Classic Cartoons
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50 free Classic Cartoons trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Classic cartoons were made to fill a few minutes before the main feature or a slot on Saturday morning, yet they outlasted almost everything around them. A wisecracking rabbit, a Stone Age family and a cowardly dog who solves mysteries are still recognised by people born decades after their debuts. This quiz runs from the silent era and the golden age of theatrical shorts through the Hanna-Barbera television years to the toy-driven adventures of the 1980s. Expect questions on famous characters and their sidekicks, the voice actors and directors behind them, theme tunes, studios and the odd behind-the-scenes surprise. It is written for anyone who grew up on reruns, and for quiz hosts who need an old-school cartoon night. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the questions for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Bugs Bunny's habit of chewing a carrot while talking was borrowed from which star's scene in a 1934 comedy?
Clark Gable
Clark Gable munches carrots while talking with his mouth full in It Happened One Night, and three Looney Tunes directors said that scene gave the rabbit his style.
Q 02In The Flintstones' early sponsor commercials, Fred and Barney were shown relaxing with which adult product?
Cigarettes
Cigarettes from Winston co-sponsored the first two seasons, until the audience skewed younger and Welch's grape juice took over.
Q 03In the Peanuts animated specials, which muted brass instrument supplies the garbled voices of teachers and adults?
Trombone
Trombone was the suggestion of the specials' composer, Vince Guaraldi, and the makers kept the wah-wah effect because they found it funny.
Q 04Which voice actor recorded Barney Rubble's Flintstones lines in a full-body cast after a 1961 car crash?
Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc had been in a coma after the head-on crash on Sunset Boulevard, so producers set up recording gear in his hospital room and later at his home.
Q 05Which fictional band from a Saturday-morning cartoon had America's top single of 1969 with Sugar, Sugar?
The Archies
The Archies were cartoon teenagers, so session singer Ron Dante supplied the lead vocal on a record that topped the Hot 100 for four weeks.
Q 06Scooby-Doo was deliberately drawn with a sloped back and bow legs to flout the kennel standard for which breed?
Great Dane
The Great Dane design came from Iwao Takamoto, who asked a breeder colleague what a prize-winning dog looks like and then drew the opposite.
Q 07Tweety, first drawn pink and featherless before being given yellow plumage, is usually portrayed as which kind of bird?
Canary
A canary is how Tweety is usually billed, but his yellow feathers were painted on only after censors declared the bare pink chick nude.
Q 08Which 1950s sitcom about a blustering bus driver and his sewer-worker pal was the model for The Flintstones?
The Honeymooners
The Honeymooners star Jackie Gleason later said he had considered suing Hanna-Barbera over the resemblance but decided to let it pass.
Q 09Which radio countdown host voiced Shaggy in Scooby-Doo and returned in 2002 only once Shaggy went vegetarian?
Casey Kasem
Casey Kasem, the voice of American Top 40, had quit the role in the 1990s in a dispute over a Burger King commercial.
Q 10Which Smurf was created by an evil wizard as a spy to sow jealousy, then turned into a real Smurf by magic?
Smurfette
Smurfette began with black hair, and the spell Papa Smurf cast turned it blonde as the sign of her transformation.
Q 11Which fictional mail-order company sells most of the gadgets that backfire on Wile E. Coyote in the desert?
Acme
Acme comes from the Greek for summit or peak, an ironic name for a firm whose products fail catastrophically at the worst possible moment.
Q 12Which hamburger-loving friend of Popeye gave his name to a burger chain that spread across Britain from 1954?
Wimpy
Wimpy lent his name to Wimpy Grills, founded in Indiana in 1934, and J. Lyons licensed the brand for the United Kingdom twenty years later.
Q 13What is the name of the robot maid, an outdated rental model, who keeps house for the Jetsons?
Rosie
Rosie was an old demonstrator the family hired from U-Rent a Maid, and the first episode gives her model number as XB-500.
Q 21Which horror film veteran both narrated and voiced the title role in the 1966 TV cartoon How the Grinch Stole Christmas?
Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff was cast for the warmth and rhythm of his reading, but the special's famous song was sung by an uncredited Thurl Ravenscroft.
Q 22Which Looney Tunes villain in a Roman soldier's helmet went unnamed until merchandising demanded a name in 1979?
Marvin the Martian
Marvin the Martian was styled on the god Mars, whose armour gave him the helmet, and he made just five theatrical shorts between 1948 and 1963.
Q 23Which Looney Tunes romantic, forever chasing a cat with an accidental white stripe, starred in a 1949 Oscar winner?
Pepé Le Pew
Q 14Which little sidekick acts as Yogi Bear's conscience, warning him that Ranger Smith will not like his schemes?
Boo-Boo
Boo-Boo is Yogi's constant companion and not his son, as viewers sometimes assume.
Q 15Which Disney dog made his debut as a nameless bloodhound chasing an escaped Mickey Mouse in The Chain Gang?
Pluto
Pluto got his name only in his third film, The Moose Hunt, after turning up as Minnie's dog Rover in his second.
Q 16Which Disney star made his debut in the 1934 short The Wise Little Hen, faking a stomach ache to dodge work?
Donald Duck
Donald Duck danced a sailor's hornpipe in that first outing and was then reworked as Mickey Mouse's temperamental foil in Orphan's Benefit.
Q 17Which composer wrote the slinky saxophone theme that introduced the cartoon Pink Panther in a 1963 comedy's titles?
Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini's jazzy tune went on to accompany every animated short, and its tenor saxophone solo was played by Plas Johnson.
Q 18Which Hollywood studio employed William Hanna and Joseph Barbera when they created Tom and Jerry in 1940?
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer got 114 cat-and-mouse shorts from the pair, seven of which won the Oscar for best animated short.
Q 19Which blue-skinned sorcerer plots from Snake Mountain to seize Castle Grayskull from He-Man?
Skeletor
Skeletor believes the castle's secrets would let him conquer the planet Eternia, and later stories revealed him as Keldor, half-brother of He-Man's father.
Q 20Which Autobot leader in The Transformers, voiced by Peter Cullen in the 1980s cartoon, turns into a semi-truck?
Optimus Prime
Optimus Prime began life as a transforming truck in the Japanese Diaclone toy line made by Takara.
Pepé Le Pew's For Scent-imental Reasons was only the second Warner Bros. cartoon to win the animated short Oscar, after Tweetie Pie.
Q 24Which Looney Tunes character was shelved as too obnoxious by producer Edward Selzer until Jack Warner asked for more?
Tasmanian Devil
The Tasmanian Devil was saved by fan mail: Warner told Selzer he had received boxes of letters from people who wanted to see more of Taz.
Q 25Which Warner Bros. director created Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner and later brought the Grinch to television?
Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones devised the pair in 1948 with writer Michael Maltese, who went on to write the first 16 of their desert chases.
Q 26Which cartoon flapper of the Jazz Age was toned down to look more modest once Hollywood's Hays Code took hold?
Betty Boop
Betty Boop started out as a French poodle, and her floppy ears turned into hoop earrings when she was redrawn as a woman.
Q 27Which silent-era cartoon star appeared as a spinning toy figure in RCA's experimental television broadcasts of 1928?
Felix the Cat
Felix the Cat was mounted on a revolving phonograph turntable for the tests, yet his cartoons did not reach American television until 1953.
Q 28Which Terrytoons superhero debuted in 1942 as a Superman parody and later starred in cartoons sung like operettas?
Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse was first billed as Super Mouse, and the whole idea began with an animator's sketches of a superhero fly.
Q 29What kind of birds are Heckle and Jeckle, the identical Terrytoons pranksters with New York and British accents?
Magpies
Magpies of the yellow-billed kind, to be exact: the 1946 Terrytoons short The Talking Magpies tried the idea with a husband-and-wife pair before the identical duo took over.
Q 30Which Hanna-Barbera dog is Dick Dastardly's sidekick in Wacky Races, best known for his rasping laugh?
Muttley
Muttley's wheezy snicker was older than he was: voice actor Don Messick had already used it for several earlier Hanna-Barbera dogs.