1950s Trivia: A Few Fun Questions That Will Put Your Toy & Game Knowledge to the Test
If you grew up in the baby boom era of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, chances are you have fond memories of the toys and games that were made popular back then.
In our game Boom Again, we invite players to have fun remembering the best of the pop culture of the era—the fads, the music, the movies and, yes, the things we played with as well.
Here, we’ve handpicked a few of the questions from the game to test how well you know specifically your toy and game 1950s trivia—plus share a few fun facts that maybe you didn’t know.
So, for the first question:
If you rolled five that matched, you yelled out the title of what best-selling game?
If you guessed Yahtzee, that’s right! Originally dubbed “The Yacht Game,” it was invented by a wealthy Canadian couple in 1954. The dice rolling game was a big hit with their friends when they’d all play it aboard their yacht.
Two years later, the couple approached Edwin S. Lowe—a man who’d made his fortune selling Bingo sets in the 1920s—to see if he could produce sets that they could give to their friends. He instead acquired the rights to the game and renamed it “Yahtzee.”
Surprisingly—considering it’s now a classic—Yahtzee wasn’t an instant hit. However, its popularity grew both by word of mouth and because people started hosting Yahtzee parties in their homes.
Ready for the next toy and game 1950s trivia teaser? Here we go:
Name the classic toy that was designed by the son of Frank Lloyd Wright and was named for the 16th president’s childhood experience.
The answer is…Lincoln Logs. If you were a kid during the baby boom era, most likely you had a set of these miniature wooden logs of varying lengths that you fitted together to build log houses and other buildings.
Lincoln Logs were invented by a then 25-year-old John Lloyd Wright, son of the famed architect. While working with his father, he’d been inspired by the Japanese methods for intricately weaving wood together in their buildings.
The toy is named after President Abraham Lincoln, who was famous for chopping logs to build houses. Early packages featured a picture of Lincoln and showed how to make a frontier log cabin.
Lincoln Logs came on the market in 1927 and were a toy box staple in the 1950s. They are in fact considered one of the most popular and successful toys of the century.
No toy and game 1950s trivia would be complete without this question:
What fun company brought us the Hula Hoop, Frisbee and Slip ‘N Slide?
Of course, it’s the famous Wham-O company—which is still around today. Wham-O’s first product was a slingshot, and the company is actually named after the sound a slingshot made when it hit its target. (Wham-O also marketed very real crossbows, machetes, boomerangs and throwing knives.)
The Hula Hoop was inspired by bamboo exercise rings that were popular with children in Australia. In less than four months after the Hula Hoop was introduced in 1957, more than 25 million were sold.
The Frisbee and the Hula Hoop, along with another Wham-O Toy—the Superball—have all been inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame.
One classic toy was an accident. It started out as a compound to clean wallpaper but was fun to work with. What is its famous brand name?
It’s Play-Doh—and it saved the fortunes of Kutol, a failing Cincinnati company. Kutol’s chief product was a compound used to wipe soot from wallpaper, but by the 1950s as homes switched from coal to cleaner heating options, the product was no longer in demand.
Luckily, the sister-in-law of one of its principals had read about how wallpaper cleaner could be used for modeling projects. A nursery school teacher, she not only suggested that it be marketed as a toy for kids, but she even came up with the name!
Play-Doh has sold more than 3 billion cans since its debut as a child’s toy in 1956. We’ll bet that if you played with it back in the day, you can still these many decades later remember exactly how it smells… and probably how it tastes as well.
And just for fun, a couple more quick toy and game 1950s trivia questions:
Name the classic Milton Bradley kids game that was advertised as “A sweet little game for sweet little folks.”
The word “sweet” was your tip off, because the game was Candy Land. The game was invented in the 1940s to entertain hospitalized children during the Polio epidemic. Milton Bradley began selling it in 1949—and by the 1950s it was a huge hit.
What was the relationship between the Sunday newspaper and your Silly Putty?
If you were a kid in the boom era, you know this one: When you pressed the silly putty on the newspaper, it copied the image.
Silly Putty was discovered in 1943 by James Wright as a mix of boric acid and silicone oil that produced a moldable, bounceable substance. It went on the market as a toy in 1950.
While it’s still around today—because of advances in printing methods—the newspaper copying trick doesn’t really work anymore.
So how did you rate your toy and game trivia? Even if you didn’t get them all right, wasn’t it fun to take a trip down memory lane?
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