AriZona made a game, and it’s really petty

“99 The Game” (also sometimes written “AriZona: The Game”; “AriZona: 99 The Game”; and “AriZona: Great Buy! 99 The Game”) is a 2025 card game developed by AriZona Tea and published by Spin Master Ltd. This one is probably a bit more mainstream than most of what I’ve covered – Spin Master was an established publisher, AriZona Tea is a multinational corporation, and it received a somewhat mainstream distribution through stores like Target, Wal-Mart, and Amazon. That said, we’re going to talk about it, because it’s really funny. 

According to the AriZona website, the 22 oz. “big can” went on sale for 99 cents in 1992. It’s held steady at that price for over 30 years (though some secondary retailers do sell it for higher). If it kept up with inflation and price changes, the cans would cost an estimated $1.99 per can (“Can AriZona’s 99-Cents Iced Tea Survive Trump’s Tariffs?” Remy Tumin and Brian Frazer, New York Times, 2025). This is still less than most 20 oz. single bottles of name-brand sodas. And it’s a source of pride for owner and founder Don Vultaggio, who has repeatedly expressed resistance to changing these prices. 

And this brings us to their card game: which is explicitly about reaching exactly 99 cents, no more, to “resist inflation”. 

The mechanics themselves are fairly simple. You play cards, do a little math, and try to keep the total number under 99. Cards include things like “Great Buy! 8 cents” (add eight to the total); “Fight Inflation! 0 cents” (the total remains the same); and “Pass the Buck” (the next player plays two cards in a row). It’s entirely unambitious, but nonetheless effective. I’ve played several games with the same basic system before (“Zeus on the Loose” was the version I had as a kid, though it’s far from alone). 

I am quite conflicted about the art. I see what they were trying to do. I really do. It’s meant to be a card version of their over-the-top colorful geometric patterns and floral designs. And conceptually, I have no notes. That said, most of the cards just don’t have enough going on to make this work – but still too busy to have the classic clean-ness of cards in games like “Uno” or “Cards Against Humanity”. This normally wouldn’t be a big deal to me, but due to the fact that you just play cards in a stack and only are supposed to see one at a time on the game board, these cards are not just visually dominant, they’re the only visual. It’s not giving enough for the visual importance of those cards. 

That said, the sheer pettiness of this game permeates everything. Like, some of the strongest cards explicitly say things like “fight inflation”, and it’s entirely themed around not breaking that 99-cent marker – something the company and Vultaggio have repeatedly held up as an important value for the company, especially in comparison to the market. It’s really interesting to see an openly anti-capitalist game get such a broad distribution through ultra-capitalist routes. This is what caught my eye about this game. 

Who would I recommend this game for? It’s a good game for basic addition. It’s fun and easy enough for people looking for straightforward games. I don’t think it really succeeds as a “party game” as advertised, but it’s not bad. There are more interesting versions of this game out there, but this one still works and I think it is fairly priced. Ultimately, I think its main audience is probably people looking to try and get a laugh at the expense of inflation in our late-stage capitalist society. 

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