Canadian History for Kids: Trivial Pursuit

How much of a genus are you when it comes to trivia?

This Canadian History for Kids, Sketches of our Canada, looks at an amazing game where the players are in pursuit of trivia. The successful board game, Trivial Pursuit, was developed on December 15, 1979 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Trivial Pursuit was created by Canadians Chris Haney, an editor with The Gazette in Montreal and who died on May 31, 2010 at the age of 59 years old, and Scott Abbott, who was a sports editor for The Canadian Press.

The game involved answering 6,000 trivia questions which were coded by six categories (history, science, entertainment, sports, literature, and geography). The game is placed on a circular board cut into pie shapes by colourful squares. The winner of the game is the team that collects all the “pies” and answers the final question.

Over the years, there have been more editions created, such as The Beatles, Junior Edition, and Millennium. Do you know what the first edition was called? [the Genus edition].

There have also been a number of legal actions taken including one hitchhiker who claimed he told Chris Haney about his idea for the game, and an author, Fred Worth, who claimed many of the questions were taken from his trivia based books. While the pair confirmed some questions were taken from Mr. Worth’s books, they argued that facts were not protected by copyright and the court agreed.

While the first copies were sold at a loss and investors were hard to find, the game eventually took off and by 1984 had over $500 million in sales and eventually made over $1 billion. Trivia Pursuit is now sold in over 26 countries and 17 languages. At the top of its popularity, the American license was owned by Selchow & Righter. Hasbro bought the rights in 2008.

And that’s this week’s Canadian History for Kids, Sketches of our Canada.
 

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