How many of you remember "Pop Qwiz?" Made in the early 90s, this ill-fated Pop Secret brand combined the familiar taste of buttered popcorn with wacky ass neon colors. If you wanted to eat red, blue, green or purple popcorn, you had to be a Pop Qwiz loyalist. The stuff seems to have been criminally short-lived. The world wasn't ready for pink popcorn, but that doesn't mean we can't reminisce. Review includes a download for what's probably the only Pop Qwiz commercial that ever existed. And Guessin' Ted, too! Click here to read it!
Oh my god. I remember this… I tried it once.. popped the bag for too long, thus burning the contents to an inedible blackness.
Chestnuts roasted by Paul @ 01/16/2004 2:14 AM
I had the burnination problem too. In fact, no matter how many bags I tried, I never got to see what my mystery color was, as they all came out charcoal colored.
Chestnuts roasted by GadgetMouse @ 01/16/2004 2:25 AM
I never got any My mom lied yo me and told me she would buy me some and never did? How long did pop qwiz last? Maybe 2 years?
Chestnuts roasted by pikachulover @ 01/16/2004 2:51 AM
It managed to last for a while, but not long enough to be considered a success. Poor Pop Qwiz.
Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 01/16/2004 2:54 AM
I remember that commercial a little too well, Like it was on yesterday or something. I don’t recall eating any of it though.
5th post!!
Chestnuts roasted by heeloyd @ 01/16/2004 3:25 AM
Boy howdy I remember this shit. I remember being turned off by the fact that it was funky colors but not flavored different. When I was a kid we had this store up the street in a strip mall and the only thing they sold was popcorn. Flavored, colored popcorn. They were gone in about a year, maybe less. I can’t imagine why…the market for bubble gum and red dye flavored popcorn must have been poor. They even had "confetti" flavored popcorn which was essentially a little bit of everything. So yes, you could get mint flavored popcorn mixed with cheddar. ICK!
Chestnuts roasted by Killer Duck @ 01/16/2004 3:27 AM
Heeloyd in da house!
Chestnuts roasted by Killer Duck @ 01/16/2004 3:28 AM
I remember that commercial. The thing that bothered me, was what sort of prize the other kids got. Did they get to eat their bags of popcorn? Where they banished to the Phantom Zone? Or did the host Superkick them through a Babershop window?
Chestnuts roasted by Kool-Aid Man @ 01/16/2004 3:36 AM
I used to eat that flavored colored popcorn I used to get it at the local mall between 87 and 92. There is one like that at a different mall I go to now. ALthough the rainobw flavored one I got were all sweet flavors; chocolate, grape, cherry, orange, lime and other flavors I can’t remember. I used to "share" it with my cousins and give them all the flavors I didn’t like
Chestnuts roasted by pikachulover @ 01/16/2004 3:37 AM
I’m with you Heeloyd, I feel like I just saw that damn commercial yesterday. I still have to crack up everytime Ted says "Tastes so buttery!" and hops up and down in his chair like an asshat. Ah cheese of the early 90′s……
Chestnuts roasted by Loneman1 @ 01/16/2004 3:46 AM
oh off your horse Kool Aid Man – you know the superkick wasn’t for 4 or so years. They were just thrown through the barbershop window.
/wants Hurricane to do it to Rosie.
Chestnuts roasted by Saint Stryfe @ 01/16/2004 3:54 AM
Another fun American snack your neibours to the north never had.
We got jipped on the pop qwiz.
Chestnuts roasted by turkeys can't fly? @ 01/16/2004 3:55 AM
I stand corrected. Superkick, then tossed through a window. In the extended version of the commercial, Orville Redenbacher dropped and elbow on Ted, and nipped up.
Chestnuts roasted by Kool-Aid Man @ 01/16/2004 3:58 AM
I remember the commercial although I never actually tried the stuff. I think the reason why it failed was probably because it was named after a method of torture that the target audience of the commercials had probably been subjected to.
On the other hand, there were also some popsicles that used a similar gimmick, in which the artificial colorings didn’t match the artificial flavorings, so a red popsicle might be blue raspberry. Those were similarly unsuccessful, but I think they were intended as a short-term gimmick.
Then, of course, there were the "White Mystery" Airheads. Those actually were popular. Maybe the success of a gimmick depends entirely on luck.
Chestnuts roasted by gmfbrown @ 01/16/2004 6:54 AM
Great review! That ad reminded me of some of those game shows that were on the network on "UHF."
White Mystery Airheads SUCKED. I never got a flavor I liked in those.
I’ve never heard of this before. Shame, I would have wanted to try it if I was old enough to remember back then.
Chestnuts roasted by Behonkiss @ 01/16/2004 8:31 AM
I pushed my mother fervently to buy some of this for several weeks, convinced for some reason that colored popcorn had to taste better than regular popcorn. My color turned out to be green, and it was AWFUL in every sense of the word.
I HATED ever kernal, but I had to force the shit down in order to maintain my integrity. I couldn’t let it be known that I had been wrong to urge so strongly for mom to buy this crap…especially after pushing so hard for those Kahn’s Corndogs that wound up untouched in the back of the freezer for years after that first taste….
yeah, I’m terrible at cooking popcorn, but I was an expert at guessing what color would come out.
BLACK. because I burned that shit everytime. If I was on that game show, i woulda asked them to let me cook my own popcorn… then we’ll see who’s laughing TED
Yet another thing that I was born too late to experience…
Time to help Paul out! I’m home for the entire weekend and more or less snowed in (the roads are crap). What should I do?
Chestnuts roasted by Paul @ 01/16/2004 9:40 AM
Triple H was offered the job of distributing the rest of the Pop-Qwiz inventory but he declined because he refuses to sell anything…
-Paul (not a Triple H fan)
Chestnuts roasted by Paul @ 01/16/2004 9:40 AM
I never had the pop qwiz [sic] crap, but I do remember the commercial. I’m not gonna attempt to download the commercial to check it out, but part of my memory isn’t too clear… (another thing that happens when you get old, Paul.) Was the whole popped kernel neon colored, or just the kernel husk? I’ve had ‘confetti’ popcorn of a different nature, which was just dyed unpopped kernels .. no fancy flavoring… those things just had multi-colored husks, but the popcorn kernels (i.e., the popcorn meat) were white white. Not too impressive.
…
Kernel sounds weird when you say it too much… kernel.
Chestnuts roasted by Nachokhaki @ 01/16/2004 10:04 AM
Yup. I think the reason this popcorn was so unsuccessful was because of the burn factor. I think whatever was in the dye, make it burn a lot quicker. I never ever burned ANY microwave popcorn, EXCEPT this one, which I burned nearly every time. If it didn’t end up burned, a big majority of the kernals went unpopped. Lame.
Chestnuts roasted by B-Dawg @ 01/16/2004 10:07 AM
Haven’t read the article yet, work coming up, but I can tell you guys this stuff rocks. Tastes exactly the same but exactly the type of thing kids would go gaga over. Last I ever saw of anything close to it was a multi-color bag of this stuff for stove-top. Man I miss this stuff
Chestnuts roasted by shoujoaifan @ 01/16/2004 10:09 AM
Paul, how old are you? too young to remember something from 1991? You must be real young.
Man was this the best or what when I was a kid if there was a color gimick I was into it i dont know if they could turn vegitable into a color game mabye i would have eaten them and i wouldent be a 2 foot tall midget who has blue fingers and smells like the floor of a movie theater
Chestnuts roasted by atomrenner @ 01/16/2004 10:48 AM
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How many of you remember "Pop Qwiz?" Made in the early 90s, this ill-fated Pop Secret brand combined the familiar taste of buttered popcorn with wacky ass neon colors. If you wanted to eat red, blue, green or purple popcorn, you had to be a Pop Qwiz loyalist. The stuff seems to have been criminally short-lived. The world wasn't ready for pink popcorn, but that doesn't mean we can't reminisce. Review includes a download for what's probably the only Pop Qwiz commercial that ever existed. And Guessin' Ted, too!
This entry was posted
on Friday, January 16th, 2004 at 2:00 am
and is filed under General.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
How many of you remember "Pop Qwiz?" Made in the early 90s, this ill-fated Pop Secret brand combined the familiar taste of buttered popcorn with wacky ass neon colors. If you wanted to eat red, blue, green or purple popcorn, you had to be a Pop Qwiz loyalist. The stuff seems to have been criminally short-lived. The world wasn't ready for pink popcorn, but that doesn't mean we can't reminisce. Review includes a download for what's probably the only Pop Qwiz commercial that ever existed. And Guessin' Ted, too! Click here to read it!
Posted by Matt on 01/16/2004. E-mail me!
Chestnuts roasted by 
My mom lied yo me and told me she would buy me some and never did? How long did pop qwiz last? Maybe 2 years?
Oh my god. I remember this… I tried it once.. popped the bag for too long, thus burning the contents to an inedible blackness.