90s Toys Trivia
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45 free 90s Toys trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
The 1990s toy aisle was a run of manias: virtual pets that died while you were at school, bean-stuffed animals traded like stocks, a giggling red Muppet that caused store stampedes. These 90s toys trivia questions cover the fads, the inventors behind them, the recalls and the numbers that made Toys R Us rich. Every answer is sourced, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Built for a nostalgia night, a 90s party or anyone who still knows where their Pogs are.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1995 Nintendo system displayed its games only in red and black?
Virtual Boy
The Virtual Boy flopped so fast that Nintendo dropped it in Japan within six months of its 1995 launch.
Q 02The name Tamagotchi combines the Japanese word for 'egg' with which English word?
Watch
Watch is the English half of the name, and Tamagotchi's success soon drew rival virtual pets such as Giga Pets.
Q 03Tamagotchi's two creators won a tongue-in-cheek 1997 Ig Nobel Prize in which field?
Economics
The Economics prize honoured Tamagotchi's creators "for diverting millions of person-hours of work into the husbandry of virtual pets."
Q 04Which 1997 keychain pet was Tamagotchi's battling counterpart for boys?
Digimon
Digimon soon spread from keychains to video games such as Digimon World, released in 1999.
Q 05Which company created the Furby?
Tiger Electronics
Tiger Electronics' Furby was so scarce at Christmas 1998 that resellers got hundreds for one.
Q 06What is the name of the language a brand-new Furby speaks?
Furbish
Furbish came first: each Furby was programmed to swap in more English words over time, so it seemed to be learning to talk.
Q 07Which console grew from a failed Super Nintendo CD add-on?
PlayStation
The PlayStation deal collapsed in public: a day after Sony unveiled the add-on at CES 1991, Nintendo announced a rival deal with Philips.
Q 08Which US agency banned Furbies from its property in 1999 over recording fears?
The NSA
The NSA memo lumped Furbies in with recording equipment, warning that the toys might repeat classified conversations they overheard.
Q 09In which US city did Beanie Babies first go on sale, in January 1994?
Chicago
Chicago shops got the first Beanie Babies, and their maker sold only through small toy and gift stores, a limit on supply that fed the craze.
Q 10Who created Beanie Babies?
Ty Warner
Ty Warner's toys made him a billionaire, but in 2014 he was sentenced to probation for hiding money in a secret Swiss bank account.
Q 11What are Beanie Babies stuffed with instead of conventional soft filling?
Plastic pellets
Plastic pellets were packed loosely, so the understuffed animals could move and be posed like real ones.
Q 12Which animal was Pinchers, one of the nine original Beanie Babies?
A lobster
Pinchers the lobster was one of the first nine Beanie Babies, and once the maker began 'retiring' designs in 1996, collectors paid inflated prices for older ones.
Q 13At the height of the craze, Beanie Babies made up about a tenth of all sales on which website?
eBay
Collectors flipped Beanies on eBay for far more than retail, and rare retired designs fetched thousands of dollars.
Q 21Which engineer invented the Super Soaker?
Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson, an engineer working on heat-pump designs, got the idea when a homemade nozzle shot a spray of water across his bathroom.
Q 22What was the Super Soaker originally called when it went on sale in 1990?
Power Drencher
The Power Drencher was renamed the Super Soaker in 1991 after design changes and a remarketing campaign, and it became a huge seller.
Q 23Which company originally sold the Super Soaker in 1990?
Larami
Larami took on the Super Soaker after its inventor, unable to afford production, had struggled to find a toy company partner.
Q 14Which toy company produced the original Tickle Me Elmo?
Tyco
Tyco's giggling toy was nearly Tickle Me Taz, based on the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil, before it became Elmo.
Q 15What animal was Tickles, the prototype toy that became Tickle Me Elmo?
A chimp
Inventors Ron Dubren and Greg Hyman pitched the giggling monkey, and the toy company liked the tech but not the animal.
Q 16Which 1990 cheat cartridge did Nintendo fight in court, and lose?
Game Genie
Game Genie survived Nintendo's lawsuit because the court held that its changes vanished once it was unplugged, and a derivative work must be permanent.
Q 17Which talk show host showed Tickle Me Elmo on air in October 1996, boosting demand?
Rosie O'Donnell
Peak demand and the stock shortages did not hit until nearly two months after her segment.
Q 18The name Pogs comes from a brand of what?
Juice
POG juice, a passionfruit-orange-guava blend, came with bottle caps that children were already using to play the game.
Q 19In Pogs, what is the heavier piece you throw onto the stack called?
A slammer
Players hurl a slammer onto the stack and keep the caps that flip, which is why some schools banned the game as a form of gambling.
Q 20The 1990s Pogs craze spread across the US from which state?
Hawaii
Hawaii children had played the game since at least the 1930s, long before its 1990s revival.
Q 24Which English company first put Polly Pocket on shelves in 1989?
Bluebird Toys
Bluebird Toys' founder, Torquil Norman, later spent his toy fortune rescuing London's derelict Roundhouse arts venue.
Q 25Which miniature toy line, marketed mainly to boys, came from the same British maker as Polly Pocket?
Mighty Max
Mighty Max and Polly Pocket came from one British toymaker, whose miniature lines drove its meteoric growth in the early 1990s.
Q 26What feature did the 1990s Skip-It add to the ball on the end of its hoop?
A digital counter
Nickelodeon ads drilled the counter into a generation of kids, and the patent was filed by future Marvel boss Avi Arad.
Q 27The Talkboy recorder began as a prop in which 1992 film?
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
Writer John Hughes asked for the prop, and the retail version only took off after the voice changer was added in 1993.
Q 28What was the boy-targeted spin-off of Sky Dancers called?
Dragon Flyz
Dragon Flyz got its own cartoon series, made with Gaumont, just as its creators also turned Sky Dancers into a TV show.
Q 29What happens on screen when a Giga Pet dies?
It grows angel wings
The average pet lasted about two weeks; testers found girls named theirs first while boys went straight to discipline.
Q 30Which game was bundled with the Game Boy in North America and Europe?
Tetris
Nintendo planned to bundle Super Mario Land until Henk Rogers argued Tetris would sell the Game Boy far beyond traditional gamers.