The games were produced by Lewis Saltzman of Saltzman Printers in Maywood, Illinois. Tezak formed International Games, Inc., to market Uno, with offices behind his funeral parlor. Robbins later sold the rights to Uno to a group of friends headed by Robert Tezak, a funeral parlor owner in Joliet, Illinois, for $50,000 plus royalties of 10 cents per game. He sold it from his barbershop at first, and local businesses began to sell it as well. When his family and friends began to play more and more, he spent $8,000 to have 5,000 copies of the game made. The game was originally developed in 1971 by Merle Robbins in Reading, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. Played with a specially printed deck, the game is derived from the crazy eights family of card games which, in turn, is based on the traditional German game of mau-mau. Uno ( / ˈ uː n oʊ/ from Spanish and Italian for 'one'), stylized as UNO, is a proprietary American shedding-type card game originally developed in 1971 by Merle Robbins in Reading, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, that housed International Games Inc., a gaming company acquired by Mattel on January 23, 1992.
