Nah yeah: Shire artist with designs on UNO
Michael Bailey | Arts and culture editor
Australian Financial Review - November 2nd 2026
Last decade Joel Moore was a bored paraplanner for AMP, now he has joined Jean-Michel Basquiat and Takashi Murakami among a handful of artists licensed by UNO, the world’s biggest-selling card game.
Best known for more than 400 murals in Sydney and beyond of brightly coloured, larrikin Australiana, Moore – who paints under his childhood nickname “Mulga” – has even bent the rules of the family game night stalwart, introducing “Yeah Nah” and “Nah Yeah” cards.
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Mulga, aka Joel Moore, has joined a handful of artists invited to redesign UNO. Louie Douvis |
The Australian arm of UNO’s owner, Nasdaq-listed Mattel, gave Mulga the freedom to reimagine the stalwart of family game night in a deal signed around Easter last year. The result will be in shops across the US and Australia this week, an event the California-based toy maker hopes can continue a sales kick for UNO that is bucking the trend towards screen-based entertainment.
In a first for the game, which has sold 150 million packs since its invention by Cincinnati barber Merle Robbins in 1971, Mulga’s “Yeah Nah” card – adorned by a crocodile with its thumbs down – cancels any punishment card such as a “skip” or “draw four” played before it, but can be cancelled itself by the “Nah Yeah” card – illustrated with two cheekily beaming wombats.
“I reckon we’ll confuse a few overseas people at first, but ‘Yeah Nah’ is a good Aussie phrase for them to learn,” says Mulga, who has played UNO since he was six.
Non-Australians might be just as mystified by Mulga’s artworks printed across the 112 cards. Rendered originally in Posca paint marker, they include rock star koalas and platypuses, surfing kangaroos and seagulls, plus a cocktail-sipping bin chicken.
UNO’s four familiar suit colours have been replaced by sky blue, sunshine yellow, bush green and zinc pink.
“I live by the beach, try and go for a surf every day, love being in nature, and my art’s inspired by all that,” says the 44-year-old from Sydney’s Sutherland shire.
“Kids love bright colours and funky characters, so UNO was a match made in heaven for me.”
Mulga is only the ninth artist and the first Australian to be licensed for UNO’s global Artiste series, which started with late New York graffitist Keith Haring in 2019 and last year featured Belgium’s Vexx, who like Mulga is renowned for colourful doodle-style works. (A Ken Done pack was marketed in Australia only in 2020.)
“We’re always trying to keep UNO fresh and different for the consumer, and localising it where we can,” says Paul Faulkner, managing director of Mattel Asia Pacific.
Mattel’s shares are trading at about one-third of the $US47 high they reached in 2014. The company behind Barbie and Hot Wheels is still amid a transition to where, as former chief executive Ynon Kreiz said when presenting its 2025 results, high-margin licensing and digital games become as important to it as physical product.
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| Joel Moore, aka Mulga, painting one of the demountable classrooms at Bondi Public School in 2018. James Brickwood |
Yet while there has been more than 100 million downloads of UNO’s mobile game from the Google app store alone, sales of physical UNO decks continue to grow year-on-year in Australia, Faulkner said.
“Friends and families will always want to come together, and at its core that’s what UNO does,” he said.
“Inventing house rules, arguing over whether you’re actually allowed to play that ‘draw four’, the banter, all that stuff just seems to stay the same.”
Mattel is leaning into the trend, sponsoring “UNO social club” nights in pubs and a world championship this month in Los Angeles, as a counter to remote gaming.
For Mulga, the deal with Mattel is just his latest step in becoming one of Australia’s most globally recognised artists.
A “compulsive doodler” since childhood, he got a bachelor of economics degree from UNSW and “fell into” paraplanning.
“But I felt like I was wasting my life. I wanted a job that I loved and to be my own boss,” he says.
He side-hustled for two years, selling T-shirts printed with his characters – most of them wearing trademark chunky sunglasses – before in 2012 successfully applying to paint a mural on the Bondi Beach seawall.
The result, Griswald the Good Vibe Gorilla, went viral and Mulga scaled back to four days a week at AMP, before quitting altogether in 2014.
His 400-plus mural commissions include more than 150 on school playgrounds, and among his brand collaborators are Samsung, Coca-Cola, Red Bull, Adidas, Lego and, since Mattel, Hello Kitty owner Sanrio.
“Turns out there was no money in finance. Art is where it’s at,” he quips.
