Mattel Kicks Off Pride Merch Season With Deck of Rainbow Uno Cards

In the 50 years since Ohio barber Merle Robbins invented Uno, the card game has sold north of 100 million decks. To bolster the game’s appeal, Mattel (which bought it in 1992) has stamped out an endless array of themed and licensed packs—473, by one count. These have included a Minecraft Uno, a Frozen Uno and a Harry Potter Uno. There are Uno packs themed around the Yankees, Cubs and Astros. There’s Batman Uno and Hulk Uno and Spider Man Uno. As of 2019, there’s even a braille Uno. So why not an LGBTQ+ Uno? One has to wonder why it took this long. Today, in advance of Pride month in June, Mattel released a special edition it’s calling UNO Play with Pride. The backs of the cards sport a blurry color gradient, a riff on the rainbow flag that has been the LGBTQ+ community’s banner since San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker created it in 1978. Founded by popular gay columnist Dan Savage, the It Gets Better Project began in 2010 after a rash of LGBTQ+ teens died by suicide. In conjunction with selling the $5.99 decks (which only Target stores will carry), Mattel has pledged to donate $50,000 to the It Gets Better Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose content sends the message to gay and lesbian youth—frequently the targets of bullying at school and intolerance at home—that their lives are destined to improve. Columnist Dan Savage started the group in 2010 in response to the death of 15-year-old Billy Lucas, who took his own life after his classmates bullied him over their assumption that he was gay. In a statement, It Gets Better’s brand marketing director Eboni Munn welcomed the partnership by pointing out that the Uno game has “the ability to transcend age, culture and language while bringing people together,” a mission that her own group shares. Mattel’s partnership kicks off what is sure to be a season of brands announcing that they have signed on to an LGBTQ+ cause in advance of Pride Day, the last Sunday in June. In New York—where the first parade took place on June 28, 1970, a year after the historic Stonewall Uprising—this year’s corporate sponsors read like a who’s who of blue-chip stocks, including Mastercard, Hyatt, Target, Chase, Wells Fargo, PepsiCo, Viacom and many others. The rainbow flag isn’t trademarked, so there’s nothing to stop any company from using it for Pride-related marketing. Mattel is voluntarily giving its $50,000 gift to It Gets Better, though it’s worth pointing out that Mattel generated a whopping $1.6 billion in sales for 2020, a 10% increase over the year prior. In recent years, many brands that create special LGBTQ+ merch have been charged with "pinkwashing," a term applied to large corporations that are happy hang a rainbow flag to draw dollars, even if they do little to support community causes or LGBTQ+ employees within their own organizations. According to a 2020 study by management consulting firm EgonZehnder, in today’s corporate world, “the LGBTQ+ community is an example of a group whose views have been largely ignored. It does not help that data on the number of LGBTQ+ executives is nearly non-existent.” In taking stock of diversity on American corporate boards, for example, the firm found that only 24 out of 5,000 seats are presently held by executives who identify as LGBTQ+.