Everybody's Mad About Uno

Wall Street Journal

4 days ago

When a fight breaks out between a couple at one of his New York board game cafes, Greg May can guess the likely culprit without even looking up: Uno.
More than 50 years after its debut, the card-shedding game is now more popular than ever, fueled by savvy marketing, nostalgia and viral stunts.
That is especially true among young adults, who organize game nights around Uno, incorporate drinking rules and embrace increasingly cutthroat variations. But taking a game that already seemed designed to make people mad and reintroducing it to grown-ups who were raised on different rules can be a recipe for tension.
Think politics divides? Try mixing competitors with different views on stacking 'action' cards, or getting everyone to agree on the true power of the Wild card. And nobody can seem to decide whether staples of the game of their youth – like mandating players yell 'Uno!' when they have one card left – are socially acceptable at a bar with strangers.
'Emotions can definitely run high, 'said May, co-founder of the Hex & Company and The Uncommons cafes in New York.
Josh and Erin Alderson by all accounts have a peaceful marriage. But there is one issue on which they can't seem to come together. Josh says a Wild card only lets a player change the color, while Erin argues it allows the player to change the color and play a card. The couple typically defaults to Erin's ruling.
Sitting on the floor of their living room in St. Louis one night this month, the duo were locked in a different kind of standoff: an Uno match that wouldn't end.
'We're both very competitive, so we can't finish in a tie,' Erin said. 'I think we ended up playing nine rounds.' (Josh won, she added somewhat begrudgingly, crediting his victory to a strategy of hoarding action cards until late in the game.)
Uno's publisher, Mattel, has embraced the game's power to test relationships and often acts as referee, settling disputes on its X account, realUNOgame.
'*Per management: You cannot STACK a +2 on a +2,' the account posted, denouncing a commonly held belief that stacking—or playing the same card on top of itself to double its consequence—is allowed. 'Go ahead, roast us.'
Mattel also launched Uno Show 'Em No Mercy, a version designed that features what gamemakers call ruthless rules and penalties. It was the second-best-selling card game in the U.S. last year, according to research firm Circana, trailing only the classic version of Uno.
Ray Adler, vice president and global head of games at Mattel, said the game's appeal stems from both its simplicity and its power to divide. 'Best friends become merciless. Seven-year-olds turn strategic,' Adler said. 'This is what makes Uno special – universal accessibility meets authentic emotions disguised as family fun.'
Despite several new iterations, Uno's basic rules have remained largely unchanged since its 1971 debut. Players take turns shedding cards that match the color or number of the top card on a discard pile. If a player can't play a card, they draw a new one from the deck. The first person to ditch their hand wins.
The deck is sprinkled with cards that force another player to draw more cards, thwarting their path to victory and extending the game.
The other catch: You have to call out 'Uno!' when you have one card left.
Maggie Burke learned this the hard way while playing Uno at summer camp. After shedding her hand down to one card, she was too shy to yell, 'Uno!' The other campers called her out.
Now a 28-year-old writer in Boston, Burke had a full-circle moment while playing with an attractive stranger at a dive bar. 'Had to be really chill abt the fact that they didn't announce uno when they had one card left making their win invalid,' she posted on X. 'Couldn't let them see the game night aggression.'
Burke said Uno has had a revival in her life thanks to regular game nights with friends. The group created a drinking version by adding blank cards that require the next person up to either draw 25 cards or take a shot.
Andrea Williams frequently plays Uno at a bar near her apartment in Hartford, Conn., with her college friends and random patrons.
'People I don't know will join in at the bar, and I'm just like, 'I feel bad because I don't know you, but I gotta give you the Draw 4,'' she said. Expletives are often exchanged—especially after a few drinks—but 'it's always playful,' Williams said.
Uno got an unexpected viral boost from a British YouTuber.
At a charity soccer match in 2023, Max Fosh sprinted down the pitch in front of more than 60,000 spectators at London Stadium and tackled an opposing player in the hopes of drawing a yellow card. When the referee obliged, Fosh whipped out a green Uno Reverse card.
The stunt helped supercharge a movement to use the card—which in the game reverses the order of play—as a real-life comeback meaning, 'No, you.'
Now American middle schoolers stash Reverse cards in their pockets to redirect any manner of affront. In turn, teachers have tucked the cards into lanyards and stowed them in desk drawers, prepared for when students try to use the cards on them.
Leigh Dyer, a 25-year-old account manager at an Orlando, Fla., marketing firm, loves Uno so much that she recently bought a miniature deck to keep in her purse for when she goes out with friends or colleagues.
She has long followed house rules that allow stacking, as well as dropping multiple cards at once: 'If I have three Draw 4 cards, I'm laying them down,' she said.
But recently, Dyer has started to rethink that strategy.
'I've become very cautious about stacking when I'm sitting next to my mom or my fiancé,' she said. 'Because what goes around comes back around, especially with the Uno Reverse.'
Write to Connor Hart at [e-mail]