Commercial & Jingle Trivia
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168 free Commercial & Jingle trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This commercial trivia quiz covers the ads themselves: the mascots, the jingles, the catchphrases and the campaigns that people can still recite decades later. Cereal boxes (Tony, Snap, Crackle and Pop, the Trix rabbit, Cap'n Crunch), fast food (Ronald, the Hamburglar, the Taco Bell chihuahua, Where's the beef?), insurance (the Gecko, the Cavemen, Flo, Jake, Mayhem, the Aflac duck), beer (the frogs, Whassup, Spuds, the Clydesdales, Dilly Dilly), soda (Mean Joe Greene, Hilltop, the polar bears, the Pepsi Challenge) and the landmark spots like Apple's 1984, VW's Think Small and Old Spice's man on a horse. If it is slogans you are after, our advertising slogans quiz is the place; for game-day ads specifically, try the Super Bowl commercials quiz. The easy questions are the ones any TV watcher knows: which cereal Tony sells, which brand the drumming pink bunny belongs to, who says 'Oh, yeah!' through a wall. Then it gets harder: who voiced Tony for fifty years, which short film Whassup was based on, why the 1984 ad ran once in Idaho before the Super Bowl, what the first radio jingle sold in 1926, and which company owned the drumming bunny first. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry for the campaign or character before publishing, and the sentence that supports it is stored with each question.
30 of 168 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did the first radio commercial jingle, aired in December 1926, advertise?
Wheaties
Wheaties' 'Have You Tried Wheaties?' jingle aired on WCCO Minneapolis on Christmas Eve 1926; strong Twin Cities sales persuaded General Mills to keep the cereal and take the jingle national.
Q 02The first official paid TV commercial, in 1941, was for which brand?
Bulova
Bulova paid about $9 for a 10-second spot on New York's WNBT on July 1, 1941, shown before a Dodgers-Phillies game, the first paid TV commercial in the US.
Q 03The first TV ad in the UK, in 1955, was for what?
Toothpaste
Gibbs SR toothpaste, on the opening night of ITV.
Q 04Which cereal does Tony the Tiger sell?
Frosted Flakes
Tony the Tiger has fronted Kellogg's Frosted Flakes (originally Sugar Frosted Flakes) since the cereal launched in 1952, outlasting co-mascot Katy the Kangaroo within a few years.
Q 05Who provided Tony the Tiger's deep bass voice for five decades?
Thurl Ravenscroft
Thurl Ravenscroft voiced Tony the Tiger from 1952 until his death in 2005, and was the uncredited singer of 'You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch' in 1966.
Q 06Tony the Tiger was named after whom?
An ad man at Leo Burnett
Tony took his name from Raymond Anthony Wells, an ad man at Leo Burnett, the agency that created the mascot for Kellogg's in 1952.
Q 07Who first played Ronald McDonald on TV in 1963?
Willard Scott
Willard Scott, later the Today show weatherman, first played Ronald McDonald on Washington's WRC-TV in 1963 after playing Bozo there from 1959 to 1962.
Q 08Which McDonaldland character started out evil, stealing milkshakes?
Grimace
Grimace debuted in 1971 as 'Evil Grimace', a four-armed shake thief; McDonald's later softened him into a gentle friend and sold a Grimace birthday shake in 2023.
Q 09Who sued McDonald's claiming McDonaldland plagiarized their children's TV show?
Sid and Marty Krofft
Sid and Marty Krofft won: a jury found McDonaldland copied H.R. Pufnstuf, with Mayor McCheese too close to Pufnstuf himself, and the Ninth Circuit upheld the verdict in 1977.
Q 10The Big Mac debuted in 1967 in which Pennsylvania town?
Uniontown
Franchisee Jim Delligatti introduced the Big Mac at his Uniontown, Pennsylvania restaurant in 1967 for 45 cents; it went national in 1968 after trial names Aristocrat and Blue Ribbon Burger.
Q 11McDonald's 'I'm lovin' it' campaign was created by an agency in which country?
Germany
German agency Heye & Partner of Unterhaching, near Munich, created the campaign; it launched in Germany on 2 September 2003 as 'ich liebe es' before rolling out worldwide.
Q 12Who sang the vocals on the original 2003 'I'm lovin' it' spots?
Justin Timberlake
Justin Timberlake sang the jingle, produced by Pharrell Williams' Neptunes; McDonald's launched the 2003 campaign, its first global one, after posting its first-ever quarterly loss in late 2002.
Q 13The Energizer Bunny began in 1988 as a parody of which rival's ad?
Duracell
Duracell's drumming bunny dated to 1973, but its trademark had lapsed.
Q 21Mr. Clean's creator modeled him on what?
A US Navy sailor
Mr. Clean was modeled on a US Navy sailor from Pensacola, Florida; his earring, folded arms and habit of appearing by magic lead many to assume he is a genie.
Q 22What is Mr. Clean's first name, chosen in a 1962 contest?
Veritably
Veritably won a 1962 'Give Mr. Clean a First Name' promotion; the character had made his TV debut in 1958, played in live action by actor House Peters Jr.
Q 23The Green Giant began in the 1920s as the brand for which vegetable?
Large peas
The Minnesota Valley Canning Company of Le Sueur first used 'Green Giant' in the 1920s for a variety of unusually large peas, with a giant on the label; it took the name for the whole firm in 1950.
Q 14In which two countries is the drumming bunny Energizer's rather than Duracell's?
United States and Canada
Energizer owns the drumming-bunny trademark in the United States and Canada, where Duracell's mark had lapsed; Duracell's original 1973 bunny fronts its batteries across the rest of the world.
Q 15What does the Energizer Bunny wear on its feet?
Blue and black striped flip-flops
The Energizer Bunny is a pink toy rabbit in sunglasses and blue and black striped flip-flops, beating a bass drum bearing the Energizer logo since his 1988 debut.
Q 16What is the Pillsbury Doughboy's proper name?
Poppin' Fresh
Poppin' Fresh is the Pillsbury Doughboy's given name; Leo Burnett copywriter Rudy Perz created him in 1965 for a crescent-roll commercial.
Q 17What does the Doughboy do when a finger pokes his belly?
Giggles
The Doughboy giggles when poked in the belly, the sign-off that has closed Pillsbury ads since his 1965 debut.
Q 18Who was the first voice of the Pillsbury Doughboy, for 21 years?
Paul Frees
Paul Frees, also the voice of Boris Badenov, voiced the Doughboy from 1965 until his death in 1986; Jeff Bergman took over the role afterward.
Q 19What is the Michelin Man's official name?
Bibendum
It comes from Horace's line Nunc est bibendum, 'now is the time to drink'.
Q 20At the Lyon Exhibition of which year did the Michelin brothers conceive their tyre man?
1894
At the 1894 Lyon Universal Exhibition, Édouard Michelin saw a stack of tyres on the firm's stand and remarked that with arms it would look like a man; O'Galop drew Bibendum in 1898.
Q 24What is the name of the Jolly Green Giant's young apprentice?
Little Green Sprout
Little Green Sprout, the Giant's small, curious apprentice, joined Green Giant ads in the 1970s as a talkative foil to the giant, whose only line was 'Ho, ho, ho'.
Q 25How tall is the Jolly Green Giant statue in Blue Earth, Minnesota?
55 feet
The fibreglass Blue Earth statue stands 55.5 feet tall; it was raised in 1979 beside the Interstate 90 / US 169 interchange, where I-90's final section had been joined in 1978.
Q 26What does the Kool-Aid Man shout after bursting through a wall?
Oh, yeah!
'Oh, yeah!' is the Kool-Aid Man's catchphrase, bellowed after he smashes through a wall when thirsty kids shout 'Hey, Kool-Aid!'
Q 27What inspired the smiling pitcher face that became the Kool-Aid Man in 1954?
A child drawing on a frosted window
Art director Marvin Potts watched his son draw smiley faces on the glass.
Q 28How did an ad-agency art director come up with the Aflac Duck?
He said the company name aloud while walking
Muttering 'Aflac, Aflac' in Central Park, he realised it sounded like a quack.
Q 29Who voiced the Aflac Duck until being fired in 2011 over tsunami jokes?
Gilbert Gottfried
Gilbert Gottfried quacked for the Aflac Duck from its debut until March 2011, when Aflac dropped him over jokes he tweeted about the Japan earthquake and tsunami; Japan is Aflac's largest market.
Q 30What were the three Budweiser Frogs named?
Bud, Weis, Er
The frogs croaked 'Bud', 'Weis' and 'Er' in turn to spell Budweiser; the spot debuted during Super Bowl XXIX in January 1995 and later spawned the rival lizards Frank and Louie.