My Club Tattoo Playing Cards Review

I had quite a fun surprise during my last trip to Walgreens. If you can believe it, I found this awesome deck of playing cards next to the marked down Christmas stuff. And get this - they were marked down to $1.00!

Look at that color! And I know I don't have to tell you guys how cool those skeletons are. You probably noticed that these look like tattoo designs, or are based off general classic styles of tattoos anyway.

This is the outside of the box, showing that they are fittingly enough called "Club Tattoo" playing cards. I was already familiar with the tattoo cards from seeing pictures of them online, so when I saw this box I jumped on it!

The back of the cards matches the box:

The pictures I'd seen of the cards online didn't do justice to them. The color in person is a lot more vibrant than what I'd seen pics of. I'll share the highlights of the deck here.

These are the two Jokers. They're very different, as you can see.

Each of the card suits is based around a different tattoo style and theme. The face cards are of course where the really detailed, colorful art can be found. But the number cards, to my surprise, also had art on them! I expected them to be plain. The drawings on the number cards are more sketchy and sepia tone. I'll show you an example of each suit.

The spades have a "Skulls" theme:

The diamonds have a "Traditional Japanese" theme:

The clubs are my favorite suit in this deck. They have a "Day of the Dead" theme:

I like my skulls happy.

The hearts have what one blogger called a "Hello Sailor" theme:

On the sites where I've seen these cards for sale, this suit has been called "traditional tattoo" but it's clearly old-school-sailor-tattoo themed.

So you see where they're going with the classic tattoo themes. You'll notice in the more detailed art, that each suit has its own artistic style. Now, onto the really fun stuff! The aces:

The ace of spades was as ominous as I would expect it to be.

The classic "Mom" is probably my favorite of the aces, though.

Next, the face cards. Starting with the spades:

The King is by far the strongest of these, in my opinion.

The diamonds:

The Queen card is so beautiful.

I looked over the King at first, without noticing some pretty cool details. Looking closer, I noticed he has this wild snake curling around him and this little shrunken gremlin head on his helmet.

I was going to skip sharing a close-up of the Jack, because he's kind weirding me out. But then I thought, "I bet someone reading this can tell me who this figure is". So if you can, please do!

On to the clubs! Those of you who follow me on Twitter are going to recognize the lady in the middle here.

I love the Queen and the Jack in this suit!

There is actually some pretty good tattoo inspiration in this deck. I've never seen any Day of the Dead themed tattoos on a person, but I assume plenty of people have them.

And lastly, the hearts:

Again, it's the Queen and the Jack that I like best. I don't know what's up with some of the Kings in this deck. Except for the King of spades, which is awesome.

The Queen of Hearts looks like a beautiful gypsy to me.

And I like the way they worked an anchor with those classic birds into the lower half of the Jack card.

I took a pic of my four favorite cards together:

So, it was my lucky day when I saw these at Walgreens, hey? This is one of those purchases where you know it's going to be cool and then you get it home and realize it's really, really cool!

Interestingly, I've seen three options for these cards online, as far as the box/backs go. You can get that gold color I have, blue, or black/white. The black/white set has a completely different design on back. Here's a link if you're curious: Different color options

You might be interested to know that actual tattoo artists designed these cards and the deck is associated with an actual tattoo studio: Club Tattoo