Merle Robbins (1911–1984) was an American barber from Reading, Ohio, who invented the popular UNO card game in 1971 to settle an argument over Crazy Eights rules with his son Ray. They designed the original decks at home, mortgaging their house to raise $8,000 and selling the first 5,000 decks from Robbins’ barber shop. Robbins sold UNO’s rights in 1972 to International Games for $50,000 plus 10 cents per copy in royalties. Today, the game is produced by Mattel and sold in 80 countries, with over 151 million copies worldwide. Robbins passed away in 1984 in Cincinnati at age 72.
External links
References
"Merle Robbins died". New York Times. 16 January 1984. Retrieved 22 October 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/16/obituaries/merle-robbins.html ↩
"Uno Nasıl Oynanır? Kartları ve Cezaları". OyunBilim (in Turkish). 2020-05-22. Retrieved 2020-05-22. https://www.oyunbilim.com/kutu/uno/ ↩
"Merle Robbins died". New York Times. 16 January 1984. Retrieved 22 October 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/16/obituaries/merle-robbins.html ↩
Ohio, Death Records, 1908-1932, 1938-2007 ↩
Schuldt, Gretchen (6 February 1984). "Cards were stacked for success of UNO". Milwaukee Sentinel. Archived from the original on 21 February 2020. Retrieved 29 February 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20200221080111/https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=WYFQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OBIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6606,1069000&dq=ray-robbins+uno&hl=en ↩