50 Fun Facts About Retro

What was Slinky inventor Richard James's job when he saw a spring 'walk' off a shelf in 1943?

Richard James was a naval engineer at a Philadelphia shipyard, developing springs to steady ship instruments, when one tumbled off a shelf and kept 'walking'.

How long did it take the first 400 Slinkys to sell at their 1945 Philadelphia department store debut?

All 400 Slinkys sold in 90 minutes at Gimbels department store in Philadelphia in November 1945, priced at a dollar each.

The Rubik's Cube was invented in 1974 by a Hungarian sculptor and professor of what?

Ernő Rubik taught architecture at Budapest's Academy of Applied Arts and built the cube in 1974 as a teaching aid for spatial relationships.

Roughly how many Rubik's Cubes had been sold worldwide as of January 2024?

About 500 million Rubik's Cubes had been sold by January 2024, making it the best-selling puzzle toy; the cube has some 43 quintillion possible arrangements.

What did French electrician André Cassagnes originally call the Etch A Sketch?

Cassagnes called his 1959 invention L'Écran Magique, 'the magic screen'; the Ohio Art Company of Bryan, Ohio bought the rights and launched it in the US in 1960.

The inside of an Etch A Sketch screen is coated with a fine powder of which metal?

The glass is coated from inside with fine aluminium powder mixed with tiny plastic beads; the stylus scrapes it away and shaking re-coats the screen.

The View-Master, whose reels hold seven stereoscopic pairs of pictures, was introduced at which event?

William Gruber and Harold Graves introduced the View-Master at the 1939 New York World's Fair; the US military later bought 100,000 viewers for training.

Wham-O's plastic hula hoop went on sale in 1958 and sold how many in under four months?

Wham-O sold 25 million plastic hula hoops in under four months in 1958, and sales passed 100 million within two years.

The Pet Rock was created in 1975 by Gary Dahl, who worked in what industry?

Gary Dahl was an advertising executive in Los Gatos, California; he sold about 1.5 million Pet Rocks at $3.95 each before the fad faded in early 1976.

The mood ring craze of 1975 relied on which technology to change colour with skin temperature?

Mood rings contain thermotropic liquid crystals that twist and reflect different wavelengths as skin temperature changes; Joshua Reynolds marketed them in New York in 1975.

Edward Craven Walker invented the lava lamp in 1963 after seeing an egg timer bubbling where?

Craven Walker saw a homemade liquid-filled timer bubbling on a pub stove in Dorset; his first lava lamp, the Astro, went on sale in 1963 from Poole.

The Simon memory game was launched in 1978 at which famous New York nightclub?

Milton Bradley launched Simon with a party at Studio 54 in 1978; Ralph Baer and Howard Morrison based it on Atari's arcade game Touch Me.

Under what name did Xavier Roberts originally sell the dolls that became Cabbage Patch Kids?

The name had to change because Fisher-Price already owned it; Coleco began mass-producing the dolls in 1982.

How many possible answers does the die inside a Magic 8 Ball carry?

The Magic 8 Ball's floating die is an icosahedron, so it carries 20 answers: ten positive, five non-committal and five negative.

The Tamagotchi's name is a portmanteau of the Japanese word for 'watch' and the Japanese word for what?

Tamagotchi blends tamago, Japanese for egg, with uotchi, 'watch'; Bandai released the egg-shaped toy in Japan on November 23, 1996.

The 1990s Pogs craze took its name from POG, a brand of what?

POG was a Haleakala Dairy fruit juice of passion fruit, orange and guava; Hawaiian educator Blossom Galbiso revived the milk-cap game with its lids in 1991.

Stuart Anders, who invented the slap bracelet in 1983, worked as what in Wisconsin?

Stuart Anders was a high-school shop teacher in Wisconsin; cheap knock-offs with thinner steel could cut wrists, and many schools banned the bracelets.

The Sony Walkman went on sale in Japan in July 1979. What was it initially called in the United States?

It was the Stowaway in Britain and the Freestyle in Australia and Sweden before Sony standardised the name; 'Walkman' entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1986.

Sony's Betamax lost the format war to VHS, yet Sony kept making blank Beta cassettes until when?

The last blank Betamax cassettes shipped in March 2016, fourteen years after the recorders themselves stopped in August 2002.

The 8-track cartridge was created in 1965 by a consortium led by the founder of which aviation company?

Bill Lear of Lear Jet led the consortium, with Ampex, Ford, Motorola and RCA, that created the 8-track in 1965; Ford offered players on 1966 models.

The first floppy disks, made by IBM in 1971, were how big across?

IBM's first floppy, the 1971 read-only 'memory disk', was 8 inches across and held about 80 kilobytes; 5.25-inch disks followed in 1976.

Which company, in floppies since 1983, sold its last 3.5-inch disks in March 2011?

Sony, which introduced the 3.5-inch format in the early 1980s, sold its last 3.5-inch floppies in March 2011, by which time the disk was mostly a skeuomorph in software menus.

Push-button Touch-Tone telephones were first shown to the public at which event?

Bell System first demonstrated Touch-Tone push-button dialling to the public at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair; commercial service began in Pennsylvania in November 1963.

The first telephone pager system was patented in 1949 by which inventor?

Al Gross, who also pioneered the walkie-talkie, patented the first telephone pager in 1949; Japan's last paging service shut down in 2019.

What did Polaroid's SX-70 folding instant camera cost when Edwin Land unveiled it in April 1972?

The SX-70 listed at $180 when Edwin Land unveiled it in April 1972, with ten-shot film packs at $6.90; Polaroid sold about 700,000 by mid-1974.

The 2600 console was released in 1977 under what original name?

It launched in 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (VCS) and was rebranded the 2600 in November 1982; the 1980 home port of Space Invaders was its killer app.

In which state did Atari bury 14 truckloads of unsold cartridges, including E.T., in 1983?

Atari dumped the cartridges in a landfill at Alamogordo, New Mexico; a 2014 excavation recovered about 1,300 of an estimated 728,000 buried, confirming the long-rumoured burial.

Pong, the first commercially successful video game, was created in 1972 by Allan Alcorn as what?

Nolan Bushnell assigned Pong to Alcorn as a training exercise; the prototype went into Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, and Sears sold the home version for Christmas 1975.

What was Pac-Man originally called in Japan?

Namco released it in Japan as Puck Man on May 22, 1980; Midway renamed it Pac-Man for the US, fearing vandals would alter the P on cabinets.

What are the four ghosts in Pac-Man called?

The four ghosts are Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, coloured red, pink, cyan and orange, and each has its own chasing behaviour.

Why did designer Tomohiro Nishikado keep the enemies speeding up as you shoot them in Space Invaders (1978)?

The chip drew fewer sprites faster: the 8080 board rendered the few remaining invaders quicker than a full screen, so Nishikado kept the speed-up as a feature; the game had grossed $3.8 billion by 1982.

The hero of Donkey Kong (1981) was originally called Jumpman. After whom was he renamed Mario?

Mario Segale owned the office building; Universal later sued Nintendo over King Kong and lost.

Which puzzle game was bundled with the Game Boy for its North American launch?

Tetris was the North American pack-in in 1989; Gunpei Yokoi's team designed the handheld, which with the Game Boy Color sold about 118.69 million units.

How many days after New Coke's launch did Coca-Cola announce the original formula's return?

Coca-Cola announced the original formula's return as Coca-Cola Classic on July 11, 1985, 79 days after New Coke's April 23 launch; New Coke became Coke II in 1990.

New Coke was briefly brought back in 2019 as a promotional tie-in with which Netflix series?

Coca-Cola revived New Coke in May 2019 for Stranger Things, whose third season is set in the summer of 1985, the year of the original launch.

Crystal Pepsi's Super Bowl commercial in January 1993 was set to a hit song by which band?

The ad used Van Halen's 'Right Now' to launch Crystal Pepsi nationally during Super Bowl XXVII in January 1993.

Tang became famous when NASA put it on whose 1962 Mercury flight?

Tang's fame came from its association with John Glenn's Friendship 7 flight in February 1962; General Foods had sold it since 1959 and it was never invented for NASA.

Which General Foods scientist, who also formulated Tang, patented the concept behind Pop Rocks in 1961?

William A. Mitchell, the General Foods chemist behind Tang and Cool Whip, co-patented the carbonated candy concept in 1961; the pop comes from pressurised carbon dioxide bubbles trapped in the sugar.

An urban legend claimed 'Little Mikey' from the Life cereal ads died after mixing Pop Rocks with what?

The legend had Mikey's stomach bursting from Pop Rocks and a cola drink; the actor, John Gilchrist, was unharmed and later became a media sales executive.

How much did the original Swanson TV Dinner of 1953 sell for?

The 1953 Swanson TV Dinner sold for 98 cents; the first production run was just 5,000 turkey dinners in three-compartment metal trays, and over 10 million sold the next year.

The DeLorean DMC-12 was built from 1981 in a factory near which city?

The DMC-12 was built at Dunmurry, on the outskirts of Belfast in Northern Ireland; about 9,000 were made before the company collapsed in 1982, the year of John DeLorean's drug arrest.

The last original Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the line on July 30, 2003, in which country?

The final Type 1 Beetle left Volkswagen's Puebla, Mexico plant on July 30, 2003, the 21,529,464th built; Ad Age voted its 'Think Small' campaign the best of the 20th century.

The first drive-in movie theatre opened on June 6, 1933, in which US state?

Richard Hollingshead opened the first drive-in in Camden, New Jersey, on June 6, 1933; the format peaked at more than 4,000 US drive-ins in 1958.

On the BBC's Test Card F, what is Carole Hersee playing noughts and crosses with?

The clown, Bubbles, and the card clocked up roughly 70,000 hours of airtime.

Stretch Armstrong, sold by Kenner from 1976, is a latex figure filled with a gel similar to what?

It stretches from about 15 inches to four or five feet, and the box booklet said tears could be fixed with a sticking plaster.

Which company introduced the Speak & Spell at the summer Consumer Electronics Show in 1978?

Texas Instruments unveiled the Speak & Spell at the June 1978 Consumer Electronics Show; its TMC0280 speech-synthesis chip earned it recognition as an IEEE Milestone in 2009.

'Jukebox' came into use around 1940 from 'juke joints', rooted in a Gullah word meaning what?

The Gullah word 'juke' meant bawdy or disorderly, so 'juke joint' named a rowdy roadside bar; makers such as Wurlitzer and Seeburg preferred 'automatic phonograph' to avoid the slur.

Which company introduced the Compact Cassette in August 1963?

Philips introduced the Compact Cassette at the 1963 Berlin Radio Show; Lou Ottens' team designed it for dictation, and it was the top-selling US music format from 1983 to 1991.

Troll dolls were created by a woodcutter named Thomas Dam from which country?

Thomas Dam carved the first troll in Gjøl, Denmark, in 1959; the dolls became one of America's biggest toy fads of the early 1960s, and DreamWorks bought the brand in 2013.

Lite-Brite was designed at Marvin Glass and Associates and licensed to which toymaker in 1967?

Hasbro licensed Lite-Brite from Marvin Glass and Associates and launched it in 1967; it entered the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2022.