WEBVTT - The Trivial Pursuit Trivia Edition 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:07.720 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.680 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:18.040 there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's here too. We're 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:24.760 just rolling the dice and moving the pies. Yeah, because 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:27.840 I mean it was like a pie piece. Yeah. I 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:29.720 can't think of anything else you call them. I think 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:32.680 some people call them wedges, but they're clearly sickos. Yeah. 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:34.280 Oh, I think they're officially wedges. 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:37.760 Well, I've seen the guys who invented the game. 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:39.720 So did you watch that video? 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:40.680 Yeah? 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:41.160 Oh boy. 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:43.840 We should probably tell everybody what we're talking about. First, 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:46.000 this is Stuff you should Know. Second, we're talking about 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:50.400 Trivial Pursuit. Arguably one of the greatest board games ever created. 0:00:50.840 --> 0:00:52.760 And we're not just saying that because Stuff you Should 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:55.800 Know has its own Trivial Pursuit edition. It's because it 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:57.800 legitimately is such a great game. 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:01.600 Yeah. I played this game a lot when I was 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:05.919 a kid. It was a family favorite. My mom really 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:10.080 really loved it. We were often a team together, my 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:11.600 mom and I, so it's kind of one of my 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:13.400 good childhood memories with her. 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.160 I'll bet Yeah, looking at the board and all like 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:19.360 pictures of the board and some of the question cards 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:22.959 and all that. Like, I was just overwhelmed with nostalgic 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:24.679 because it was a huge thing in my family too, 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:25.840 playing Trivial Pursuit. 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:27.480 Boomer City, Baby. 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:28.160 I love that game. 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:30.840 Yeah, for sure, as it turns out, for sure. 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:33.640 And what's funny is in doctrineeded us into everything that 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:37.479 Boomer's like. Like it was a really like huge cultural 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:40.360 transfer from one generation to the other in that way. 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:43.680 Yeah, I mean I was a twelve year old who 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:47.720 learned about gun smoke and Richard Nixon through playing Trivial Pursuit. 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:53.760 Yeah yeah, and Spiro Agnew from Mad Magazine. Oh yeah, 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:56.000 So we should probably start at the start, and that 0:01:56.080 --> 0:02:01.520 actually goes long before Trivial Pursuit was created, but not 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:03.360 as far back as you would think. Like in the 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.920 United States, we did a live episode on game shows 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:08.800 that was really cool, and we talked about this some 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:11.720 but back as far back to the thirties on the 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:14.920 radio and then later on TV, quiz shows were like 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:20.240 all the rage and America's had like fascinations with trivia 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:22.160 and then got bored with it and then came and 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:24.440 found it again and then got bored with it. And 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:27.720 back in the thirties that was one of the peaks 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:29.440 where everybody was super into it. 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:33.480 Yeah, quiz shows were for sure big. I think you know, 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:36.000 Lvia helped us with this. And I always kind of 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:39.359 wondered about the word trivial because I thought that was 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:41.360 a pretty genius And we'll get to the name change, 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:44.400 because initially this was called trivia pursuit, and a lot 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:48.200 of people called it trivia pursuit. But the change to trivial, 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:51.200 I don't know, that was just something that made it 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:53.160 a little cheeky. 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:56.960 Maybe yeah, because you're not just talking about trivia, you're 0:02:56.960 --> 0:03:00.480 also poking fun at your own game, Like you're putting 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:02.840 all this effort into something that doesn't really matter in 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:03.280 the end. 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.440 Yeah, I guess so. But I thought it mattered when 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:08.080 I was a kid. I was Now that i'm adult, 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:09.960 I'm like, trivia Pursuit's kind of a fun name. When 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:11.520 I was a kid, I was like, this is not trivia. 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:14.720 These are facts and figures, right, it's weird. 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:17.040 Oh I took it seriously too. Yeah, for sure, I 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:19.679 love trivial pursuit too, but it was definitely in the 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:22.000 vein of the people who invented this thing to kind 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:24.360 of poke fun at themselves and even at you, the 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:25.520 player for playing it. 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:29.880 Yeah, for sure. So pub quizzes were big in England 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:32.440 before they were a big deal in the United States, 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:35.800 where we call it just par trivia, I guess, but 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:38.720 they kind of hit it big earlier on. So the 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:42.000 world of trivia was gaining steam through the nineteen sixties. 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:47.480 I think there was a Columbia student named Edwin Goodgold 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:53.480 who I think he wrote a book, right, He and another. 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.880 Guy named Dan Karlinski wrote a book simply called Trivia. Yeah, 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:00.640 but he's credited as one of like the early people 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:05.080 to spread the whole concept of being quizzed about inconsequential 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:09.600 usually pop culture questions to just show like how much 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:13.080 you knew about your childhood and that Edwin Goodgold thing. 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:15.480 Two things about him. He went on to become the 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:21.159 manager of Shanna Nah really yeah, oh wow, And he 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:25.279 wrote in Columbia University's I guess their newspaper, he was 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:28.039 one of their writers. He wrote that this is that 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:30.200 these trivia games that are like the hot new thing 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:33.200 on campus are played by young adults who, on the 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:36.000 one hand, realize they have misspent their youth, yet on 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:37.960 the other hand, do not want to let go of it. 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:40.440 And that was the whole idea. It was about all 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:43.440 the stuff that you learned in your childhood from reading 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:47.240 Superman comic books and listening to like gangster or seen 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:51.800 like gangster TV shows, just from being a kid. That's 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:53.960 what the whole thing was based on. And that kind 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:57.600 of became a tradition too that it was largely stuff 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:00.880 in the past. A lot of it was pop culture. 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:03.839 Yeah, exactly, and that was the mid sixties. The mid 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:06.359 seventies is when the pub quizzes really took off in England. 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:10.279 That didn't start in the US untill really after Trivial Pursuit. 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:13.600 There was a time even where the TV show Jeopardy 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:15.560 was not on the air because like you said, there 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:18.320 was just a waxing and waning on interest in trivia. 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:22.120 But Jeopardy came back in eighty four and all of 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:25.760 a sudden, you know, trivia started to be important in 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:26.800 the United States again. 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:29.320 Yeah, and I didn't see it anywhere, but I would 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:32.880 put some serious money on the idea that Trivial Pursuits 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:34.839 success revived Jeopardy. 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:37.280 Yeah, I bet it did, because it was. 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:40.440 A huge, huge deal as we'll see, yeah, for sure, 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:42.719 But the whole thing starts all the way back in 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:46.080 nineteen seventy nine, in December of nineteen seventy nine, appropriately 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:50.359 because Trivial Pursuit and Christmas for its first few years 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:54.359 of being out, were synonymous with one another. Essentially, maybe 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.240 synonymous isn't the right word, but they were. It was 0:05:57.279 --> 0:05:59.400 a big deal around Christmas time when it first came out. 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:02.840 About that, Yeah, and this is our pick. We kind 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:04.880 of had a hard time deciding this year, but actually 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:07.760 not really. It was a toss up, but we always 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:11.200 do like a Christmas you know, legendary Christmas gifts in 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:13.800 pop culture history kind of episode, And this year we 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:16.800 went with Trivial Pursuit because it was a big you know, 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:18.919 they as you'll see that. You know, rolling out a 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:22.000 board game in October and November is a pretty smart 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:23.720 move for sure. 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.240 And these two guys, there are two Canadians. I read 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:31.560 an article about them that was contemporary to them in 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:34.240 the Toronto Star. It said that they come off like 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:38.000 the two original Hosers. Yeah, even bigger Hosers than Bob 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:39.640 and Doug Mackenzie is what they were saying. 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:42.960 Yeah, there were a couple of hockey dudes, just hockey 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:47.039 beer drinking, Canadian, good old fashioned Canadian hockey playing. They're 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:48.880 at least hockey watching. I bet they played too. They 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:49.360 all played. 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:52.280 Yeah, I think they definitely did. They certainly covered it. 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:54.680 One of them, Scott Abbott, was a sports reporter for 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:57.920 the Canadian Press who I think his focus was on hockey. 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:00.400 The other guy was Chris Haney. He was a photo 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:02.599 editor at the Montreal Gazette. So these are a couple 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:10.080 of late seventies early eighties journalist dudes who wear mustaches 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:14.080 and drink beer during their interviews on the news and 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:17.360 smoke like yeah, and smoke during them too, like this 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:20.160 would These were the guys who invented trivial pursuit. 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:23.560 Yeah. Hani was a high school dropout. Abbott did have 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:27.040 a master's degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:31.120 and he was living with Haney and his wife Sarah 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:33.640 in their apartment in Montreal at the time. And as 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.680 the legend goes, they're hanging out one day it was 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:39.720 kind of rainy, they were like, hey, let's play some scrabble. 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:43.040 They realized they didn't have some scrabble, and then I 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:46.679 saw a couple of different versions. It kind of inconsequential, 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:48.920 like whether or not he just dropped everything and went 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:50.640 out and bought a scrabble or whether just on his 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:53.240 next shopping trip he did. But Hani would buy a 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:56.000 scrabble game, bring it back to play and was like, 0:07:56.040 --> 0:07:57.840 you know what, I bought like six of these things 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:00.600 over the years because I just keep losing number leaving 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:02.880 behind or learning them out or something, and like what 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:06.320 a racket, Like we should get into the gaming business. 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:09.360 Yeah, that's how I was born. They just realized how 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:12.200 how many times he bought a scrabble game, and they 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:13.880 were like, we should we could do that. 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:14.840 We should say. 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:17.520 Yeah, these guys, that was the kind of thing that 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.120 they would talk about doing, is making a game because 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:22.920 they realized that you could that other people have made 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:23.680 money off of it. 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:24.840 Yeah. 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:28.160 Up to this point, their big claim to fame in 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:32.640 their circle was having carried out a pyramid scheme with 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:35.959 a chain letter that was actually successful in that they 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:38.440 made money off of it and they never got caught 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:41.240 for it either. So up to this point, so these 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:43.679 were that was these this kind of these kind of 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:48.920 guys right, And this particular idea though, kind of started 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:52.640 to take shape really really quickly. I think it was 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:56.080 Chris Abber Scott Abbott who was like, well, how about 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:59.040 something with trivia. And remember, at the time, like trivia 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:02.160 was not hot item, and also, as we'll see, board 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:04.480 games were not a high item. So these were like 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.760 two bad ideas that these guys decided to put together 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:11.319 and accidentally became a success, or not accidentally it ended 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:13.720 up becoming a success. But it was like they figured 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:15.319 it out really quickly, didn't they. 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:18.880 Some might say suspiciously quickly. We'll get to that later. 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:23.480 But as their story goes at about forty five minutes time, 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:26.520 and they're really specific about that. I'd never saw anywhere 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:29.920 an hour. They always said forty five minutes. They got, 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:32.280 you know, the game together, They got some construction paper, 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:37.400 they started sketching things out. They based the design of 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:40.400 the circular board on a ship's wheel with six spokes 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:45.320 that corresponded to categories of geography, entertainment, sports and leisure, 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:49.480 science and nature, arts and literature, and history. And you 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:53.240 would roll the die. You would move in any direction 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:55.920 you wanted, as long as it's only one direction. You 0:09:56.360 --> 0:10:01.760 get this little circular pie crust with six available pie slots, 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:06.080 right wedges not wedges. And the idea is you go 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:09.280 around and you answer questions in the corresponding categories, and 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:12.760 when you answer them on the center of each spoke 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:16.079 or I guess the landing point of each spoke, you 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:18.240 would get to put in a pie piece. Once you 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:21.000 have all those pie pieces in, you roll your way 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:23.760 to the center. Must have an exact role, and then 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:27.839 the other teams decide which category of question they want 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:30.880 to randomly ask you and if you miss you if 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:32.360 you make it, you win the game. If you miss it, 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:35.080 you got to roll back out and then answer questions 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:36.000 eventually roll back in. 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:41.960 Yes, well put. I am not one for boasting typically, 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.600 but I will say that I once confirmed one a 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:49.880 game doing all the things you just said in twenty minutes. 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:52.400 The wow by yourself? 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:55.760 No no, no, not by myself. It's playing a dude 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:57.320 at work at the liquor store. 0:10:57.520 --> 0:10:59.720 No no, no, I mean, were you on a team by yourself? 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:02.480 No? Oh no, just me, Okay, that's what. 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:08.200 I was asking, not literally playing boy, Josh. I'll never mind. 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:10.280 I mean, I guess if you were really honest you 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:11.480 could play by yourself. 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:14.400 You know, he gets it around recards. I did that 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:15.160 for a little while. 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:18.240 That's not honest. I'm saying you could roll, you could move, 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:21.000 you could ask yourself questions, answer them and yeah, got 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:21.400 it wrong. 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:24.560 Yeah, just you could talk in different voices. No, good, 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:26.880 try chuck right, great. 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:28.800 You kind of ruined my twenty minute anecdote. 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:32.240 Frankly, no, I want to dwell back on that, because 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:35.600 twenty minutes. I mean, I played a lot of trivial pursuit, 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:37.200 and I don't feel like we ever got through a 0:11:37.200 --> 0:11:40.360 game in less than that standard forty five minutes. It 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:41.160 took to an a minute. 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:44.120 Yeah, yeah, it took It took a It could take 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:46.920 a while, especially if like they were just had a 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:50.560 lot of people who yeah, didn't didn't know trivia. But yeah, 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:54.200 it would usually take yeah, forty five minutes an hour, 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:57.800 depending on how fast everybody was moving. Usually it took 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:01.440 longer because the whole point was almost every question and 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:06.120 answer would like generate a quick conversation or usually a 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:09.280 short conversation, sometimes longer, yeah, exactly, And. 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:12.080 Most of the times it was boomer parents like waxing 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:13.560 philosophic about how great their. 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:17.000 Stuff was right exactly to that too. But that was 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:19.079 the point, and that's one of the reasons it became 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:21.520 so popular, is like it was really easy to have 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:23.760 a party centered on trivial pursuit. 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:26.600 Yeah, so I don't think we mentioned you could you 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:28.440 could have teams. I did sort of allude to that, 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:30.960 but you could have I mean, you could probably have 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:32.480 as many people as you want on a team, but 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:35.760 I think they suggested max of four, meaning a max 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:37.800 of twenty four players, and anything more than that would 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:40.160 get at unwieldy. But I feel like we were and 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:43.679 my family wasn't big. It was usually we were in pairs. 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:46.720 Yeah, that was typically how it was done, so you 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:49.520 could argue and be mad at one another one the 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:51.800 other one insisted on the wrong answer. 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:56.120 Yeah, And as a kid, I do also remember all 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:58.319 of my family trying to nab me because I was 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:00.479 the only one who really knew much about sport. 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:03.440 Yeah. That was always my weak one too, and that 0:13:03.559 --> 0:13:05.320 was always the one that would get picked for me 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:06.800 if I ever made it to the middle. 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:08.679 What was your category? Like, if you could pick your 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:10.360 own final category, what would it be? 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:13.160 It was usually history or entertainment. 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:16.720 Yeah, I would say, I would say sports and leisure 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:19.559 or entertainment for me, Yeah, definitely not geography. 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:23.679 Still, yeah, my worst was definitely sports and leisure, and 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:26.040 I would yeah, geography was probably second. 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:29.640 That's because they didn't have masths. 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:31.440 Right, only in the British version. 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:36.560 So I mentioned the name change. That was Sarah, who 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:40.559 was Hani's wife, Chris Haney's wife. Sarah is the one 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:43.120 that said now change it to trivial instead of trivia. 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:46.560 I think it was a pretty great switch. And I 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:48.120 think that's a pretty good intro. 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:52.080 Oh okay, well if that's the end of the intro, 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:53.960 then Chuck, I think we have to put an ad 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:54.600 break in here. 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:56.280 Yeah, let's move along to Act two. 0:13:56.400 --> 0:14:27.880 Right after this, so Hani and Abbott like they were like, 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.520 we're gonna do this, and they came upon a great 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:36.640 idea that they would visit a toy industry convention, like 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:39.000 the big one in Canada. I think it was the 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:42.120 Canadian Toy Manufacturer's Trade Show. I can't remember what's called. 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:43.880 I looked it up and couldn't find anything on it. 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:47.880 But they went. Remember they were journalists, so they went 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:51.200 as reporters as if they were on an assignment to 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:54.880 do a story on the toy industry, specifically the board 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:58.080 game industry. So they used that cover to pick the 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:01.080 brains of a bunch of people who we're in the 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:03.440 board game industry and one of the well, they found 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.360 out a couple of things very quickly. They found out 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:08.960 that the board game industry was in a slump. They 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:12.760 also found out that is a very very closed industry 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:16.160 where if you're a newcomer with an idea, just hit 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:18.200 the bricks like they're not going to listen to you. 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:20.360 That's not how the board game industry works. And they 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:23.840 figured this out. So they decided that from going to 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:25.720 this conference they were going to have to do this themself. 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:28.320 If they wanted to get this game out there, they 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:30.880 were going to have to They couldn't just sell the idea. 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:32.880 They had to make the game first. And that's what 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:34.000 they said about doing. 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:36.480 Yeah, they were like, we did a pyramid scheme. We're 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:39.840 good at selling things that don't exist. So they enlisted 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:41.600 a little bit of help. They got Chris's brother, John 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:43.280 Haney on the team, and then a guy named Ed 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:47.120 Werner who was a friend who's a corporate attorney, and 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:51.080 they formed the horn Abbot Company. Hani's sickname was the Horn, 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.040 and Abbot in this case with one tee was just 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:57.560 a variation on Abbot's two teed name. And they started 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:01.760 selling equity to raise a little money through friends and family. 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:04.720 So they sold forty shares at one thousand dollars each 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:09.920 to thirty two friends and family members. And boy, you 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:13.800 want to talk about an investment that paid off for sure? Wow? 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:15.960 Can you imagine it'd be like one of the early 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:19.680 Apple stock or Google stock, right, you know. 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:23.400 Very similar to that, not quite as lucrative, but still 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:26.720 pretty well. The people who bought several shares each were 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:30.600 set for life basically after the game hit. Oh yeah, 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:34.080 but at the time Chris Haney told his mom she 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:38.680 shouldn't invest. Yeah, and this is his idea, his business venture. 0:16:38.800 --> 0:16:41.480 That's how much he paged in it, I guess. But 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:46.280 there's a guy named Michael Worstlin, and so this iconic, 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:52.280 really elegant design for the package, the board itself, cards, 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:55.840 all that stuff. It was Michael Worstlin's work. He was 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:57.040 eighteen at the time. 0:16:57.120 --> 0:16:58.239 That's just amazing. 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:00.840 And he didn't get a dime front for it. He 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:05.320 did this work for five shares of stock in the company. 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:08.679 Of equity and yeah, it was very smart, as we'll see. 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:12.840 Yeah, so they managed to raise forty grand. They got 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.639 a seventy five thousand dollars line of credit from a bank, 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:19.520 and that was enough dough to start getting this game 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.439 together in earnest. The one thing they didn't have they 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:24.760 had design, They had it kind of all ready to go. 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:29.159 They needed six thousand questions and so I assume with 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:32.199 some of that, what is that like close to one 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:36.560 hundred and twenty grand. They went to Spain in nineteen 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:39.400 eighty one and they said, we're going to go drink 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:41.600 beer on the beach and write questions. We're going to 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:46.560 pack a bunch of you know, dictionaries and encyclopedias and 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:51.560 reference books and newspapers, and we're going to go out there. 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:54.679 We're going to write it for the American audience. Some 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:57.600 of this stuff's going to be pretty obscure stuff. Some 0:17:57.760 --> 0:17:59.080 is going to be you know, some are going to 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:00.720 be a little easier. They wanted to kind of give 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:04.400 it a little bit of variety, and finally, in November 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:08.920 eighty one, registered Trivial Pursuit as a trademark and then 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:14.320 launched the Genus not Genius edition that same month is 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:15.040 when that came out. 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:19.240 Yeah, we should explain, because I've never understood it until 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:23.719 I started researching this. It's called genus because genus, you know, 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:26.920 like in taxonomy, genus is above species. So yeah, there's 0:18:27.000 --> 0:18:31.960 a bunch of different variations of this thing. Another way 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:36.080 to interpret another definition of it. It's general, it's not specific, 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:39.120 and so the questions in here were not They were 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:42.159 very general. You didn't have to be like a specialist 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:45.600 in anything to play trivial pursuit, and if you were, 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:48.439 you're kind of handicapped because there was a bunch of 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:50.919 other questions that had nothing to do with your specialist 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:57.360 or special Yes, specialist, specialism, what's the word I'm looking for? Specialty? 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:01.080 You go, I think or something behind you with the 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:03.440 giant y like dancing up and down. 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:06.000 I think there's somebody behind me with a hammer. 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:11.000 Oh no, no, no, no. So toy Fair people were 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.720 not too interested at first, at least they got passed 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:18.239 on from the bigs Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley at 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:21.199 the time, saying this is a really expensive game to produce, 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:24.000 and I mean that's something we learned a lot about 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:26.040 and doing this stuff you should know version is like, 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:29.159 cost of production is obviously a big deal. I just 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:31.280 never we were like, you know what if those pieces 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:34.280 were like copper or something, and they're like, uh no, 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:37.000 they're gonna be punch out cardboard. But you got you 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:37.719 guys are sweet. 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:40.280 Yeah. We were like, well what about plastic. They're like 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:41.360 we keep guessing. 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:44.920 Yeah, you know Monopoly has all those solid lead figurines, 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:47.200 and they're like no, no, no, no, no no no. 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:49.200 That's brain damage if you play too much. 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:52.280 Not to knock the team we worked with, because they 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:55.040 werenating the game turned out great. It's just it's just 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:56.600 how you make a game to make money. 0:19:57.040 --> 0:19:59.000 Yeah, we said it before and we'll say it again. 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:02.720 Like they were the greatest bunch of people that I've 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:05.160 ever worked with as a group. Like, as a group, 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:07.160 they were as good as it comes. It was amazing. 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:10.840 Yeah, it was pro top to bottom enthusiasm, just a 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:15.400 sheer pleasure. Yeah all right, so enough of that kissing up. 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:20.520 They got about eleven hundred games made, sold them to 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:27.000 local retailers, regional Canadian retailers, basically right before Christmas, and 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:33.600 then this distributor of games Cheaptain products very smartly were like, hey, 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:37.440 we'll put this thing together. My daughter, supposedly the vice 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:40.200 president's daughter, really really loved the game when she went 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:41.760 away for a weekend and played it a lot, and 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:44.240