We’ve finally reached Number ONE in our 10-day countdown here at 365Barrington.com and my tidbit for today is a success story that shows how best-loved brands can come from humble beginnings.
It also falls into the “Useless Trivia that May Come in Handy Someday” category:
The inventor of the popular card game UNO was a guy by the name of Merle Robbins from Milford, Ohio. Originally from Hungary, Merle was working as a barber back in 1971 when he reportedly created the game of UNO to resolve an argument with his son about the rules of Crazy Eights. With the help of his wife, Marie, and his son and daughter-in-law, Ray and Kathy, the Robbins family designed and made the original UNO decks on their dining room table. Together, they saved $8,000 and created the first 5,000 UNO decks to sell. At first Merle sold them out of his barber shop. In 1981, he sold the rights to UNO to International Games for $50,000 plus royalties of 10 cents per copy. Today the game is produced by toy giant Mattel in 80 countries and has sold 150 million copies worldwide.
So what have we been counting down to for the past ten days? It’s top secret. But I’m letting the cat out of the bag tomorrow. Hope to see you back here for the big surprise!
*Info Source and Photo Source
Old English ān | Indo-european *OIN-, *OIW-, *OIK- | Sanskrit EKA, ekaḥ (m) / ekā (f) / ekam (n) | Proto-Hellenic *HEMS (< sems) | Greek, Attic ‘EIΣ, MIA, ‘EN HÊS (m), MIA (f), HÉN (n) | Latin VNVS, -A | Archaic Latin *ŒNVS, -A, *OINOS, -A | Italian, Spanish uno | Romanian, French, and Catalan un | Provençal uns | Portuguese um | Romansh in | Sardinian únu | Old Celtic OINO | Breton unan | Welsh un | Irish a haon (cardinal), amháin (thing), duine (person) | Old Germanic AINAZ | Dutch een | German eins | Danish and Norwegian en, et | Swedish ett | Icelandic einn | Old Slavic JEDINU, -A, -0 | Russian один odÕn | Czech and Polish jeden | Slovenian êna | Proto Indo-Iranian *AIWAS | Persian یک yek | Hindi ek | Old Chinese (pron.) iêt | Chinese 一 yī. 幺| Proto-Semitic *HAD ‘IShT | Semitic root WHD | Ancient Egyptian [w’.-] ua- | Akkadian ishte’n | Punic e’hd | Arabic واحِد wa:hid | Hebrew אחת ‘aHat | Maltese wiehed | Magyar egy | Turkish bir | Mayan hun | Nahuatl cē | Suomi yksi |Zulu (u-ku)nye
