The hunt for Trivial Pursuit was intense in 1982

It was on Dec. 15, 1979, that journalists Scott Abbott and Chris Haney decided they should invent their own game and it would be about trivia. 

"Right, the 40th anniversary of the world premiere of Gone With the Wind, we've since found out," said Haney, when recalling the moment on CBC's The Journal.

The two teamed up with Haney's brother, John. The next two years were spent writing the questions, making samples and getting the financing together.

By the time The Journal was reporting on the game in December 1982, the game was a runaway hit, having sold over 100,000 copies.

Now there was only one question that mattered — how to get hold of a copy before the New Year?

"They can't make the games fast enough," The Journal's Fred Langan reported.  

"With 1,000 multi-coloured cards per box, it's a complicated production run," he added. "All the parts except the dice are designed, manufactured and assembled in Canada."

The assembly line was turning out an average of 3,500 games a day, and as fast as they were reaching the stores, they were selling out, outselling even the all-time favourite — Monopoly.

Stu Robertson, the distributor, credited the game for making "in this fiscal year about 20 per cent of our total sales" and suggested it was "terribly important for the retail industry in the toy and game business this year because it's one of the few things that is drawing people into their stores."

"According to the inventors, this is the beginning of a trivia empire," Langan said. 

Upcoming editions would be themed around the movies, sports, baby boomers and children, he reported. 

"They hope for a lucrative string of spin-offs," said Langan.