Fulton's Chinatown was the second in the "Fulton's" series, designed by Brad Fulton. Asian theme, priced with three "8s" for $8.88 a pack (8 is a traditionally lucky number for many Chinese). The face colorings were, except for the background, identical to the Vintage Plaids that had preceded them, and some were disappointed by the "red" from the photos actually being more of a reddish orange shade. (I think it was Syd in Customer Service who said that the cards looked redder because they were reflecting the color of the fireworks they were photographed with.) It did, however, have a stylin' dragon joker pair and an attractive Ace of Spades.
Some months later, after the success of the initial release of Ace Fulton's Casino in Sunset Orange, Tobacco Brown and Midnight Fuel, out popped the eye-catching "Game of Death" version of the deck, inspired by the Bruce Lee movie of the same title. It was very well-received, but it was also much more rare and sold out quickly.
The Dragon Backs have an interesting story. Advertised at the time of release as being a long-lost Bicycle back believed to have never been printed, it turned out that they were instead vintage Tally Ho backs! The originals were one-color prints, like most decks made in that era, but these were given the Technicolor treatment, with metallic ink on the gold deck. The blue deck is unique in that the red pips are colored blue to match - the gold and red decks used red pips in a pleasing shade between the bright red of most Bicycle decks and the deeper "casino red". Otherwise, the faces are all USPC standard, right down to the duplicate "King on bicycle" jokers, and of all three backs, the gold is probably the best in terms of detail clarity - the red and blue used a black background that muddied the overall appearance and concealed some of the finer details, but the gold deck used a red background with its gold dragons to great effect.
(Bonus points if you can figure out which two decks of the three have a one-way mark - and WHERE the mark is!)
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