By Gary Symons, TLL Editor in Chief
If you’re going to launch a game show, what better way than to base it on an already popular game?
That appears to be the thinking behind reports that toy and game giant Mattel is working Ben Silverman and Howard T. Owens of Propagate to release a new show called The Uno Game Show.
According to a story in The Hollywood Reporter, the show will see the classic card game turned into a competition, with four teams facing off each episode to become an Uno champion. If that sounds a bit dry for TV, the onscreen version of Uno will feature what Mattel is calling a “super-sized Uno experience” that includes trivia questions, audience participation, and physical challenges. Mind you, that was pretty much the same as when I played Uno with my own family.
Uno was originally developed in 1971 by Merle Robbins of Reading, Ohio, who played it with family and friends. As it became more popular in the Cincinnati suburbs, Robbins invested $8,000 to have 5,000 copies the game produced, which he originally sold at his barbershop. Later some local businesses began to sell it as well, and then Robins sold the rights to a group of friends headed by a local funeral director for $50,000 plus a 10 cent royalty payment per pack of cards.
The funeral director, Robert Tezak, formed International Games to market Uno from the office behind his funeral parlor, and the rest, as they say, is history. The game became a runaway success, and International Games was purchased by Mattel in 1992.
If you’ve never played Uno, which I suggest is not possible, it’s a ‘card-shedding’ game somewhat like Crazy 8s, in which the goal is to get rid of all your cards before your opponents.
The game has been so popular since its inception that it has been licensed by a wide range of top properties including DC Comics, Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Sesame Street, Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, a wide variety of sports franchises, and many more.
Interestingly, in 2013, Mattel announced it was planning a game show based on Uno with The Gurin Company, but the idea was scrapped and the show never aired. However, the most recent incarnation of an Uno game who involves some top talent in the genre, as Silverman and Owens will be joined as executive producers by John Quinn of Let’s Make a Deal and The Price is Right fame.
“Uno is the most popular game in the world and is a fixture in pop culture, making it the ideal franchise to build a reality game show around,” says Adam Bonnett, executive producer, Mattel TV. “Ben, Howard, Greg and John have deep expertise in unscripted content and are the perfect partners to help us transform Uno into a television series for the whole family.”