80s Cartoons Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
This 80s cartoon trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the decade when toy companies took over Saturday morning and the after-school slot: He-Man and She-Ra, Transformers and G.I. Joe, ThunderCats, Voltron, Jem, My Little Pony, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Disney afternoon that started with Gummi Bears and DuckTales. It also has room for the Smurfs, Inspector Gadget, Muppet Babies, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Dungeons & Dragons, The Real Ghostbusters, Danger Mouse and Count Duckula, the Pac-Man cartoon, and the December 1989 night The Simpsons became a series. The questions run from ones anyone who owned a lunchbox will get (what Prince Adam shouts, who Skeletor wants to conquer) to ones for people who read the credits: which Marvel editor invented the Autobots and Decepticons, which studio animated ThunderCats, why the Ghostbusters cartoon needed the word Real, and what Orson Welles was doing five days before he died. Every answer was checked against a reference source and each question shows its citation once you have answered, so it works for a nostalgia round at a pub quiz or an argument-settler in the group chat.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Filmation's 1983 cartoon He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was based on which company's toy line?
Mattel
Mattel had passed on the Star Wars toy licence in 1976, balking at the $750,000 price, and spent years chasing a hit of its own. He-Man reached shops in 1982, and the cartoon followed a year later.
Q 02What is the name of Prince Adam's pet tiger, who transforms into Battle Cat?
Cringer
Cringer's fierce other half began as a money-saver: rather than pay for a new toy, the makers reused a tiger from their older Big Jim line. It was far too big for the figures, so it got a saddle and became He-Man's mount.
Q 03Which fortress is Skeletor's main goal, since He-Man draws his power from it?
Castle Grayskull
Castle Grayskull is the name Prince Adam calls on each time he raises his sword to transform. Its guardian, the Sorceress, is powerful only inside its walls; beyond them she can do little more than turn into a falcon.
Q 04Prince Adam's twin sister, raised by the enemy, leads a rebellion as which cartoon heroine?
She-Ra
She-Ra is Princess Adora, snatched as a baby by Hordak and brought up to be a Force Captain in his Horde. When her brother arrives with the magic sword meant for her, she learns the truth and changes sides.
Q 05In The Transformers, what wakes the robots in 1984 after four million years buried on Earth?
A volcanic eruption
A volcanic eruption shakes the buried Ark and restarts its computer, Teletraan I, which sends out a probe and rebuilds the robots in the shape of the Earth machines it scans.
Q 06Voice actor Peter Cullen modelled which Autobot on his older brother, a Marine veteran of Vietnam?
Optimus Prime
Optimus Prime owes his calm to Larry Cullen, a Marine captain. Before the audition he advised Peter not to shout like a movie tough guy, because the truly strong are 'tough enough to be gentle'.
Q 07Which Japanese studio drew most of the first two seasons of The Transformers?
Toei Animation
Toei Animation handled most of the first two seasons, designing the transformation schemes and animation models; in season three much of the work shifted to the South Korean studio AKOM.
Q 08Orson Welles voiced which planet-sized villain in the 1986 animated Transformers film?
Unicron
Unicron was Orson Welles's final film role: he voiced the planet-eating robot five days before he died in October 1985, and his voice was so weak that it was altered with synthesizers.
Q 09Which company produced ThunderCats in 1985?
Rankin/Bass
Rankin/Bass, best known for stop-motion holiday specials, recorded the voices and music in the United States, sent the tapes to Japan to be animated, then brought the film back for editing.
Q 10What is the name of the ThunderCats' legendary weapon, whose hilt holds the source of their power?
The Sword of Omens
The Sword of Omens rests as a dagger and grows to full length when Lion-O calls on it. Held to his eyes with the words 'give me sight beyond sight', it shows him danger far away.
Q 11On which planet do the ThunderCats settle after fleeing their dying homeworld?
Third Earth
The ThunderCats settle on Third Earth after the Mutants of Plun-Darr cripple their flagship in flight; Jaga steers the survivors there, where the ever-living mummy Mumm-Ra already waits.
Q 12In the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, the bodiless alien warlord Krang was banished from where?
Dimension X
Dimension X is where Krang ruled until he was stripped of his body and banished to Earth. There Shredder built him a walking android suit in return for a base in Krang's rolling fortress, the Technodrome.
Q 13In the 1987 TMNT cartoon, Splinter was originally a human ninja master by what name?
Hamato Yoshi
Q 21In Jem, what is the real name of the record-company owner whose alter ego fronts the Holograms?
Jerrica Benton
Jerrica Benton inherited Starlight Music and a secret from her late father: Synergy, a computer he built that projects lifelike holograms. A touch of her star-shaped earrings turns her into Jem.
Q 22The first season of Voltron (1984) was adapted from which Japanese anime series?
Beast King GoLion
Beast King GoLion (1981) supplied the five robot lions of Voltron's first season, re-dubbed and re-edited by World Events Productions; season two's Vehicle Team came from the unrelated Armored Fleet Dairugger XV.
Q 23In Adventures of the Gummi Bears, what does gummiberry juice let the bears do?
Hamato Yoshi, framed by rival Oroku Saki and exiled to the New York sewers, was mutated into the rat Splinter because he had been touching sewer rats; in the Mirage comics Splinter was instead Yoshi's pet rat.
Q 14When the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon reached British TV in 1990, which word replaced 'Ninja' in its title?
Hero
Hero was the BBC's safer choice during a British panic over ninja weapons. The word was also cut from the theme song and dialogue, and Michelangelo's nunchucks were edited out of the fights.
Q 15DuckTales (1987) was based on Uncle Scrooge comics created by which cartoonist?
Carl Barks
Carl Barks drew his duck stories without a byline, since Disney comics carried only Walt's name. Readers who noticed that some stories were far better than the rest called their unknown author 'the Good Duck Artist'.
Q 16Which DuckTales character went on to become the title character's sidekick in Darkwing Duck?
Launchpad McQuack
Launchpad McQuack, Scrooge's crash-prone pilot, talked his way into the job: he introduced himself as Darkwing's biggest fan, kept offering to be his sidekick and built him a jet, the Thunderquack.
Q 17Which comedy actor voiced the bumbling detective in the 1983 cartoon Inspector Gadget?
Don Adams
Don Adams was the third voice tried: two earlier actors were dropped from the pilot before producers turned to the man who had played Maxwell Smart, the bumbling Get Smart spy who helped inspire the character.
Q 18What is the name of Inspector Gadget's dog, who secretly saves him in disguise?
Brain
Brain is the dog who shadows Gadget in disguise; Gadget usually mistakes him for a M.A.D. agent and gives chase, while niece Penny does the real detective work with her computer book.
Q 19On which US network did Hanna-Barbera's blue-skinned Peyo adaptation run from 1981 to 1989?
NBC
NBC president Fred Silverman ordered the series after buying his daughter a doll of the little blue characters. It became one of the few hits of his troubled time there and ran for nine seasons, long after he had gone.
Q 20Which cartoon bears began life in 1981 as paintings for greeting cards?
Care Bears
Care Bears were painted by Elena Kucharik for American Greetings cards, then became toys, TV specials and a 1985 film that out-earned Disney's far costlier The Black Cauldron.
Bounce like rubber balls
Bounce like rubber balls is what the juice does for bears. On humans it gives a brief burst of super-strength that works only once a day, which is why Duke Igthorn keeps trying to steal the recipe.
Q 24In which kingdom's forest do the Gummi Bears live in their secret home of Gummi Glen?
Dunwyn
Dunwyn's forest hides the last Gummis for a reason: jealous humans drove the rest of their kind into exile long ago, and the kingdom now takes the bears for a fairy tale.
Q 25Why did the 1986 Ghostbusters cartoon have to add 'The Real' to its title?
Filmation already owned the name
Filmation already owned the name, from a 1975 live-action comedy called The Ghost Busters. Columbia paid to borrow it for the film, then Filmation revived its show as a cartoon days before the film's own spin-off aired.
Q 26Muppet Babies grew out of a dream sequence in which 1984 film?
The Muppets Take Manhattan
In The Muppets Take Manhattan (July 1984), Miss Piggy imagines the gang as babies in the 'I'm Gonna Always Love You' number; the CBS series premiered that September, mixing live-action film clips into the babies' daydreams.
Q 27In the 1983 series Alvin and the Chipmunks, which female chipmunk is Alvin's vain, bossy opposite number?
Brittany
Brittany leads the Chipettes as Alvin leads his brothers, with Jeanette a match for Simon and Eleanor for Theodore. She seems to have grown out of Charlene, who sang a Grease duet with Alvin on a 1982 album.
Q 28In the 1983 Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, how are the six kids transported into the realm?
On a roller coaster
On a roller coaster: the ride is a Dungeons & Dragons attraction that drops the six into the realm, where Dungeon Master arms each of them. Forty years on, all six appeared in live action in the film Honor Among Thieves.
Q 29Where is the secret London headquarters of Penfold's eyepatched boss hidden?
Inside a pillar box on Baker Street
Inside a pillar box on Baker Street, a red post box, sits the base of the eyepatched agent and his timid sidekick. The show's artist doodled Penfold before a meeting, then realised he had drawn his own brother.
Q 30Count Duckula (1988) was a spin-off from which other Cosgrove Hall cartoon?
Danger Mouse
Danger Mouse was the parent show: a villainous Count Duckula had been a recurring baddie there, and the 1988 spin-off recast him as a vegetarian vampire, co-produced with Nickelodeon after the original's US success.