Rudolph Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
83 free Rudolph trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free Rudolph trivia questions with answers. Rudolph is younger than most people assume. He was invented in 1939 as a giveaway booklet for a department store, by a copywriter who nearly called him Rollo, and whose bosses first rejected the glowing nose because in the 1930s a red nose meant a drunk. This quiz follows the whole chain: the booklet and its 2.4 million copies, the 1949 song, and the 1964 stop-motion special that was voiced in Toronto, animated in Tokyo, sponsored by General Electric and has aired every December since. There are questions on Hermey the would-be dentist, Yukon Cornelius, King Moonracer and the Abominable Snow Monster, plus a final round on the real animal, which is the only deer whose females grow antlers. Every answer is written against a sourced account with the sentence that establishes it attached. Good for a Christmas quiz, a family movie night, or the argument about which network is supposed to show it.
30 of 83 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which department-store copywriter created Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1939?
Robert L. May
Robert L. May wrote the Rudolph booklet as a work assignment, drawing on his own childhood as a small, shy boy who was often teased, and tried each part out on his four-year-old daughter Barbara.
Q 02Which Chicago-based department store chain commissioned the original Rudolph booklet as a 1939 Christmas giveaway?
Montgomery Ward
Montgomery Ward had been buying booklets to hand out to shoppers' children every Christmas and decided that writing its own would save money, so it gave the job to one of its copywriters.
Q 03Rudolph's author rejected the name Rollo as too cheerful and which other name as too British?
Reginald
Reginald sounded too British and Rollo too carefree for the story of a misfit, so the author kept hunting for an alliterative name and settled on Rudolph.
Q 04What gave Rudolph's author the idea for a glowing nose?
Fog off Lake Michigan
Fog off Lake Michigan rolled past the author's Chicago office window as he puzzled over his story, and he pictured a bright red nose that could shine through it like a spotlight.
Q 05Why did the store's managers at first reject the idea of giving Rudolph a red nose?
It suggested alcoholism
It suggested alcoholism: in the 1930s a bright red nose was the mark of a drunkard, so the author had an artist friend sketch an appealing young reindeer to change his bosses' minds.
Q 06Which fairy tale did Rudolph's author draw on when shaping his story?
The Ugly Duckling
The Ugly Duckling was his model for an outcast who comes good; to see how his hero should look, he took a store artist to Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo to sketch the deer.
Q 07The Rudolph booklet borrows its metre from whose 1823 Christmas poem?
Clement Clarke Moore
Clement Clarke Moore is credited with the poem known as 'The Night Before Christmas', which first named Santa's reindeer; Rudolph's author set his newcomer's story to the same galloping anapestic beat.
Q 08Who was given Rudolph's copyright by the store in 1947?
Its author
Its author got the rights for nothing from the head of the company; the copywriter, deep in debt from his late wife's medical bills, could at last earn from his own creation.
Q 09What was the 1954 sequel called?
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Shines Again
The author's 1954 sequel was titled Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Shines Again; it followed the 1939 booklet by fifteen years and was again written in verse.
Q 10Which songwriter turned the Rudolph story into the hit song of 1949?
Johnny Marks
Johnny Marks was the brother-in-law of Rudolph's author, who talked him into writing it; the 1964 television special later took its title and much of its story from his song.
Q 11In the 1964 Rudolph special, which song does a young doe sing to him after the reindeer games?
There's Always Tomorrow
There's Always Tomorrow is the doe's attempt to cheer Rudolph up once he has been laughed out of the reindeer games; when he runs away she joins his parents in the search for him.
Q 12Which company sponsored the first broadcast of the 1964 Rudolph special?
General Electric
General Electric put its name on the slot, The General Electric Fantasy Hour, and a star narrator was added late in production to help sell the special to the network.
Q 13In the 1964 Rudolph special, Hermey lures the Abominable Snow Monster from its cave by imitating which animal?
A pig
Q 21At the end of the 1964 Rudolph special, what job does the tamed Abominable Snow Monster do?
Trimming a Christmas tree
Trimming a Christmas tree suits the reformed monster, which Yukon Cornelius brings back looking for work: it is tall enough to set the star on top without a ladder.
Q 22Which network took over the Rudolph special in 1972 and aired it every Christmas for over 50 years?
CBS
CBS lured the special away from the network where it had premiered and made it a December fixture, until in 2024 the original broadcaster won it back in time for the 60th anniversary.
Q 23Unlike the TV special, where does Santa first find Rudolph in the original 1939 booklet?
Asleep in his bedroom
A pig: Yukon Cornelius reckons the monster likes pork better than deer meat, so Hermey oinks at the cave mouth and a falling rock knocks the creature out as it steps outside.
Q 14What did Rankin/Bass call the stop-motion process used in its Rudolph special?
Animagic
Animagic was the studio's name for nudging flexible puppets a fraction at a time between frames; the special later helped inspire The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Q 15In which city was the stop-motion animation for the 1964 Rudolph special actually filmed?
Tokyo
Tokyo: the special was conceived and designed in New York, then sent to Tadahito Mochinaga's MOM Production studio, whose animators moved the puppets frame by frame.
Q 16Which singer voiced Sam the Snowman, the narrator of the 1964 Rudolph special?
Burl Ives
Burl Ives was the cast's one celebrity, and a song he sings in the special, 'A Holly Jolly Christmas', climbed to No. 4 on the US singles chart in January 2020, 55 years after the broadcast.
Q 17The 1964 Rudolph special's mostly Canadian voice cast was recorded in which city?
Toronto
Toronto offered the producers a ready pool of trained voices, because radio drama was still going strong in Canada in the early 1960s.
Q 18What job does Hermey the elf want instead of making toys?
Dentist
Hermey's wish to be a dentist ends up saving the day: once the Abominable Snow Monster is knocked out, he pulls every one of its teeth and leaves it harmless.
Q 19What is Yukon Cornelius searching for?
Silver and gold
Silver and gold are what Yukon Cornelius seems to be tasting for when he licks his pickaxe, but a closing scene has him strike it rich with a peppermint mine instead.
Q 20Which creature is King Moonracer, ruler of the Island of Misfit Toys?
A winged lion
A winged lion, King Moonracer circles the earth every night looking for toys nobody wants and brings them back to his island until children can be found to love them.
Asleep in his bedroom: Santa is delivering presents to the deer's house when he notices the glow, because in the booklet Rudolph is no North Pole resident but a youngster raised in a loving home elsewhere.
Q 24On the Island of Misfit Toys, the cowboy rides which animal?
An ostrich
An ostrich is the cowboy's mount in place of a horse, and that alone earns him a line in the misfit toys' own song, which asks how anyone would like to be a cowboy who rides one.
Q 25On the Island of Misfit Toys, why does the jack-in-the-box count himself a misfit?
His name is Charlie
His name is Charlie, and he is sure no child wants to play with a Charlie-in-the-Box; so he stays on the island and serves as its sentry.
Q 26How is Rudolph usually counted among Santa's reindeer?
Ninth and youngest
Ninth and youngest: the rest of the team was named in a poem of 1823, and Rudolph was added 116 years later, invented for a department store's Christmas giveaway.
Q 27In the 1964 special, which of Santa's reindeer is Rudolph's father?
Donner
Donner is so embarrassed by his son's nose that he keeps it hidden, yet when Rudolph runs away he heads into the wilderness to find him and ends by apologising.
Q 28Which two Rankin/Bass sequels followed the original special?
Shiny New Year and Christmas in July
Rankin/Bass followed the original with Rudolph's Shiny New Year (1976) and Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July (1979), both also made with stop-motion puppets.
Q 29What is the scientific name of the reindeer?
Rangifer tarandus
Rangifer tarandus has a nose worth a song even without the glow: its passages warm freezing air on the way in, so the animal can breathe Arctic air without chilling its lungs.
Q 30What makes reindeer unique among deer species?
Females may grow antlers
Females may grow antlers, and they keep them longer: males shed theirs in late autumn while females carry theirs through the winter, so an antlered reindeer on Christmas Eve is probably female.