Different Colors Make the Pooh Playing Card Deck Attractive But Hard to Use

It’s no secret to anyone I know that I am a big fan of Winnie the Pooh. Add that to my fondness for playing cards and it’s little wonder that I have received more than one deck of Winnie the Pooh playing cards over the years. The sturdy deck produced by the United States Playing Card Company comes in an attractive pastel purple box whose front shows a drowsy Pooh Bear happily snoozing in a hammock. A simplified version of this same picture appears on each of the four ace cards.

In terms of image variety, this isn’t the most complex of card decks, since it only uses 13 different pictures, plus pictures of Pooh and Tigger that take up the whole card for the jokers. The ace, jack queen and king each have a thin border with yellow on the left side, pink on the right and either purple or blue on the top and bottom, depending on the suit. Otherwise, the background is white, and that white background is uninterrupted for cards two through ten.

The most unusual thing about this deck of cards is the fact that instead of having black clubs and spades and red hearts and diamonds, it has purple clubs and spades and blue hearts and diamonds. The reason for this is aesthetic, as it goes so nicely with the cheerful color palette used in the pictures themselves, and I do like it from that standpoint. On the other hand, my brain is so used to the established colors that I tend to get a little confused when I play with this deck. It’s not a problem if I’m playing something simple like golf, which allows me to take my time, but if I’m playing a fast-paced game of double solitaire, this is not a deck I prefer to use.

For numbers two through ten, the icons emblematic of that particular suit are featured on the card. For instance, the nine of hearts has nine hearts on it. Hence, there’s not a lot of room for pictures. Out of necessity, only the jack, queen and king can be really large. The hammock picture on the ace doesn’t take up much room because of the large “Disney’s Winnie the Pooh” floating above it. Of Pooh’s jumbo poses, my favorite is probably the one on the queen card, which shows him clutching a bouquet of purple flowers and smiling, eyes closed. However, I also love the jack, on which he stands with his nose tilted upward as a butterfly lands upon it. The king pose is actually identical to the eight aside from the size, which is a bit boring; I would have thought something different could have been done for the final card in the suit.

Among the regular numbers, we have a variety of poses, some more interesting than others. Pooh is alone on seven and eight, whereas he has company on all the other cards, though in the case of three, it seems to be his imagination that Heffalumps and Woozles are peering at him through the mirror. The box for this deck includes an advertisement for The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, the show that really made me an ardent enthusiast of the Silly Old Bear and his friends, and the style of the pictures reflects that. The pictures are very detailed and cheerful. My favorite is probably two, in which Piglet offers a pot of honey to a kingly Pooh as Tigger, a pot atop his head, stands guard. I also love ten, in which the two friends surprise Pooh with a birthday party. However, I was a little disappointed that only Tigger and Piglet appear in the deck. That leaves out Rabbit and Eeyore, who are usually just as prominent as Piglet and Tigger, as well as the more infrequent Kanga, Roo, Owl, Christopher Robin and Gopher, who isn’t in the books but is at the heart of some of the show’s most memorable episodes.

With seven other major characters unrepresented here, there is plenty of reason to introduce other decks into the mix, which the company has done. Still, this is a very nice deck for those who love Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and the simple pleasures depicted on these cards. Each card is sturdy and smooth, making this an easy deck to use with any number of traditional card games. While I would recommend it primarily for slower-paced games, if you are not so easily addled, you should be able to use it for whatever card game you enjoy most. Card-playing, like most activities, is so much friendlier with Pooh!