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Podcast Episode Notes: Stuff You Should Know - The Trivial Pursuit Trivia Edition
Episode Overview
- Title: The Trivial Pursuit Trivia Edition
- Description: Josh and Chuck explore the history and impact of the board game Trivial Pursuit, a cultural phenomenon that became a holiday favorite.
Key Themes and Concepts
Introduction to Trivial Pursuit
- Nostalgia: Both hosts share personal memories of playing Trivial Pursuit in family settings, highlighting its significance in their upbringing.
- Cultural Impact: The game served as a bridge for generational knowledge transfer, introducing younger players to historical figures and events through trivia.
Origins of Trivia and Board Games
- Historical Context:
- Interest in trivia dates back to the 1930s with radio and TV quiz shows.
- The rise of pub quizzes in England set the stage for trivia’s resurgence in the U.S.
- Trivia vs. Trivial: The name change from "Trivia Pursuit" to "Trivial Pursuit" was a clever marketing strategy, emphasizing the lighthearted nature of the game.
The Creation of Trivial Pursuit
- Founders:
- Scott Abbott and Chris Haney, two Canadian journalists, devised the game concept in the late 1970s.
- Their initial idea stemmed from a desire to create a game that could capitalize on the trivia trend.
- Development Process:
- The duo quickly sketched the game design and categories that would form the basis of Trivial Pursuit.
- They gathered 6,000 questions from various resources while traveling in Spain, aiming for a balance of difficulty.
Launch and Success
- Initial Launch:
- Trivial Pursuit was trademarked in November 1981, with its first edition, the Genus edition, released shortly after.
- The game gained immediate popularity, especially during holiday seasons, selling out quickly in its initial year.
- Record Sales:
- By 1984, Trivial Pursuit had sold 20 million copies in the U.S., becoming a staple of social gatherings and family game nights.
Marketing and Cultural Phenomenon
- Celebrity Endorsements:
- The game featured in pop culture references, and marketing strategies included sending copies to celebrities.
- Media Attention:
- Articles and reports highlighted the game's rise, with mentions in major publications like *Time* and *The New York Times*.
- Boomer Connection:
- The game catered heavily to boomers, becoming a nostalgic pastime that helped reconnect players with their childhood memories.
Evolution and Variants
- Expansion of Editions:
- The game has spawned numerous themed editions, targeting various demographics and interests (e.g., Disney, sports).
- Modern Adaptations:
- New iterations of the game, including generative AI question creation, reflect changing societal interests and technological advancements.
Controversies
- Legal Issues:
- Several lawsuits arose regarding the game's development and question creation, notably concerning claims of idea theft.
- Challenges from individuals who believed they contributed to the game’s original concept were dismissed due to lack of evidence.
Reflection on the Game's Legacy
- Decline in Popularity:
- While Trivial Pursuit was a cultural icon during the 80s and 90s, its market presence has diminished with the rise of digital gaming and niche trivia products.
- Current Relevance:
- The hosts discuss their personal experiences with updated versions of the game and how nostalgia can sometimes clash with modern gameplay experiences.
Key Takeaways
- Trivial Pursuit as a Cultural Artifact: The game represents a significant moment in gaming history, bridging generational gaps and shaping social interactions.
- Evolution of Trivia: The nature of trivia and board games has changed over the decades, adapting to new audiences and technological advances.
- Nostalgia's Role in Gaming: Both hosts emphasize the power of nostalgia in maintaining the game's relevance and appeal to older generations while also introducing it to new players.
Listener Engagement
- Listener Mail: The hosts conclude with listener feedback, inviting more insights and experiences related to the topic, showcasing their engagement with their audience.
Conclusion
- The episode wraps up with holiday wishes and a reminder of the joy and connection that games like Trivial Pursuit can foster among friends and families.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:32aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle? A shady hypnosis scam? Or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people.
1:09Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, we always say new year, new me, but real change starts on the inside. It starts with giving your mind and your spirit the same attention you give your goals. Hey, everybody, it's Michelle Williams, host of Checking In on the Black Effect Podcast Network. And on my podcast, we talk mental health, healing, growth, and everything you need to step into your next season, whole and empowered. New year, real you. Listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:53Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
2:02Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's here, too. We're just rolling the dice and moving the pies. I call them pies, too. Yeah, because, I mean, it was like a pie piece. Yeah, I can't think of anything else you would call them. I think some people call them wedges, but they're clearly sickos. Yeah. Oh, I think they're officially wedges. Well, I've seen the guys who invented the game, so. Did you watch that video? Yeah. Oh, boy. We should probably tell everybody what we're talking about. First, this is Stuff You Should Know. Second, we're talking about Trivial Pursuit.
2:39Arguably one of the greatest board games ever created. And we're not just saying that because Stuff You Should Know has its own Trivial Pursuit edition. It's because it legitimately is such a great game. Yeah. Yeah, I played this game a lot when I was a kid. It was a family favorite. My mom really, really loved it. We were often a team together, my mom and I, so it's kind of one of my good childhood memories with her. I'll bet. Yeah, looking at the board and all, like, pictures of the board and some of the question cards and all that, like, I was just overwhelmed with nostalgia because it was a huge thing in my family, too, playing Trivial Pursuit.
3:17Boomer City, baby. I love that game. Yeah, for sure. As it turns out. For sure. And what's funny is it indoctrinated us into everything that boomers like. Like, it was a really, like, huge cultural transfer from one generation to the other in that way. Yeah. I mean, I was a 12-year-old who learned about Gunsmoke and Richard Nixon through playing Trivial Pursuit. Yeah. And Spiro Agnew from Mad Magazine. Oh, yeah. So we should probably start at the start. And that actually goes long before Trivial Pursuit was created, but not as far back as you would think. Like in the United States, we did a live episode on game shows that was really cool.
3:59And we talked about this some. But back as far back to the 30s on the radio and then later on TV, quiz shows were like all the rage. And America's had like fascinations with trivia and then got bored with it and then came and found it again and then got bored with it. And back in the 30s, that was one of the peaks where everybody was super into it. Yeah. Quiz shows were for sure big. I think, you know, Livia helped us with this. And I always kind of wondered about the word trivial because I thought that was a pretty genius. And we'll get to the name change because initially this was called Trivia Pursuit.
4:35And a lot of people called it Trivia Pursuit. But the change to trivial, I don't know, there was just something that made it a little cheeky maybe. Yeah, because you're not just talking about trivia. You're also poking fun at your own game, like you're putting all this effort into something that doesn't really matter in the end. Yeah, I guess so. But I thought it mattered. When I was a kid, I was now that I'm adult, I'm like, Trivia Pursuit is kind of a fun name. When I was a kid, I was like, this is not trivia. These are facts and figures. Right. It was weird. Oh, I took it seriously, too, for sure.
5:08I love Trivial Pursuit, too, but it was definitely in the vein of the people who invented this thing to kind of poke fun at themselves and even at you, the player, for playing it. Yeah, for sure. So pub quizzes were big in England before they were a big deal in the United States where we call it just bar trivia, I guess. But they kind of hit it big earlier on. So the world of trivia was gaining steam through the 1960s. I think there was a Columbia student named Edwin Goodgold, who I think he wrote a book, right? Right. He and another guy named Dan Karlinsky wrote a book simply called Trivia. Yeah.
5:48But he's credited as one of like the early people to spread the whole concept of being quizzed about inconsequential, usually pop culture questions to just show like how much you knew about your childhood. And that Edwin Goodgold thing, two things about him. He went on to become the manager of Shauna Na. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. And he wrote in Columbia University's, I guess their newspaper, he was one of their writers. He wrote that this is that these trivia games that are like the hot new thing on campus are played by young adults who on the one hand realize they have misspent their youth. Yet on the other hand, do not want to let go of it.
6:30And that was the whole idea. It was about all the stuff that you learned in your childhood from reading Superman comic books and listening to like gangster or seeing like gangster TV shows. just from being a kid, that's what the whole thing was based on. And that kind of became a tradition, too, that it was largely stuff in the past. A lot of it was pop culture. Yeah, exactly. And that was the mid-60s. The mid-70s is when the pub quizzes really took off in England. That didn't start in the U.S. until really after Trivial Pursuit. There was a time even where the TV show Jeopardy was not on the air because, like you said, there was just a waxing and waning on interest in trivia.
7:10But Jeopardy! came back in 84, and all of a sudden, you know, trivia started to be important in the United States again. Yeah, and I didn't see it anywhere, but I would put some serious money on the idea that Trivial Pursuit's success revived Jeopardy! Yeah, I bet it did. Because it was a huge, huge deal, as we'll see. Yeah, for sure. But the whole thing starts all the way back in 1979, in December of 1979, appropriately, because Trivial Pursuit and Christmas for its first few years of being out were synonymous with one another, essentially. Maybe synonymous isn't the right word, but they were, it was a big deal around Christmastime when it first came out.
7:52Yeah, and this is our pick. We kind of had a hard time deciding this year, but actually not really. It was a toss up, but we always do like a Christmas, you know, legendary Christmas gifts and pop culture history kind of episode. And this year we went with Trivial Pursuit because it was a big, you know, they as you'll see, you know, rolling out a board game in October and November is a pretty smart move. Sure. And these two guys, there are two Canadians. I read an article about them that was contemporary to them. In the Toronto Star, it said that they come off like the two original hosers. Yeah.
8:28Like even bigger hosers than Bob and Doug McKenzie is what they were saying. Yeah, there were a couple of hockey dudes, just hockey, beer drinking, Canadian, good old-fashioned Canadian hockey playing, or at least hockey watching. I bet they played too. They all played. Yeah, I think they definitely did. They certainly covered it. But one of them, Scott Abbott, was a sports reporter for the Canadian press, who I think his focus was on hockey. The other guy was Chris Haney. He was a photo editor at the Montreal Gazette. So these are a couple of late 70s, early 80s journalist dudes who wear mustaches and drink beer during their interviews on the news.
9:05And smoke. Yeah, and smoke during them, too. These were the guys who invented Trivial Pursuit. Yeah, Haney was a high school dropout. Abbott did have a master's degree in journalism from University of Tennessee. And he was living with Haney and his wife, Sarah, in their apartment in Montreal at the time. And as the legend goes, they're hanging out one day. It was kind of rainy. They were like, hey, let's play some Scrabble. They realized they didn't have some Scrabble. And then I saw a couple of different versions, kind of inconsequential, like whether or not he just dropped everything and went out and bought a Scrabble or whether just on his next shopping trip he did.
9:43But Haney would buy a Scrabble game, bring it back to play, and was like, you know what? I bought like six of these things over the years because I just keep losing them or leaving behind or loaning them out or something. And like, what a racket. Like, we should get into the gaming business. Yeah, that's how I was born. They just realized how many times he bought a Scrabble game. And they were like, we could do that. What a story. We should say, yeah, these guys, that was the kind of thing that they would talk about doing is making a game because they realized that other people have made money off of it.
10:15Yeah. Up to this point, their big claim to fame in their circle was having carried out a pyramid scheme with a chain letter. Yeah. That was actually successful in that they made money off of it and they never got caught for it either. So up to this point, so these were, that was these, this kind of, these kind of guys, right? And this particular idea though, kind of started to take shape really, really quickly. I think it was Chris Abbott or Scott Abbott who was like, well, how about something with trivia? And remember at the time, like trivia was not a hot item. And also as we'll see, board games were not a hot item.
10:55So these were like two bad ideas that these guys decided to put together and accidentally became a success. Or not accidentally. It ended up becoming a success. But it was like they figured it out really quickly, didn't they? Some might say suspiciously quickly. We'll get to that later. But as their story goes, in about 45 minutes time, and they're really specific about that. I never saw anywhere an hour. They always said 45 minutes. They got, you know, the game together. They got some construction paper. They started sketching things out. They based the design of the circular board on a ship's wheel with six spokes that corresponded to categories of geography, entertainment, sports and leisure, science and nature, arts and literature and history.
11:40and you would roll the die. You would move in any direction you wanted as long as it's only one direction. You get this little circular pie crust with six available pie slots. Right, not wedges. Not wedges. And the idea is you go around and you answer questions in the corresponding categories and when you answer them on the center of each spoke or I guess the landing point of each spoke, you would get to put in a pie piece. Once you have all those pie pieces in, you roll your way to the center, must have an exact roll, and then the other teams decide which category of question they want to randomly ask you.
12:21And if you make it, you win the game. If you miss it, you've got to roll back out and then answer questions and eventually roll back in. Yes, well put. I am not one for boasting, typically, but I will say that I once confirmed one, a game doing all the things you just said in 20 minutes. Wow. By yourself? No, no, no, not by myself. I was playing a dude at work at the liquor store. No, no, no. I mean, were you on a team by yourself? No, no, no, just me. Okay. That's what I was asking. Not literally playing by yourself. Boy, Josh, I mean, oh, nevermind. I mean, I guess if you were really honest, You could play by yourself, you know?
13:04You could sit around and read cards. I did that for a little while. That's not honest. I'm saying you could roll, you could move, you could ask yourself questions, answer them, and if you got it wrong. Yeah, yeah. Just talking different voices. No, good try, Chuck. Right. Great cast. You kind of ruined my 20-minute anecdote, frankly. No, I want to dwell back on that because 20 minutes, I mean, I played a lot of Trivial Pursuit, And I don't feel like we ever got through a game in less than that standard 45 minutes. It took two and a minute. Yeah. Yeah. It took a, it took a, it could take a while, especially if like they were just had a lot of people who, yeah, didn't, didn't know trivia, but yeah, it would usually take, yeah, 45 minutes an hour, depending on how fast every, everybody was moving.
13:48Yeah. Usually it took longer because the whole point was almost every question and answer would like generate a quick conversation. are usually short conversations, sometimes longer. Yeah. Exactly. And most of the times it was boomer parents, like, waxing philosophic about how great their stuff was. Right. Exactly to that, too. But that was the point. And that's one of the reasons it became so popular is, like, it was really easy to have a party centered on trivial pursuit. Yeah. So I don't think we mentioned you could have teams. I did sort of allude to that. But you could have, I mean, you could probably have as many people as you want on a team.
14:24but I think they suggested max of four, meaning a max of 24 players. And anything more than that would get a little unwieldy. But I feel like we were, and my family wasn't big, it was usually we were in pairs. Yeah, that was typically how it was done. So you could argue and be mad at one another when the other one insisted on the wrong answer. Yeah, and as a kid, I do also remember all of my family trying to nab me because I was the only one who really knew much about sports. Yeah, that was always my weak one, too. And that was always the one that would get picked for me if I ever made it to the middle.
14:58What was your category? Like, if you could pick your own final category, what would it be? It was usually history or entertainment. Yeah, I would say sports and leisure or entertainment for me. Yeah. Definitely not geography, still. Yeah, my worst was definitely sports and leisure. Yeah, geography was probably second. That's because they didn't have maths. Right. Only in the British version. So I mentioned the name change. That was Sarah, who was Haney's wife. Chris Haney's wife, Sarah, is the one that said, no, change it to trivial instead of trivia. I think it was a pretty great switch. And I think that's a pretty good intro.
15:41Oh, OK. Well, if that's the end of the intro, then, Chuck, I think we have to put an ad break in here. Yeah. Let's move along to act two right after this.
16:04Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one person billion dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen.
16:38I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
17:14When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. its crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits.
17:53He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The moments that shape us often begin with a simple question. What do I want my life to look like now? I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, and on Therapy for Black Girls, we create space for honest conversations about identity, relationships, mental health, and the choices that help us grow. As cybersecurity expert Camille Stewart-Gloster reminds us, we are in a divisive time where our comments are weaponized against us.
18:36And so what we find is a lot of Black women are standing up and speaking out because they feel the brunt of the pain. Each week, we explore the tools and insights that help you move with purpose, whether you're navigating something new or returning to yourself. If you're ready for thoughtful guidance and grounded support, this is the place for you. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
19:17so Haney and Abbott like they were like we're gonna do this and they came upon a great idea that they would visit a um a toy industry convention like the big one in Canada I think it was the Canadian Toy Manufacturers Trade Show I can't remember what it was called I looked it up but couldn't find anything on it. But they went, remember, they were journalists. So they went as reporters as if they were on an assignment to do a story on the toy industry, specifically the board game industry. So they used that cover to pick the brains of a bunch of people who were in the board game industry. And one of the, well, they found out a couple of things very quickly.
19:56They found out that the board game industry was in a slump. They also found out that it is a very, very closed industry. where if you're a newcomer with an idea, just hit the bricks. They're not going to listen to you. That's not how the board game industry works, and they figured this out. So they decided that from going to this conference, they were going to have to do this themselves. If they wanted to get this game out there, they were going to have to – they couldn't just sell the idea. They had to make the game first, and that's what they set about doing. Yeah, they were like, we did a pyramid scheme.
20:27We're good at selling things that don't exist. So they enlisted a little bit of help. They got Chris's brother, John Haney, on the team, and then a guy named Ed Warner who was a friend who was a corporate attorney. And they formed the Horn Abbott Company. Haney's nickname was The Horn. And Abbott, in this case with one T, was just a variation on Abbott's two-Ted name. And they started selling equity to raise a little money through friends and family. So they sold 40 shares at$1 ,000 each to 32 friends and family members. And, boy, you want to talk about an investment that paid off. For sure. Wow.
21:05Can you imagine? It'd be like one of the early, like, Apple stock or Google stock people, you know? Very similar to that. Not quite as lucrative, but still pretty well. The people who bought several shares each were set for life, basically, after the game hit. Oh, yeah. But at the time, Chris Haney told his mom she shouldn't invest. Yeah. And this is his idea, his business venture. That's how much he believed in it, I guess. But there's a guy named Michael Wurstland. And so this iconic, really elegant design for the package, the board itself, cards, all that stuff. It was Michael Wurstland's work.
21:46He was 18 at the time. That's just amazing. And he didn't get a dime up front for it. He did this work for five shares of stock in the company of equity. And, yeah, it was very smart, as we'll see. Yeah, so they managed to raise$40 ,000. They got a$75 ,000 line of credit from a bank, and that was enough dough to start getting this game together in earnest. The one thing they didn't have, they had design, they had it kind of all ready to go. They needed 6 ,000 questions. And so I assume with some of that, what is that, like close to 120 grand, they went to Spain in 1981 and they said, we're going to go drink beer on the beach and write questions.
22:32We're going to pack a bunch of dictionaries and encyclopedias and reference books and newspapers and we're going to go out there. We're going to write it for the American audience. Some of this stuff is going to be pretty obscure stuff. Some are going to be a little easier. They wanted to kind of give it a little bit of variety. And finally, in November 81, registered Trivial Pursuit as a trademark and then launched the Genus, not Genius edition. That same month is when that came out. Yeah, we should explain because I've never understood it until I started researching this. It's called genus because genus, you know, like in taxonomy, genus is above species.
23:17So there's a bunch of different variations of this thing. Another way to interpret or another definition of it, it's general. It's not specific. And so the questions in here were not, they were very general. You didn't have to be like a specialist in anything to play Trivial Pursuit. And if you were, you're kind of handicapped because there was a bunch of other questions that had nothing to do with your specialist or special. Yes. Specialist. Specialism. What is the word I'm looking for? Specialty. There you go. I think there's someone behind you with a giant Y like dancing up and down. I think there's somebody behind me with a hammer.
23:57Oh, no, no, no, no. So Toy Fair people were not too interested at first, at least. They got passed on from the bigs, Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley at the time, saying this is a really expensive game to produce. And I mean, that's something we learned a lot about and doing the Stuff You Should Know version is like cost of production is obviously a big deal. I just never we were like, you know, what if those pieces were like copper or something? And they were like, no, they're going to be punch out cardboard. But you guys are sweet. Yeah, we were like, well, what about plastic? They're like, keep guessing.
24:32Yeah. You know, Monopoly has all those solid lead figurines. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. None of that's happening. They give you brain damage if you play too much. Not to knock the team we worked with because they were great and the game turned out great. It's just how you make a game to make money. Yeah. We've said it before and we'll say it again. They were the greatest bunch of people that I've ever worked with as a group. As a group, they were as good as it comes. It was amazing. Yeah, it was pro top-to-bottom enthusiasm, just a sheer pleasure. Yeah. All right, so enough of that kissing up.
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25:07They got about 1 ,100 games made, sold them to local retailers, regional Canadian retailers basically, right before Christmas. And then this distributor of games, Chieftain Products, very smartly were like, hey, we'll put this thing together. My daughter, supposedly the vice president's daughter, really, really loved the game when she went away for a weekend and played it a lot. And it ended up being a great decision for them as well. Yeah, hugely consequential. And this was Christmas 1981. So this is the first Christmas that Trivial Pursuit comes out and makes a big splash because they sold out of those 1 ,100 games so quickly that by the time the end of the— by the time the next Christmas rolled around, they'd already sold 100 ,000 copies in Canada.
25:58And that's a lot. And it turns out it's even more than you think it is because at the time, a board game, to be a bestseller, sold about 10 ,000 copies. So this little... Independent. Yeah, a very independent game created by a couple of outsiders sold 10 times more than you would expect it to sell as a bestseller in this first year. Yeah, it was incredible. They were making everything in Canada at the time except for the dice. 3 ,500 games a day, but they still couldn't keep up with the pace. In 1983, finally, a U.S. company called Selcho and Richter, I guess, or Ryder? Ryder, yeah. Ryder. They licensed that game.
26:45They had real marketing money finally. they sold 1.3 million games in 1983 with that company. And one thing we haven't mentioned is this game was about double the cost of what a board game was at the time. $25 to$40, depending on where you went, that's up to$90 today. Oh, I saw$125 today. Oh, really? Yeah, I put$40 in for 1983 in West Egg, and it said$125. It told me$90. Oh, God. Oh, no. Oh, no. Inflation calculations are now in question. Oh, God. It must be having a bad day. This is the worst thing that's ever happened to us. Our beloved West Egg. Well, either way, let's settle at 110. Okay. Great.
27:31Perfect. But either way, that was about double the cost of a board game. So it was no small thing to plunk down that kind of money on this big, heavy, voluminous game. Voluptuous, too. So you said heavy. each game package weighed six pounds because they they really pulled out the stops in their the materials and like yeah it was cardboard and yeah it was plastic but it was really really well made well manufactured well designed cardboard and plastic put together and again that the just the look of it had such an elegant look it just didn't it did not look like other board games at the time it was like sorry or trouble or something like that you know where it's like wacky and there was like a cartoon explosion or something like that.
28:16Bunch of kids rolling dice on there. And that was a big deal too. There was no kid, no person anywhere on the box. The only person who showed up was the poet, the English poet, Alexander Pope, whose quote, what mighty contests arrived from trivial things was on the box. So this whole thing is so highbrow that it just doesn't even make sense. And yet that made people want it all the more. It was a brand new thing. It was a revival of board games is what Trivial Pursuit was when it came out. Yeah, and it was, I mean, it said four adults on the box, which turned out to be a stroke of genius. Because I even remember, I read an article in Slate that kind of drove this home.
29:00But I even remember kind of agreeing with what Slate was saying, which was like as a kid in the 80s, especially for kids in the 80s who had like narcissistic parents who didn't show them much attention. It was if you could play Trivial Pursuit and hang, it was a chance to sit at the adult table for a minute. Yeah. And to like interact with your parents for an hour a day. Yeah. And maybe make some extra allowance in the bargain. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, you throw a little money on it. You never know. Exactly. So this was Christmas 1983 that it blew up in the United States. And like when it blew up in the U.S., it like it it really just changed everything.
29:45Like you said, that first year they sold one point three million games. They sold 20 million the next year in 1984. And by January of 1984, right after it started to come out in the United States, The New York Times reported that people in New York were trading cocktail parties for trivial pursuit parties. And I was thinking about it. Yeah, right. Yeah. I don't think there's anything more insufferable than the New York Times reporting on what cool New Yorkers are doing right there. Right. This was a great example of that, the 80s version, too. Yeah, for sure. They had great marketing early on with this new company.
30:22There was a marketing consultant they hired named Linda Pisano who would send these games out to celebrities who were featured in questions in the game. And she got letters back from some of them, and she would publish those. She got letters from Pat Boone, Gregory Peck, and James Mason. The trio. Yeah, the boomers are just going nuts. And then to really drive it home, there was a Time magazine report that the cast of The Big Chill, the most boomer movie of all boomers, movies of all time, were unwinding between scenes, enjoying Trivial Pursuit and looking back at the nostalgia of their younger days.
31:02And that's it was that was peak boomer nostalgia, Trivial Pursuit reporting. Yeah, I've never seen that movie, but I do know that one of the characters lets her husband, I guess, impregnate, serve as like a surrogate sperm donor to her friend. Yeah. The only reason I know that is because there is a great Saturday Night Live skit about it. Oh, really? Yeah, and I guess did they show the wife who was, like, hanging out downstairs in the movie while they went upstairs or something like that? Yeah. So in the Saturday Night Live one, like, she's just sitting there, like, reflecting, like, drinking tea and, like, thinking about how great and just beautiful this is.
31:48The sound coming from upstairs, they're, like, really getting into it, and she's getting, like, more and more concerned and worried. I think I remember that. Yeah, I think it was Jan Hooks who was, like, the— The woman downstairs. It was a great sketch. Oh, that's funny. Well, that movie was very big in my house and that soundtrack. I mean, I joke about it now, but that's literally the thing that introduced me to Motown. Oh, yeah? As a kid, yeah, listening to – I was 12 years old or whatever it was, listening to Aretha Franklin and Four Tops and everyone else. Jeremiah was a bullfrog, which wasn't Motown.
32:22But if you want to hear a more in-depth conversation about that, you can listen to the Movie Crush episode featuring the wonderful and charming Janie Haddad Tompkins. Oh, nice. That was her pick, huh? That was her pick. Nice. Good movie, though. But now it suffers from anti-boomeritis. Oh, okay. So I should wait 10 years to see it? How do you feel about boomers right now? I'll wait 10 years to see it. Okay. All right. So 1984. Well, I guess we should mention that book in 1983. A guy named Robert J. Heller wrote a book called How to Win at Trivial Pursuit. Like, that's how big it got. I think like 96 trivia games trying to cash in on Trivial Pursuit's success and people writing books like How to Win at Trivial Pursuit in which Robert J.
33:12Heller said, why don't you just memorize all 6 ,000 cards? That became kind of an urban legend. Like, your cousin's friend memorized all 6 ,000 questions. Oh, really? that's funny. Yeah. And there were some other cute or interesting anecdotes, I guess, that kind of came out around the time. One was Ronald Reagan was reported on having played the game while he was waiting for the election results in 1984. And during the game, he got two questions about himself. And you can relax. He got them correct. Both of them. Well, that's the only thing Reagan I can do is the one word. One of the facts I saw bandied about in some of the reporting, that was a great Reagan, by the way, was that either Ronald Reagan signed Clark Gable's discharge papers from the Army or Clark Gable signed Ronald Reagan's.
34:07It depends on who you ask. Yes. Was one of them authorized to do so or were they just like, come over here, buddy, sign this thing? No, no. They just happened to be the luck of the draw as far as the arrangement went. Like they bore witness or something? No. I think like – let's say it was Clark Gable who signed them. He would have maybe been like higher up to Ronald Reagan. I got you. As Ronald Reagan was getting out, it happened to be Clark Gable rather than Colonel Joe Schmo. Yeah, yeah. I'm glad I complicated that. Very clean and cool story. uh another fun little trivial factoid and yes i'm saying factoid uh was that uh qe2 queen elizabeth ii hosted in the first nerd cruise it sounds like because she hosted an eight-day trivial pursuit tournament cruise in i guess 85 and so at each christmas 1983 it was like you could not find that thing.
35:04Yeah. In 1984, same deal. Like, it was really hard to find. But this time, Selchow and Ryder had, like, learned their lesson and were, like, keeping up with supply a lot better than they were at the very beginning of this whole thing. And so at the peak of this, I think it really peaked in 84, but that certainly continued on in the 1985. Oh, yeah. In the spring of 1985, 15 % of households in America had a Trivial Pursuit game in their house. I saw at some point it was 20%, one in five. Yeah, I think they're at about 80 million to date games. I believe that. Totally. That's just a staggering amount of games.
35:49I mean, my mom, you talked about how well it was made. My mom still has the OG from whatever, 40 years ago. Yeah, I'm sure it's just a little bit frayed in the parts where it folded and the rest of it's just fine. You can still read Richard Nixon on a third of those cards. Nice. There's a little cocaine in the little folds and tequila stains on some of the spots. Oh, not in my family, pal. So Trivial Pursuit is selling gangbusters. Abbott and Haney are rich dudes and also weirdly kind of celebrities. They were not shy. They loved to be on TV and to do interviews. They were in TV commercials. They were pitchmen for other brands like Amex and Diet Coke.
36:32And they would put that Trivial Pursuit branding on anything they thought they could make money of. And like you mentioned, those original investors did really, really well. There was an entertainment writer at the Toronto Globe and Mail named Susan Ferrier McKay, who took out a bank loan to buy 10 shares early on. and in 1984, she bought a house and then she retired not too long after that. Yeah, and Wurstland, the guy, the 18-year-old who did all the art, he founded a company called Wurstland Group, all one word, that became pretty successful marketers in Toronto and he used his money from his shares to start that.
37:11So it definitely paid off. And then, yeah, like you said, the Haney's and Chris Abbott or Scott Abbott were just mega rich from this. I mean, this game made hundreds of millions of dollars in the 80s, like 80s money. God knows what West Egg would convert that to. But there was a lot of money made off this, and you've got to think back. These were just a couple of dudes who had an idea and went with it. Although there were people who were like, yeah, it's questionable whether you had that idea, like you kind of referred to earlier, right? Yeah, there were two cases, at least like two notable court cases.
37:50One was a lawsuit in 1994 from a guy, an Australian named David Wall, who said, hey, in 1979, this Chris Haney guy picked me and my buddy up when we were hitchhiking, and we were in Nova Scotia, and while we were driving around, I told him about this idea for the game, like really specifically, like my mom has pictures of the wheel that I drew and the pie pieces and everything. And the court were like, well, where are those documents? And he's like, I don't have those anymore. And they said, we'll bring forward some witnesses. And he was like, no one, no one's really coming forward. They moved.
38:31Yeah, they moved away. Haney said, or he said that Haney later offered him shares like, hey, man, we're getting this game that you told me the idea for going, and I'm going to offer to buy you shares. This is a real thing. He refused. Had he bought those shares, he would have ended up a rich person as well. But in court, Haney was like, I never met this guy, never picked him up. They awarded him initially – well, not awarded him. He got$0, but the judge ruled in Haney's favor and awarded them$1.2 million in court costs. This is after a 13-year legal battle, But they reduced that to one million because they said, but you know what?
39:12Your big corporate attorneys came in and sued two of his witnesses. So we're going to knock off 200 grand and just make it a million. Yeah. I mean, imagine being that guy. You're like, you owe me tens of millions of dollars. And then 10 years later, you owe them a million dollars. Like, yeah, this is just some guy. He wasn't some like high flying jet setter who had a bunch of money. I don't know what happened to him. But I mean, he had a hard he didn't have the million bucks. I saw that. So they said they were looking to garnish his wages. And I was like, man, this just goes from bad to worse.
39:43Yeah. But I mean, this is the one guy who said that. And like you said, he didn't come up with witnesses or any kind of supporting evidence. And yeah, it's just not clear what the deal was, whether he was just looking for a payday or if he did get ripped off. But as far as the court's concerned, he definitely did not get ripped off. Yeah. What I was trying to find out was they, you know, they said they sued to first the judge said there was no witnesses. Then I find out that they had sued two of the witnesses, which they considered like, you know, witness intimidation or something. Sure. So I'm wondering if one of those witnesses they sued was like the friend that hitchhiked with them.
40:20And I'm just I couldn't find anything out. It's so hard to find out stuff about old court cases. Well, if it was like a David and Goliath thing where Goliath won, that would be very sad indeed. Yeah. What about the other one? I can't imagine that. Yeah, we'll move on because this one's getting really sad. The other one is the story of a guy named Fred L. Wirth. And if you are into trivia, Fred Wirth is essentially your messiah. He is the original trivia dude who's been writing books on trivia, books like containing trivia for decades and decades now. I don't know if he's still alive, but if he is, he's probably still going strong.
40:57And he apparently had published a three volume encyclopedia of trivia at some point. This is before Trivia Pursuit was launched. And he did something. You know how we've talked about map makers, like including like a fake town to basically protect their property, see if somebody ripped them off? Yeah. He did something with trivia question. He included a trick question in his stuff. He did. And that, well, it didn't bear fruit, but it played out in his favor. It was a question on Columbo, the TV show with, what's his name? Peter Falk. Peter Falk. I almost said Robert Blake. I used to get those confused.
41:36No, that was Beretta. Yeah, he's he's the one who murdered his wife in real life. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Peter Falk did not murder his wife as far as I know. But he he was Frank Columbo. And in the question, it was the answer was Philip Columbo. Like, what was Columbo's real name? And, you know, I don't know if anywhere else Philip Columbo had ever been printed. So it looked like pretty good proof to me. He sued for 300 million bucks, claimed that close to 1700 of the questions were his. And a judge threw it out and said, first of all, this game is a lot different than that book. And at which time Worth should have said, that's not what I'm saying.
42:16And then he said, but you can't copyright facts. No case. Which I officially feel bad for Worth because it seems clear to me that they took a lot of his questions. Yeah. I mean, they said that they used his book for creating these things. Like, they didn't deny that at all. But, yeah, I guess it was just their case was based on the idea that, like, a fact's a fact. Like, this guy didn't, it's not a creation of his own. Yeah. He found it, right? No, I get it. And I imagine Fred Worth probably thought that was like an iron-proof defense. Like, I tricked these people into putting this question in there and it didn't work out.
42:53I'm sure he was astonished when that came along, that ruling. But also, just before we move on, Chuck, I just want to tell all of our hardcore Columbo fan listeners to just stop your emails right now. We know for a fact that Frank is not, as far as canon goes, Columbo's first name. Canonically, Columbo doesn't have a first name or else his first name is Lieutenant. So Frank Columbo just happened to show up in a couple of screenshots that the producers of the show originally never intended anybody to be able to zoom in on. Boy, do you think there are any Columbo pet ants? Oh, yeah, definitely. That listen to this?
43:32Sure. Yeah, we got all kinds. Takes all kinds, Chuck. So the 90s are now upon us, and these guys are, they said they feel like rock stars, basically. They've got all kinds of money. Supposedly, John Haney, the brother that was brought in early on, they were talking about finances, and he said, We'll be great as long as we don't do anything stupid like invest in racehorses. So that's just what they did. Haney and Abbott invested in racehorses. But for Abbott, it paid off. He spent 50 grand on a yearling named Charlie Bailey that ended up winning about$900 ,000 in total purses over the years. Oh, yeah.
44:13And lots of studying out for big money. Oh, yeah. And they both invested in kind of built from the ground up these two golf courses in Canada. and Abbott bought, he was a big hockey guy, so he bought the Brampton Battalion at the time before moving them north and changing their name. And they are from the Ontario Hockey League. And I think he might still own them? Oh, yeah. I think so. I mean, this article I found was from the late 20-teens. Oh, yeah, probably then. Yeah, I don't see why he would have sold it. Oh, so they're now the Brampton Battalion, but they were the North Bay Battalion, right?
44:52No, no, no. They were Brampton, and now they're North Bay. Okay. I always get North Bay and Brampton confused. I do, too. So, Livia dug up a pretty interesting article written by who, Chuck? A guy named Ron Rodriguez. No, it's Juan Rodriguez. Oh, is it Juan? Yeah. Okay. So, Mr. Rodriguez is what we're going to call him from now on because his name is really hard to say, it turns out. um he he was a he wrote i think a daily quota 40 trivial pursuit questions a day obviously and only about half would get picked and we kind of went through that too because we helped out putting questions together for our version and um you they've asked for hundreds and hundreds of them and you're like okay well we're done they're like okay well we're going to use about a third of those so we're going to have to do this again a couple more times and it was like there weren't that many facts in all of the episodes, the stuff you should know, you guys.
45:51But we pulled it out. But I can feel Mr. Rodriguez's pain. Yeah, for sure. It was a lot of writing. He said that he used the dictionary of 20th century world politics, pop culture magazines. As his story goes, when he needed Rambo questions, he watched all the Rambo movies two times to come up with the best questions. and, you know, once you write them, they did, I think he had a partner, they had some researchers on the team, and they would fact check and do corrections and tweaks and stuff like that. Yeah, I should say we weren't actually writing the questions. We were coming up with the source material for the questions from the podcast.
46:30You just sitting there going, oh, no. Yeah, there's some writer at Hasbro who's like, uh.
46:37As far as the nitty gritty goes, questions have a maximum of 45 characters. They prefer two lines, even though there can be three. They just visually thought the two line questions look better. So they tried to edit them down when possible. Yeah. And then I think now over the years, there's been about 300 editions published. Wow. And very early on, they stayed fairly generalist. Although, I mean, let me take that back. They went from genus to silver screen edition, baby boomers edition, and I think a sports edition. But compared to some of the editions that they've come up with now, those are still pretty generalist.
47:23So another one was Disney. Disney was the first tie-in that they had in 1985. and that was still pretty general. It wasn't like Donald Duck facts specifically, right? Weirdly, here's a piece of trivia for you. The second brand tie-in that Trivial Pursuit released a game around was Fame, the TV show and movie. Oh, wow. Like I'm Going to Live Forever had its own Trivial Pursuit edition back in 1993. Was the first question, how long did the Fame people think they were going to live? That's a great question. I couldn't have been very as these additions weren't as big, though, right? There's no way.
48:04No. And that Slate article that you referred to, the author makes a case. They were basically saying I think the whole premise was Trivial Pursuit Lost Its Way. And this is about 10 years ago or something. And the premise or the thesis this author had was that it went from being general, where basically anybody could come along and try their hand at it, to increasingly more specific to where now you had to know everything there is to know about Harry Potter or everything there is to know about the Lord of the Rings or Friends or the Nightmare Before Christmas or that kind of thing. and that it just made it more and more narrow.
48:43It narrowed the pool so you have to have more and more additions to appeal to as many people as possible, whereas if you just made more generalist versions of the game, then you were always going to appeal to the most people possible. You know, some of those versions are definitely not my thing, but I'm not going to say it lost its way. I disagreed with that guy. And, like, if you want a Harry Potter edition, that's your jam, then, like, I love it. in fact I wouldn't mind a Friends edition now that I'm thinking of it I did today the Friends edition I think would be kind of fun for me or Seinfeld edition because I know those pretty well but I did today buy the Greatest Hits edition which is mainly 80s and 90s and a lot of pop culture and supposedly that's like a Gen X feast so I bought that today and hopefully I'll be getting it very soon.
49:36That's awesome I will be very disappointed if the Seinfeld edition doesn't have a question about who invaded Spain in the 900s and the answer is the moops. Right. It's got to. It has to. Yeah. We could probably write a Seinfeld edition. You and I could. Probably. They've come up with some other pretty cool ones, too. One's called X. It's for it's much more adult edgy questions. I think it's for 18 and up. And it's a stamp game where if you get it wrong, they stamp an X onto your forehead in ink. And once you get five stamps on your forehead, you're out. It is interesting. And then the weirdest edition I found, Chuck, was the EMS edition, Emergency Medical Services.
50:22Came out in 2012. Wow. And it had categories like trauma, illness, anatomy. Minor cuts, major cuts. Right. Yeah. I'd like to see some of those questions. I couldn't find them. And you can also play free online. There's a new version that came out this year called Trivial Pursuit Infinite. It uses generative AI to come up with questions. And if you are a TV watcher, you can watch the new Trivial Pursuit game on the CW that's hosted by the lovable LeVar Burton. Oh, we love LeVar. Everyone loves LeVar. Who doesn't? No one. Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I'm looking forward to playing.
51:07You know, I do have to say, I think I tried to play the original Genus sometime in the last, like, five or six years. It's been a minute. But I remember it didn't feel like it held up that well. And that's probably due to the fact that it was written in the 80s and it was geared toward boomers. Gotcha. But it was still okay. Can you give an example of how it didn't hold up or a general example? Well, just, you know, questions about Gunsmoke and Richard Nixon and over and over and over. I thought you were going to say it was like deeply sexist or something like that. No, no, no, no, not like that.
51:41It just felt a little dated question-wise. Like, hey, I mean, supposedly the Master's Edition is the one I think the gamer ranked in 2021 in a listicle. And the gamer said that the 2021 Master Edition was the best edition yet. But that classic edition has sold the lion's share of those 80 million versions. Yeah. Pretty impressive stuff. Yeah. I love these Christmas episodes, the pre-Christmas special, usually Christmas toy episode. Me too. So happy holidays to all of you out there. And the next time you see us, we're going to be on that ad-free holiday special. It's coming soon. Do you have a listener mail today?
52:29I do. Oh, great. Well, since Chuck answered in the affirmative when I asked him if he had a listener mail, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. Love your September episode on the history of music streaming. I grew up in the 90s. I can vividly remember being at my friend Ross's house downloading Weezer songs off of Napster and burning pirated versions onto CD-Rs. As the title suggests, I'm an active musician now, and I wanted to take a quick moment and give a shout-out to the music streaming platforms that didn't end up in the episode, like Bandcamp and SoundCloud. Oh, yeah. I feel bad we didn't mention these, and we just kind of went with the big corporate monoliths.
53:05As an independent artist, especially like how Bandcamp allows us to promote shows, discover, connect with other musicians directly, and the ability to customize the look and copy our releases, look and copy on our releases page. It's made getting gigs and connecting with other indie bands so much easier. I also found it interesting how the preferred medium of the day has informed artists' choices, has informed their choices when releasing music. In the 90s, albums were so much longer. He says, I'm looking at you, Smashing Pumpkins. Because a lone CD could hold more than a vinyl LP or cassette.
53:38Today, there is so much music available at our fingertips. Musicians are releasing shorter albums, digital mixtapes, and a steady stream of albumless singles, all in an attempt to stay relevant and capture fleeting attention spans of listeners. I'm curious to see what happens over the next decade. Thanks for your time and years of parasocial education and entertainment. This is from Chris in Seattle, and we actually met and hung out with Chris. When? Many, many years ago in Seattle. He was a friend of our booking agent, at least at the time, Josh Lindgren. Uh-huh. Well, he's still our booking agent.
54:14They were friends at the time, as far as I know. Oh, they're not friends anymore? Well, I don't know. I just didn't ask. But I was going to text Lindgren and ask if he knew him. But he came to the Neptune show, and I even rode in a car with him with Emily to some after party we went to. Wowee. Yeah, so good to be back in touch with Chris. Yeah. Yeah, thanks a lot, Chris. Thanks for getting back in touch. I think that that's no longer parasocial. That's just social. Yeah, you're right. Well, if you want to be like Chris and remind us that we've hung out with you before and also share some pretty great information and correct us for not shouting out an independent version of something we talked about, we love that kind of stuff.
54:51you can send us an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
55:15What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
56:20people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, we always say new year, new me, but real change starts on the inside. It starts with giving your mind and your spirit the same attention you give your goals. Hey, everybody, it's Michelle Williams, host of Checking In on the Black Effect Podcast Network. And on my podcast, we talk mental health, healing, growth, and everything you need to step into your next season, whole and empowered. New year, real you. Listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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From the publisher
For our annual pre-Holiday-Special-holiday-episode-about-a-holiday-toy we are jumping into one of the greatest games of all time, Trivial Pursuit (and we’re not just saying that because there’s an SYSK edition).
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