The Toys That Built America

It's one of the biggest

toy industry events of the year.

Toy Fair is incredibly hard to get into,

incredibly hard to get access to.

- Hey, how are ya? - Hi, good morning!

Scott Abbott?

- Scott Abbott? - Chris Haney.

And two men believe

they have an innovative new game idea.

At Toy Fair, you're gonna see 500 new games,

50 will get into stores.

Of those 50, five will be profitable.

Producing a board game,

it's like getting a camel through the head of a needle.

I'm sorry, gentlemen, you're not on my list.

We're, uh, press.

They're attending the toy fair under a total guise.

Neither of them had any experience in game invention.

They really don't know

anything about board games as a product

and how to produce them.

But what's inside holds the key

to turning their idea into a revolutionary board game

that will go on to sell over 100 million copies

in more than 17 languages.

- A piece of macaroni? - Pasta.

A telephone?

And inspire the creation

of another iconic sensation.

Pictionary really introduced the concept

of what we know of today as party games.

If it's hard, let's go with it.

Together, they'll open up

a whole new category of games.

Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary

really created the adult board game market.

Taboo and Scattergories and Guesstures, Cranium

are direct descendants of Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary.

Giving rise to a multi-billion dollar industry.

But only if these outsiders can get through the door.

- - What publication did

you say you're from?

By the late 1970s,

the toy industry is dominated

by games and gadgets for children,

leaving adults with few options

besides cards or family board games.

There really wasn't an adult gaming culture.

You know, we didn't think in terms of a game night.

The board game market

was more or less exclusively for children.

Brightly colored plastic,

things like Chutes and Ladders,

Candy Land,

big, colorful pieces,

bright, colorful boards.

The conventional wisdom

was that adults don't play board games.

But one fateful night,

two men tap into something

that could forever change this.

What's the capital of Uruguay?

Uh...

- Montevideo? - Ah!

Chris Haney was a photojournalist

for the Montreal Gazette.

Chris Haney is quite the character.

He's a dropout, but not unintelligent.

He's super creative,

super gregarious,

fun to be around,

and he's pretty ambitious.

He wants to be a millionaire by the time he's 30.

And Scott Abbott was a sports writer

for the Canadian news agencies.

Haney was really destitute.

He and his wife and child

were living with Scott Abbott

in a small apartment.

Neither of them really had a penny to spare.

News is a little bit stale,

and Haney and Abbott are looking for something more.

One evening, they were gonna play a game of Scrabble,

only to find that their Scrabble set

was missing some tiles.

You wanna play another game?

Nah, I'd rather keep beating you at trivia questions.

- (scoffs) - You can't beat me

when we don't keep score.

What if we did?

They have this idea that they can make a board game

that brings people together

and really capitalizes on their love of trivia.

By 1979, trivia game shows

have been getting big ratings for nearly 40 years.

The quiz show format is the hallmark

of American entertainment,

from the radio days to the television days.

Trivia becomes popular with radio shows

like "Take It or Leave It"

and later with shows on television like "Jeopardy."

People in the 80s,

they grew up watching "Jeopardy."

But while successful on the air,

a trivia board game is uncharted territory.

Neither of them had any experience in game invention.

But they knew a lot about a lot of things,

so they were the perfect guys, actually,

to write a trivia game.

So for Haney and Abbott,

the question simply was going to be,

what's this game going to look like?

They are trying to figure out the right game board,

and Abbott is sketching a square,

which is kind of boring.

It's too traditional.

It's very much like Monopoly.

Here, try this.

It's bigger.

Maybe try a circle.

Ultimately, they landed on that beautiful classic circle.

A circular board game

is something that had not been done before.

At first glance, it might look like

maybe an old wagon wheel.

There was a circular path

that had six spokes and a center.

Each spoke represents

a different category to test players.

It was perfect from the vision they had for their game.

They split up the categories by types

like arts and literature

or science and nature,

sports and leisure,

entertainment, history, geography.

With colored spaces around the board

for each of the different categories.

If you landed on that color,

you got a question from that category.

What do we got?

With the categories down,

they now need to work out how to keep score.

You could have a score pad off to the side

that said I had 20 points and you had 15 points,

but it's off to the side and it's numbers.

But Abbott feels that this is inelegant.

So eventually, he comes up with this pie piece

and the pie wedge.

It sounds very simplistic, right?

But it echoed the pattern on the board itself,

and it's kind of cool that your piece

was also the way you kept score.

If you got it right,

then you got the little piece of the pie.

Your wedges created the tension

that you get from watching sports.

Who's in the lead?

What's gonna happen next?

It was a unique invention

that I don't think has really been replicated since.

After they play test the game,

Haney and Abbott add a few more challenges.

In order to win,

a seventh question had to be answered correctly.

The last question you have to answer

in the middle of the board,

you don't get to pick the topic.

You had to land on the center space

by exact count.

Now, this can be very frustrating.

When designing a game,

you don't want people who are behind

to feel like they can't win,

and so we do these things called catch-up features

that gives everyone the feeling

that they're still in the game.

Finally, someone gets that complete circle,

and visually, it's like,

"I did it. I completed it."

What should we call it?

Something with trivia.

Trivia Hunt?

Trivia Quest?

Trivia Pursuit?

Originally, they come up with the name Trivia Pursuit,

which is a great name in and of itself.

But then Chris Haney's wife, Sarah,

said, "You know, it would sound better

if it was Trivial Pursuit."

It's a Trivial Pursuit

because, ultimately, you guys are spending hours

sitting here arguing over

who knows what Ar is the symbol of on the periodic table.

Trivial Pursuit came together in one night,

which is quite an amazing feat,

and it was a remarkably simple conception.

However, when it comes to

actually producing the game,

they don't know where to begin.

Abbott and Haney really have no idea how to go about it.