Pot Noodle
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40 free Pot Noodle trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Pot Noodle has been a fixture of kitchens, bedsits and office drawers across the UK since the late 1970s. Add boiling water, wait, stir, and argue about the sachet. Few snacks have inspired as much affection, mockery and regulatory paperwork. This quiz covers Pot Noodle flavours past and present, from long-running classics such as Original Curry and Sweet & Sour to limited editions and whole ranges that came and went. It also takes in the inventor of the instant noodle, the companies that have owned the brand, the factory where the pots are filled, and the adverts that drew complaints by the hundred. It is for anyone who has ever peeled back a foil lid at midnight: fans testing their flavour knowledge, quiz hosts after a food round with some bite, and the merely curious.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Despite the meaty names on its pots, every Pot Noodle flavour is suitable for which diet?
Vegetarian
Vegetarian eaters can have any of them: the brand's owner says all Pot Noodle flavours are 100% suitable, and free of artificial colours and preservatives.
Q 02Which former MP's affair with John Major, revealed in 2002, inspired a limited-edition Pot Noodle flavour?
Edwina Currie
Edwina Currie had just published diaries revealing a four-year affair with the future prime minister, and the brand answered with an 'Edwina Curry' pot.
Q 03Pot Noodle's factory, its home since 1979, stands near the village of Crumlin in which part of Britain?
South Wales
South Wales is where the pots are filled, at a plant reported to turn out about 175 million of them a year.
Q 04Which Pot Noodle flavour, named by the brand as its most popular, was first to be sold in a paper pot?
Chicken & Mushroom
Chicken & Mushroom filled the first 500,000 paper pots in a 2023 supermarket trial, the biggest change to the packaging since the brand began.
Q 05A 2006 Pot Noodle advert joked that the snack was produced by which workers, played partly by factory staff?
Coal miners
Coal miners turned noodle miners: ten former pitmen who worked at the Crumlin factory went back underground to film the spoof in a disused pit.
Q 06Which consumer goods giant took ownership of Pot Noodle in 2000 when it bought the American food group Bestfoods?
Unilever
Unilever got Pot Noodle as part of Bestfoods, a takeover that also brought it Knorr stock cubes.
Q 07Which Pot Noodle flavour is sold as an incredibly hot curry and comes with a sachet of fire chilli sauce?
Bombay Bad Boy
Bombay Bad Boy joined the range in 2002, and the brand's own history dared fans to try it.
Q 08In which BBC space series is a Pot Noodle among the last scraps of food aboard the crashed ship Starbug?
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf strands Lister on an ice planet in the 1989 episode Marooned, with little else to eat but mustard powder, water biscuits and a brown lemon.
Q 09Pot Noodle re-edited a TV advert with sounds such as a cat's meow after viewers objected to which noise?
Slurping
Slurping put off enough viewers that the brand issued more than 50 alternative soundtracks, including a baby's laugh and football commentary.
Q 10Which takeaway favourite inspired a Pot Noodle flavour that comes with a sachet of hot fire chilli sauce?
Doner kebab
Doner kebab arrived as a limited edition, with the same fiery sachet that goes into the brand's hottest curry pot.
Q 11Golden Wonder, the company that launched Pot Noodle in 1977, was already a household name for which snack?
Crisps
Crisps came first: founder William Alexander began frying them in the 1940s to use spare capacity in the doughnut fryers at his bakery.
Q 12Pot Noodle's owner says the original idea of selling noodles in a cup came from which country?
Japan
Japan had cup noodles from 1971, six years before Golden Wonder brought the idea to British shops.
Q 13Pot Noodle has long been stereotyped as a staple food for which group of people?
Students
Students were so tied to the brand that its 2006 relaunch advert was designed, a spokeswoman said, to appeal beyond giggling student boys.
Q 21What did the advertising watchdog do with hundreds of complaints about Pot Noodle's innuendo-heavy TV adverts in 2005?
Dismissed them
Dismissed them: the watchdog called the campaign a little crude but harmless, and judged its after-9pm slot restriction appropriate.
Q 22Pot Noodle: The Musical, a show set in a noodle factory, was staged in 2008 at which arts festival?
Edinburgh Fringe
Edinburgh Fringe audiences got a show dreamed up by the brand's own advertising agency, Mother, and paid for by the snack's maker.
Q 23Golden Wonder followed Pot Noodle with a similar pot snack based on which dried staple?
Rice
Q 14What name does Pot Noodle give to the larger pots sold for some of its flavours?
King
King pots arrived in 2000, the year the brand says it went up a size to give bigger appetites a fuller meal.
Q 15Pot Noodle's Original Curry flavour comes with a small sachet of which Indian restaurant condiment?
Mango chutney
Mango chutney, labelled sweet on the pot, is one of the sachets the brand has put in every Pot Noodle since 1992.
Q 16Which meaty-sounding Pot Noodle flavour was one of three on sale when the snack went nationwide in 1979?
Beef & Tomato
Beef & Tomato was there from the start and still comes with a little sachet of tomato sauce to stir in.
Q 17Which Pot Noodle flavour was launched in summer 2014 to tie in with a major football tournament?
Brazilian BBQ Steak
Brazilian BBQ Steak was pitched at the brand's core audience of 16-to-24-year-old men as an easy taste of the host nation's barbecue.
Q 18Pot Noodle's £10m relaunch in 2006 as a healthier snack cut levels of fat and which other ingredient?
Salt
Salt came down across the range in that relaunch, which also raised the vegetable content of some flavours.
Q 19Which inventor, hailed in a British obituary as Mr Pot Noodle, sold the first instant noodles in 1958?
Momofuku Ando
Momofuku Ando was 48 when he perfected flash-frying noodles after months of trial and error, and he lived to 96.
Q 20A 1993 Pot Noodle television advert was banned after reports that it had caused what in some viewers?
Seizures
Seizures in three viewers pushed the regulator to write rules on flashing images, the origin of the Harding test that adverts now have to pass.
Rice in a pot came in flavours such as risotto and curry, and returned for a limited relaunch in 2018.
Q 24Besides noodles and dried vegetables, a classic Pot Noodle contains chewy textured pieces made from which crop?
Soya
Soya pieces give the pots their bite, and in 2007 the maker estimated that 300 Pot Noodles were being eaten in Britain every minute.
Q 25In 1995 Pot Noodle was bought by Best Foods, the American maker of which mayonnaise brand?
Hellmann's
Hellmann's owner paid about $280 million for the pot snack business, then was itself swallowed by a bigger food group five years later.
Q 26When Golden Wonder went into administration in 2006, which snack firm bought the business, minus Pot Noodle?
Tayto
Tayto, based beside a castle in Tandragee, County Armagh, took on the Golden Wonder name while Pot Noodle stayed with its existing owner.
Q 27Golden Wonder launched Pot Noodle in 1977 while owned by which cigarette maker?
Imperial Tobacco
Imperial Tobacco had diversified into snacks and held Golden Wonder until a takeover broke the group up in the 1980s.
Q 28Which comedy writer, later a co-writer of the film Borat, created and played Terry in Pot Noodle's TV adverts?
Peter Baynham
Peter Baynham found unexpected fame as Terry: strangers shouted the advert's catchphrase at him in the street.
Q 29In 2002, which regulator ruled a word in Pot Noodle's television slogan unsuitable for broadcast at any time?
The ITC
The ITC, which policed commercial television before Ofcom, had received more than 300 complaints and first pushed the advert past the 9pm watershed.
Q 30Before its wider launch, Pot Noodle was test-marketed in autumn 1977 in which ITV region of England?
Granada
Granada viewers in the North West got the 32p snack first, and production reportedly could not keep up with demand.