantly singing and sharing. Their language seems like gibberish. I have dubbed them Sugbos. On further study, the high levels of sugar here seem to be causing me to develop diabetes.
Travel Log, day 16: Their society is quite fascinating; it is perhaps a Utopia. While they do not seem technologically advanced, living conditions are heavenly and could not be farther from base human nature. In an effort to enlighten the Sugbos, I am teaching them about money, taxation, slavery, and war.
Travel Log, day 42: I don't understand it, it makes no sense! Yesterday, the rebel Badniks had razed the capital city and started a campaign of genocide, but today it's as if none of that happened! Apparently, a small Sugbo child ran into the midst of the gunfire, started singing about sharing, and suddenly everyone was holding hands and, as if by magic, the entire city was restored!
Travel Log, day 167: I think I am going mad. The more I try to destwoy this bwasted, beautiful pwace, the more I fail and the wess I want too. They even keep shawing theiw sweets wif me!! Ow noh, ahm becoming one uv them, Aaaagh! ... Cwookie?
Travel Log, day 666: Auuuughhhhhh. ALL HUMANS. MUST DIE. YOU WILL BE ASSASSINATED. YOUR! DAYS! WILL! END! BADLY!
...
Were sorry for that, personally. We will not harm, inflict pain, or even touch yo- WE HAVE FALLEN AGAINST TIME! NO SUGAR MUST SHOW! ON! TO! HELL!
Editors Note: Further expeditions to explore or eradicate the Sugar Bowl Forbidden Zone have met the same fate. However, we have learned how to classify all such locations. Any place with overly friendly locals (human or not), idyllic landscapes, rustic yet amazingly hygienic towns, Harmless Villains, and Talking Animals is likely a Sugar Bowl. Be advised that proximity to, prolonged stays within, or merely entering such places may "naturalize" you into a local in body and/or mind.
Compare with: Level Ate, which covers settings that are literally made out of sugar. Contrast with Crapsaccharine World, the Mirror Universe of this trope. Not To Be Confused With the Mac Guffin in A Series Of Unfortunate Events.
We have one of these now.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Many of the later "Pretty Cure" movies involve the heroes having adventures in various Sugar Bowls, like the Kingdom of Sweets. In addition to that, the alternate worlds that the girls have to save in each season are inhabited by Ridiculously Cute Critters.
Literature
- The land of Oz under Princess Ozma, despite periodic threats from outside and certain parts of Oz of being way out there, generally follows this trope.
- In Hyperion the Priest's Story combines this with Body Horror.
Comic Book
- The French comic series Les Womoks, a sci-fi parody series about a bunch of sub-par space troopers, features the Albon, an alien Sugar Bowl civilisation of Ridiculously Cute Critters. They seldom come out of encounters with the Womoks without getting the business end of an explosion, yet somehow never lose their ludicrously optimistic view of life, even after their world gets invaded by the setting's Proud Warrior Race badguys. And after their homeworld gets blown to pieces in the following liberation? They happily live on the resulting Floating Continent Islands, happily enjoying the view.
Live Action TV
- LazyTown.
- This is a partial example at best. The point of the show is that the town is, while still "kids show" Ideal, far from perfect. Before Sportacus came, everyone was immensely Lazy (hence the name), and most of the kids were bratty. And, well, most of them still are.
- Wherever the hell Barney The Purple Dinosaur lives.
- In an example that is not a kid's show, Pushing Daisies. To balance it out, we get Deadpan Snarkers Lily and Emerson, and a whole lot of murder. Adorable murder.
- Yo Gabba Gabba
- The Puppet Land that Pee-wee's Playhouse was set in.
((Tabletop RP Gs))
- The Dungeons and Dragons Outer Plane of Elysium isn't quite this goody-goody, but it's still filled with magical Good-aligned humanimals, brims with bounteous natural beauty, and has an inconvenient habit of turning anyone who stays for more than a week or two into a blissed-out hippie zombie who can never leave. This trait of overwriting an original persona is shared with only ONE other Outer Plane, the ultimate evil realm of Hades; all the other Hells and Heavens at least let you keep your identity.
Theatre
- Babes In Toyland in the play and most film adaptations.
- Operating word being "most"; the late 1980s made-for-TV version featuring a pre-teen Drew Barrymore and a young Keanu Reeves had it's Nightmare Fuel moments.
Video Games
- Animal Crossing
- MySims and the sequel MySims Kingdoms, wherein your job is to make it even better.
- The bad guys in Razes Hell are Killer Rabbits who come from a Sugar Bowl.
- Dreamland, the main setting of the Kirby franchise. Its geography is even named after different types of kid's food.
- Peach's first board in the first Mario Party is a gigantic cake.
- As is Tart Top, a battle level from Mario Kart DS.
- Common to the point of cliché in 8-bit and 16-bit platformers,especially those with an Excuse Plot. E.g. Zool, James Pond: Robocod, Putty and others.
- Super Mario World is the best-known, with areas named after donuts, vanilla, chocolate and many cute (though often deadly) creatures.
- Zool 2 was actually sponsored by a lollipop sweet manufacturer (Chupa Chups), which subsequently turned up a lot in the game, making things even worse.
- Super Mario Galaxy has the Sweet Sweet Galaxy. It only has one star and happy (and familiar) music plays through the level. And, the star is found on a giant cake.
- Ironically, the actual gameplay of this level is one of the most difficult of the early game.
- Played for laughs with Toonstruck's Cutopia, ruled by a giant smiley face.
- Very, very, very, very subverted in Eversion. Let us leave it at that.
- Vigilante 8 on the N64 had a bonus map called Super Dreamland 64.
Web Comics
- Hello Cthulhu is about Lovecraftian horrors trapped in Sanrio's Sugar Bowl. Dagon, for example, runs a fish-and-chips shop.
- Kit'n'Kay Boodle
 is a VERY adult variant. (Warning: Will make you very sick of the word "Yiff")
- The (former) page quote from Order Of The Stick is some kind of inversion of this trope: the place Belkar is calling "Happy Fun Sunshine Land" is actually a city where it is not odd to walk down the street carrying a corpse with your dagger still in it. He calls it that
partly because there might be someone who could cure his illness there, partly because he's becoming delusional, and partly because he's Belkar Bitterleaf because he's feverish and delusional from the Mark of Justice curse, and has no idea what's actually going on. The magical fairy part is the only accurate part.
"Be very quiet, Mr. Scruffy! If we make any noise, the magical Cart Fairy might not take us on the enchanted trip to Happy Fun Sunshine Land!"
- Candyland (as illustrated above) is viciously yet hilariously parodied in this◊ notorious PBF strip.
- During the "Dimension of Pain" Sunday story arc in Sluggy Freelance, the Dimension of Pain was taken over by a sneaky angel who managed to briefly turn the Dimension of Pain into the Dimension of Fun. The demonic hordes became Care Bear parodies of themselves and the Demon King was turning into Mister Rogers. Fortunately, Lord Horribus returned from his exile and managed to make the angel Fall and become demonic, allowing the Dimension of Pain to be restored to it's original evil. Yay!
- Erfworld looks like one- at first. Sure, everything's cute, and they've got that lovable inability to pronounce the letter R (Spidews, anyone?), and nobody dies- they Croak instead. And possibly get raised as zombies by a Croakamancer. Oh, and peace is unimaginable to most people there.
Western Animation
- Care Bears
- Chorlton And The Wheelies
- The Gigglypuffs (not to be confused with a creature of a similar name), revealed to be using cereal to enslave planets. Nightmare Fuel, anyone?
- Sadly their actually called Gigglepies rather then Gigglypuffs. For extra points, they don't have much real interest in ruling. Once they've taken over the planet and had it's population spend most their economy on merchandise, they just blow it up.
- The Gummi Bears may be an exception to this— or at least not as happy go lucky as the other Disney shows. True, they live in a pretty happy Medieval world standard to the trope, but they are the last remnants of their once great race/civilization on Earth (well, the European part of it anyway) with a certain amount of sadness and Zeerust thrown in as well.
- The Magic Roundabout would almost certainly count if it wasn't for both Dougal And The Blue Cat and the recent movie
- My Little Pony
- Multiple ones. Each My Little Pony series takes place in a new location.
- The Smurfs. Gargamel has only succeeded in making one permanent change to the Smurf Village - introducing a female smurf.
- Imaginationland in South Park... that is until the terrorist attack.
- Imaginationland is arguably rather an example of a Crapsaccharine World. All your imaginations come into existence, and the darker ones have to be barred out by a wall, which is arguably always in danger of somehow breaking.
- The Powerpuff Girls: Him tricks Bubbles with one of these in "All Chalked Up." Clever — who would suspect a place like this of secretly being the creation of an evil, manipulative demon?
- The Happy Tree Friends appear to inhabit one of these until you keep watching.
- Pepperland in Yellow Submarine is a more adult version.
- In an early Simpsons episode, Homer sarcastically evokes this trope in a bitter moment ("Oh, look at me! I'm making people happy! I'm the Magical Man from Happy-Land, in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane!").
- In another episode, he misinterprets Germany's status as "the land of chocolate" in a memorable dream sequence. By the time the German he's speaking to snaps him out of it, 10 minutes have passed.
- Parodied in an animated segment on Wonder Showzen: "The Boogie Noogie Bunch".
- The Ro-Bear Berbils from Thundercats seems to be space-colonists from the Sugar Bowl. And true to their nature, they've set up a little piece of Sugar Bowl right in the middle of the mutant-infested swampland of Third Earth. A place filled with houses shaped like giant, pink mushrooms, where candy-canes grows in orchards. They also talk like smurfs, and all have names starting with a B. Isn't that right, Ro-Bear Bill? Berbil-fruit, anyone?
- On the other hand I do remember stories in the Thundercats UK comic where we saw that Sugar Bowl was a deliberate choice. They used to be cyborg-Bears rather than cyborg-Teddy-Bears but they are trying to be Space Amish while still having the Superweapon Surprise technology in their underground facilities to rebuild themselves in their spacefaring warlike image (the Thundercat they showed the hologram of what they used to look like was impressed enough to instantly agree to help them restore their facade of cute harmlessness).
- In the Darker And Edgier Thundercats: Dogs of War, they are wiped out by the Lizard Men after welcoming the invaders with flowers. This can probably be seen as trying too hard.
- Strawberryland in Strawberry Shortcake.
- In the episode Nevermore from Teen Titans, between all the Nightmare Fuel-ish landscapes that Beast Boy and Cyborg run into is one of these. Complete with floating strawberries. Beast Boy quips, "This must be where air freshener comes from."
- Bikini Bottom. Sometimes played straight, sometimes subverted.
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