Fads and Crazes
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50 free Fads and Crazes trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every generation has its crazes. Something silly, clever or simply novel catches on, sells by the million or fills the dance floor, and a year later it is at the back of a cupboard. Fads are a record of what people once could not resist, and the stories behind them are often stranger than the fads themselves. This quiz runs from the tulip mania of the 1600s to the viral stunts and smartphone games of recent years. Along the way come the campus stunts of the 1920s and 1930s, the toy stampedes of the 1980s and 1990s, mood rings and lava lamps, Beanie Babies and Tamagotchis, the Twist and the Macarena, fashion crazes, and puzzles such as the Rubik's Cube and Wordle. The questions ask who started each one, where it came from and how it spread. It is written for anyone who enjoys nostalgia and odd history, and for hosts planning a decades party or a trivia night. The questions are multiple choice, the opening ones are the gentlest, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which fad of Christmas 1975 lasted about six months yet made advertising executive Gary Dahl a millionaire?
Pet Rock
The Pet Rock was a plain stone sold in a cardboard carrier with air holes and straw bedding. Dahl sold nearly 1.5 million of them at just under $4 each.
Q 02Which US agency banned Furby toys from its offices in the late 1990s, fearing they might repeat secrets?
The NSA
The NSA suspected the chattering toys held a chip that could learn and replay classified talk. Furby's maker replied that the toy could not record anything at all.
Q 03In which country did 1630s 'tulip mania' push one rare bulb's price past ten years of a craftsman's pay?
Netherlands
The Netherlands, then the Dutch Republic, saw tulip prices peak and abruptly collapse in February 1637. The costliest variety, Semper Augustus, fetched 10,000 guilders.
Q 04Which Wham-O toy started a 1958 fad that sold twenty-five million in under four months?
Hula hoop
The Hula hoop was a plastic copy of the bamboo rings Australian children twirled around their waists. Sales passed 100 million within two years.
Q 05The teddy bear craze of the 1900s took its name from which US president, who refused to shoot a tied-up bear?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt called shooting the tethered animal unsportsmanlike on a 1902 hunt in Mississippi. A newspaper cartoon of the scene inspired candy-shop owner Morris Michtom to make a toy cub.
Q 06Which dolls, each sold with adoption papers, had shoppers fighting in American stores before Christmas 1983?
Cabbage Patch Kids
Cabbage Patch Kids were so scarce that shoppers shoved and trampled one another to grab one. Coleco had only begun mass-producing the soft-bodied dolls in 1982.
Q 07Sea-Monkeys, sold through comic book ads since the 1960s, are really which tiny creatures?
Brine shrimp
Brine shrimp eggs can lie dormant for years when dry, so the animals seem to burst into life once water is added. Inventor Harold von Braunhut first sold them as Instant Life.
Q 08The 1970s mood ring claimed to reveal emotions, but its liquid crystals actually change colour with what?
Temperature
Temperature is all a mood ring measures: its liquid crystals shift colour as the wearer's finger warms or cools. The idea was borrowed from medical thermometers.
Q 09Many airlines banned 'hoverboards', the celebrity-endorsed scooter fad of 2015, because their batteries kept doing what?
Catching fire
Catching fire was the flaw: overheating lithium-ion packs were tied to 60 blazes in over 20 US states. More than 500,000 of the scooters were recalled in America in 2016.
Q 10Which American singer's chart-topping 1960 single turned the Twist into a worldwide dance craze?
Chubby Checker
Chubby Checker cut his version after TV host Dick Clark judged the original, by Hank Ballard's group, too raunchy for teenagers. Ballard wrote it after watching teens dance in Tampa.
Q 11The Rubik's Cube, a craze that sold about 200 million between 1980 and 1983, was invented in which country?
Hungary
Hungary was where architecture professor Ernő Rubik invented the puzzle in 1974. It first went on sale in Budapest as the Magic Cube, three years before its worldwide launch.
Q 12Los del Río, the duo behind the 1996 dance craze the Macarena, came from which country?
Spain
Spain's Los del Río recorded the song in 1993, but it took a Miami remix with added English verses to top the US chart for 14 weeks in 1996.
Q 13Which toymaker launched the Tamagotchi in 1996, the egg-shaped digital creature that died if its owner neglected it?
Bandai
Bandai sold about 40 million of the original Tamagotchi. Demand ran so high that its staff were told not to carry bags showing the company logo, for fear of theft.
Q 21Which frontiersman, played by Fess Parker in a 1950s Disney series, set off a nationwide craze for coonskin caps?
Davy Crockett
Davy Crockett caps sold at a rate of 5,000 a day at the fad's peak. By the end of 1955 Americans had spent over $300 million on merchandise tied to the series.
Q 22Which billionaire businessman created Beanie Babies, the plush animals he 'retired' to keep 1990s collectors hunting?
Ty Warner
Ty Warner launched the toys in 1993 and sold them through small independent shops rather than big chains. Profits from the fad later bought him a Four Seasons hotel.
Q 23Pogs, the 1990s game of stacking and flipping cardboard discs, took its name from a juice sold in which US state?
Hawaii
Q 14Which 2016 smartphone game sent crowds roaming parks and streets to collect creatures overlaid on the real world?
Pokémon Go
Pokémon Go used a phone's location and camera to place monsters in real places, and passed 500 million downloads. Railway officials had to warn players off the tracks.
Q 15Which palm-sized toy built around a ball bearing was banned by many schools during a 2017 craze?
Fidget spinner
The fidget spinner was sold as a stress reliever and focus aid, but teachers in the US, UK and Australia said it wrecked classroom discipline.
Q 16Tickle Me Elmo, the giggling plush toy parents fought over at Christmas 1996, came from which television series?
Sesame Street
Sesame Street's red monster became a doll that shook and laughed when squeezed. With shelves empty, scalpers resold the $28.99 toy for as much as $1,500.
Q 17The 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge, with its filmed soakings in freezing water, raised money to fight which illness?
Lou Gehrig's disease
Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS, drew more than $115 million in donations from the stunt in 2014 alone. Before it went viral, only half of Americans had heard of the condition.
Q 18Which 2012 song, with its horse-riding dance, became the first YouTube video to reach a billion views?
Gangnam Style
Gangnam Style, by the rapper Psy, reached a billion views on December 21, 2012. Its title refers to the lavish lifestyles of one district of Seoul.
Q 19Which newspaper bought Wordle in 2022, three months after the five-letter guessing game was released to the public?
The New York Times
The New York Times paid a low seven-figure sum for the game. Welsh engineer Josh Wardle had built it as a private pastime for himself and his partner.
Q 20Which Oscar-winning actress fuelled the 1980s aerobics craze with a chart-topping home exercise video?
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda's Workout, released in 1982, was the first home video other than a film to top the sales charts. Her series of tapes went on to sell 17 million copies.
Hawaii's POG drink blends passionfruit, orange and guava. Children on Maui were flipping milk-bottle caps by 1927, and promotional caps printed for the juice in the 1970s gave the game its name.
Q 24Pedro Flores, whose California factories set off the yo-yo craze of the late 1920s, had emigrated from which country?
The Philippines
The Philippines had played with the toy for hundreds of years. Flores began with a dozen handmade ones in 1928, and by late 1929 his plants were turning out 300,000 a day.
Q 25The Frisbee owes its name to a Connecticut bakery whose empty what were tossed around by Yale students?
Pie tins
Pie tins from the Frisbie Pie Company were stamped with the bakery's name. Wham-O renamed its Pluto Platter disc in 1957 after learning that students called it by that name.
Q 26Troll dolls, the wild-haired figures that became a huge American toy fad in the early 1960s, came from which country?
Denmark
Denmark's Thomas Dam, a fisherman and woodcutter, carved the first trolls from wood for his children while money was tight. His factory switched to PVC plastic in 1961.
Q 27Wham-O's ultra-bouncy 1960s craze ball inspired football executive Lamar Hunt to name which championship game?
The Super Bowl
The Super Bowl got its name after Hunt watched his children play with a Super Ball. He admitted in a 1966 letter to the NFL that the jokey label could surely be improved upon.
Q 28The 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, in which servicemen attacked young men wearing the baggy fashion, erupted in which city?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles servicemen stripped the suits from mostly Mexican American youths, calling so much cloth unpatriotic while fabric was rationed for the war.
Q 29The 1939 campus fad of swallowing live goldfish is said to have begun with a freshman's $10 bet at which university?
Harvard
Harvard freshman Lothrop Withington Jr. reportedly gulped one down while running for class president. Rival campuses raced to beat the tally, and a society formed to protect the fish.
Q 30Which 1920s endurance fad was led by former sailor Alvin 'Shipwreck' Kelly, who once kept it up for 49 days?
Flagpole sitting
Flagpole sitting took off after Kelly perched for 13 hours and 13 minutes in 1924. His 49-day stint came in Atlantic City, and the fad faded with the Great Depression.