Thursday, October 25, 2007

A cheap UNO game

Here in China, we have noticed that the Chinese are very good at imitating – they copy anything and everything they can when it comes to consumer goods. For example, Ashley has a set of playing cards she got as a birthday gift this year. Liz and I decided to play a game with them today – they are California Barbie UNO cards – while playing, I noticed there were a large number of blue cards and sure enough, after checking the cards, there are only 3 colors in the deck, instead of 4 – so double the number of blue cards. I then thought I would check the box to see what brand it was – its’ a copy of a Mattel product – even have the red Mattell stamp on it – but upon looking closely – it says MaIIel instead of Mattel. Then on the side of the box, they list the phone number for the company, if you have any comments or questions – the number is 1(800)524-TOYS, which is the real Mattel US phone number. But, the website listed on the box is www.maiier.com. They even have the statement “safety tested. Conforms to astm F963” but do I dare believe that these copy cat cards have actually been safety tested? Not really.