Q 01/05

Which TV show's fans lobbied President Ford until NASA named a space shuttle after its ship?

A) Lost in Space

B) Star Trek

C) Space: 1999

D) The Outer Limits

Answer · why

B) Star Trek

Star Trek fans sent hundreds of thousands of letters, so the orbiter planned as Constitution rolled out in 1976 as Enterprise, with most of the origin...

Q 02/05

Which children's modelling compound was first sold in the 1930s as a wallpaper cleaner?

A) Silly Putty

B) Plasticine

C) Play-Doh

D) Sculpey

Answer · why

C) Play-Doh

Play-Doh was saved when a nursery school teacher read that the cleaning putty made good art projects, just as washable vinyl wall coverings were killi...

Q 03/05

Which baked goods came in the Frisbie tins that Yale students tossed around, naming the Frisbee?

A) Pies

B) Doughnuts

C) Crackers

D) Cakes

Answer · why

A) Pies

Pies from the Frisbie Pie Company were a Yale staple, and a toy maker borrowed the campus slang in 1957 for a plastic disc first sold as the Pluto Pla...

Q 04/05

Which toy, the first advertised on television, originally came as loose plastic parts with no body?

A) Lionel train set

B) Lincoln Logs

C) Silly Putty

D) Mr. Potato Head

Answer · why

D) Mr. Potato Head

Mr. Potato Head was a kit of eyes, ears and mouths to pin onto a real potato until 1964, when complaints about rotting vegetables led Hasbro to add a ...

Q 05/05

Which 1960s sitcom named its boat after the FCC chairman who called television a "vast wasteland"?

A) Gilligan's Island

B) McHale's Navy

C) Hogan's Heroes

D) Petticoat Junction

Answer · why

A) Gilligan's Island

Gilligan's Island sailed the S.S. Minnow, which producer Sherwood Schwartz named to "punish" Newton Minow for his 1961 speech.