The man who made pop cult a hit game is now a trivia item – CHRIS HANEY who created board game Trivial Pursuit is dead.
Haney, a Canadian, died in Toronto at age 59 after an undisclosed long illness, games manufacturer Hasbro disclosed.
Haney, a high school dropout partnered with pal journalist, Scott Abbott, to create a best selling phenomenon – a board game testing players knowledge of apparently limitless and often inconsequential trivia.
In the 1980s the game was outselling Monopoly, possibly the best selling board game of all time.
According to the NY Times, more than 100 million copies of the game had been sold in as many as 26 countries and in at least 17 languages, with estimated sales of well over $1 billion.
The game involved answering 6,000 trivia questions on 1,000 cards, coded by categories.
The game was a runaway hit with baby boomers, riding the crest of their own childhood nostalgia as they whiled away the late hours doping out just who was Howdy Doody’s twin brother? (see bottom for answer)
And by 1984 an estimated one in five million American homes had some form of the game.
And here’s a bit o’ trivia: Haney and Abbot had created the game while sitting around Haney’s Montreal home, drinking a round of beers.
By the time they opened the fridge for another round, they had already mentally designed the game board.
ANSWER: Howdy Doody’s brother was Double Doody.
