A Most UN-Trivial Pursuit
On May 31st, 2010, Chris Haney, one of the co-creators of Trivial Pursuit, died in Toronto at the age of 59.
While working as photo editor at the Montreal Gazette in the mid-70s, Haney met fellow journalist Scott Abbott. In December 1979, Haney and Abbott sat down at the kitchen table for a friendly game of Scrabble. Haney noticed that several tiles were missing from the game and after returning from the store with replacement tiles, he remarked to Abbott that 'the Scrabble guys must be making a fortune’. That started the wheels turning, and according to Abbott: “We sat down – then and there – and started doodling a game board. The whole thing was done in 45 minutes.”
Bridging the gap from concept to market, however, was not without its challenges:
• Such an elaborate folding game board had never been seen before.
• Haney and Abbott reportedly spent $75 per game to produce the first 1,100 copies of TP. Essentially, the pair lost their shirts bringing the game to fruition.
• Trivial Pursuit finally debuted at the Canadian Toy Show in Toronto in 1981, followed by the Toy Fair in New York in 1982. Donkey Kong had just been released and Pac Man had been hungrily eating pac-dots (and coins) for a couple of years; fierce competition, to say the least.
• Each game contained a deck of 1,000 trivia cards. By the end of 1984, 20 million games of TP had been sold in the United States. That’s 20 billion cards, which accounted for 20% of mill production at Federal Paper, which was producing cigarette cartons for every single tobacco manufacturer in the U.S. at that time.
Haney, Abbott and their investors (a small group of co-workers, friends and family who chipped in about $1,000 each) persisted, and nearly 100 million copies of Trivial Pursuit have now been sold. In 2008, the game was sold to Hasbro (makers of Play-Doh, Nerf, Tonka and Potato Head) for a reported $80 million (U.S.).
OK, trivia buffs, time to put your game faces on:
Q. How many grooves are on one side of a 45 rpm record? [Answer to be posted here this afternoon, and sent by rss feed to subscribers].
Jennifer Hartman, guest blogger
