Transformation playing card

It was at this time that designers in Germany, France and England began to draw small figures around the pips.

[2] The first transformation playing cards were created by D.W. Soltan and D. Berger in 1801 as illustrations for a German edition of Hudibras.

Strand subsequently asked its readers to submit their own designs for card squiggles, which the magazine periodically published.

have estimated that around 70 different transformation decks were created throughout the entire nineteenth century, which by modern standards is a relatively small number.

By the late 19th century more colourful and creative transformation decks by Vanity Fair and Harlequin appeared, which showed pips incorporated into artwork that depicted people dining, skating, playing tennis and riding bicycles.

One of the more notable contemporary sets is the award-winning The Key to the Kingdom, a semi-transformation deck commissioned by London's V&A Museum of Childhood and created by Tony Meeuwissen.

[11] With the advent of Kickstarter and other crowdfunded websites, individual artists are more easily able to bring transformation and semi-transformation decks to the public.