Hallmark Trivia
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47 free Hallmark trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
50 free Hallmark trivia questions with answers. Hallmark is two things at once: a 115-year-old Kansas City greeting card company that also owns Crayola, a department store and a Christmas ornament empire, and a cable channel that has turned the two months before Christmas into a genre of its own. This quiz covers both. Expect the postcard-selling founder, the goldsmiths' mark that named the brand, the 3x5 card the slogan was written on, the 1951 opera that launched Hallmark Hall of Fame, and the astronaut who sued over an ornament. The channel half runs from its origins as a religious cable feed through the 2009 birth of Countdown to Christmas, record-setting premieres, the Queens of Christmas, When Calls the Heart, the mystery wheel, Hallmark+ and the rival network built by its former boss. Easy questions cover the headquarters city and Crayola; expert ones get into architects, executives and 1980s acquisition prices. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia or an official page, and the sentence that establishes it is shown under each question, so you can settle a couch argument during the next movie premiere.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Where has Hallmark Cards been headquartered since its founder settled there in 1910?
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is where Nebraska teenager Joyce Hall stepped off a train, and the family company later spent its own money rebuilding the worn-out blocks around its offices as Crown Center.
Q 02When the postcard craze faded, Hallmark's founder bet that buyers wanted more privacy and began selling cards with what?
Envelopes
Envelopes let people write what they would never put on an open postcard, so Joyce Hall, who had arrived in 1910 with two shoeboxes of postcards, moved on to valentines and Christmas cards.
Q 03As a boy, Hallmark's founder sold door-to-door for the California Perfume Company, which later took what name?
Avon Products
Avon Products was the California Perfume Company's later name, and young Joyce Hall sold its soap and perfume to help support his sickly mother.
Q 04At Christmas 1917 Hallmark's founders put fancy decorated French paper on sale and so invented what modern product?
Gift wrap
Gift wrap as we know it began when the founders ran out of Christmas tissue: the French sheets they sold instead went at once, so they began printing decorative paper of their own.
Q 05The brand name Hallmark borrowed a mark of quality used by which 14th-century London tradesmen?
Goldsmiths
Goldsmiths had their wares stamped at Goldsmiths' Hall to vouch for purity, and J.C. Hall liked that the word both promised quality and happened to contain his family name.
Q 06Hallmark's first national advertisement, written by J. C. Hall himself, appeared in which magazine?
Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal ran the 1928 ad, the first time any greeting card company had advertised nationally, and a decade later Hall moved on to sponsoring a radio show.
Q 07Hallmark's slogan runs 'When you care enough to send' what?
The very best
The very best was executive Ed Goodman's phrase, and J.C. Hall later said the line put pressure on the company to live up to it with every card.
Q 08Until 1954, Hallmark traded under which family name, honoring the founder and the relatives who joined him?
Hall Brothers
Hall Brothers dates from the years when Rollie and William joined Joyce in the business, and the Hallmark brand sat on the cards for decades before it replaced the family name.
Q 09Hallmark Hall of Fame debuted on Christmas Eve 1951 with which opera, written specially for television?
Amahl and the Night Visitors
Amahl and the Night Visitors, the tale of a poor boy who meets the Three Kings, suited its Christmas Eve slot, and NBC's live broadcast launched what became the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
Q 10Which 1980s cartoon heroine was created by Hallmark Cards as a way into the character licensing business?
Rainbow Brite
Rainbow Brite was written by the card company purely to get into licensing, and it worked: she got a TV series, a feature film and millions of dollars' worth of merchandise.
Q 11The original host of Hallmark Television Playhouse was a British actress and the daughter of which prime minister?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill's daughter Sarah hosted the early broadcasts soon after playing Fred Astaire's love interest in the MGM musical Royal Wedding.
Q 12Hallmark Hall of Fame holds which American television record?
Longest-running primetime series
Longest-running primetime series: it has aired since 1951, collecting dozens of Emmys and moving from network to network before settling on Hallmark's own cable channel in 2014.
Q 13After NBC dropped Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1979, which network carried it for the next decade?
CBS
Q 21Which Crown Center hotel was the site of the 1981 walkway collapse that killed 114 people?
Hyatt Regency
Hyatt Regency guests had packed the lobby for a tea dance when two suspended walkways gave way; Hallmark's property arm owned the hotel, which now trades as a Sheraton.
Q 22When the founder retired in 1966, which member of the family took over as Hallmark's chief executive?
Donald, his son
Donald, his son, took charge in 1966 and within two years broke ground on Crown Center, the founder's retirement dream of reviving the tired blocks around headquarters.
Q 23Which sharp-tongued cartoon senior has starred on Hallmark's Shoebox cards since 1986?
Maxine
CBS won the series with the promise of better time slots after NBC grew tired of its low ratings, and Hallmark later hopped to ABC and back again.
Q 14Hallmark's Keepsake line, launched in 1973, turned which Christmas decoration into a yearly collecting craze?
Tree ornaments
Tree ornaments became collectibles once the Keepsake line arrived with the year marked on each design, a small touch that Hallmark says sparked the whole hobby of ornament collecting.
Q 15Which actress starred as a mail-order bride from Maine in the 1991 Hallmark Hall of Fame film Sarah, Plain and Tall?
Glenn Close
Glenn Close played Sarah opposite Christopher Walken's widowed Kansas farmer, and the film was the most-watched programme of its week, beating even Cheers.
Q 16Which astronaut sued Hallmark in 1994 for selling a product that used his name and likeness without permission?
Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong objected to a recording of his 'one small step' line being sold without his consent, settled out of court, and gave the money to Purdue, his old university.
Q 17In 1984 Hallmark bought Binney & Smith, the Pennsylvania maker of which brand?
Crayola
Crayola proved such a star that Binney & Smith renamed the whole company after it in 2007, and the same firm also makes Silly Putty.
Q 18Which Surrealist painter designed Christmas cards for Hallmark?
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí painted a Madonna and Child for Hallmark, but his Surrealist holy scenes proved too avant-garde for ordinary card buyers.
Q 19Which American painter worked under contract for Hallmark at the height of his fame?
Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell, famous for his Saturday Evening Post covers, painted Christmas scenes for founder J.C. Hall for a decade from 1948, and they became a mainstay of Hallmark's holiday line.
Q 20Hallmark's first licensing deal, signed in 1932, put which studio's cartoon characters on its greeting cards?
Walt Disney
Walt Disney signed the deal when Mickey Mouse was barely four years old, giving Hallmark its first licensed characters decades before the card company invented any of its own.
Maxine was modelled by artist John Wagner on his mother, grandmother and maiden aunts, and she usually appears with her bull terrier, Floyd.
Q 24Hallmark Channel dropped which earlier name in 2001 because viewers took it for a travel or science-fiction channel?
Odyssey
Odyssey began life as a religious channel, and its chief executive admitted that however they pitched it, viewers were confused about who and what it was.
Q 25Which partner, famous for its puppets, co-owned Hallmark Channel's forerunner with Hallmark Entertainment in the late 1990s?
The Jim Henson Company
The Jim Henson Company brought The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock to the relaunched schedule, and a new Henson series premiered the week the Hallmark name arrived.
Q 26Beginning in 2014, Hallmark Channel counter-programmed the Super Bowl with which annual showcase of adoptable animals?
Kitten Bowl
Kitten Bowl was a mock football game played by dozens of shelter kittens, most of them later adopted, and it spawned spin-offs timed against baseball's All-Star Game and the Olympics.
Q 27The 2014 film Christmas Under Wraps drew a record audience for a Hallmark premiere; who starred?
Candace Cameron Bure
Candace Cameron Bure played a doctor starting over in Alaska, and the 5.8 million viewers set a channel record that persuaded Hallmark to ramp up its original movies.
Q 28Which 2014 film starring Tiffani Thiessen was the first movie made jointly by Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Cards?
Northpole
Northpole earned a sequel the next year, and in 2017 Christmas in Evergreen went further by building a whole town out of a Hallmark card line.
Q 29Through 2023, Hallmark Channel rounded off its holiday season with live New Year coverage of which event?
Tournament of Roses Parade
Tournament of Roses Parade coverage from Pasadena capped the channel's holiday programming for years, until a rival cable network signed a deal to take over from 2024.
Q 30Which Suits star played the lead in Hallmark Channel's 2014 Fourth of July romance When Sparks Fly?
Meghan Markle
Meghan Markle made two Hallmark romances, this one and Dater's Handbook in 2016, the same year she met Prince Harry.