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As soon as he saw the first news reports about playing cards depicting Saddam Hussein and his cohorts being handed out to coalition troops in Iraq, one thought crossed Ed Jack's mind:
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"People are going to want to buy these things."

It's the nature of fads. People see something unusual - remember those berets the U.S. Olympic team wore in Salt Lake City? - and want one of their own. But it never lasts - seriously, do you really remember those berets? - which is also the nature of fads.

Jack, whose suburban Chicago beer-and-wine distributorship was just starting to dabble in selling flags and other patriotica on the side, leaped into action.

"One of our partners investigated getting a hold of some Iraqi cards," he said. "We contacted a company in Texas that could do 10,000 decks, but we were thinking that we would need more like 100,000."

Keep counting.

Since mid-April, Jack's company, Lionstone International, has commissioned 1.5million decks of what has been dubbed "Iraq's Most-Wanted." About a third were sold in the first week, when Lionstone put them up for sale on its Web site, and the rest have been selling steadily since.

It is a classic example of striking while the iron is hot.

"It was a stroke of luck," Jack said. "It was a lark. We're always looking for interesting ideas. We never turn any idea away."

The 55-card deck sells for $5.95, more than a standard deck of cards but not outrageous considering the novelty of it. Originally designed to help soldiers round up fleeing members of Saddam's regime, the cards became an instant pop-cultural curiosity here in the United States.

Lionstone International publicized the cards through an e-mail spam campaign and in an advertisement on a Web site spoofing Iraq's hapless information minister, a brief cause celabre famous for his wildly inaccurate reports from Baghdad during the height of the war.

"Everybody was going to that site," Jack said by telephone from his office in Lake Forest, Ill. "We were getting 90 orders a minute the first and second week. We bought 15 new computers to handle all the e-mail."

Although other companies are producing their own versions of the cards, Jack claims to have the only truly authentic set, the result of another lucky stroke. When the printer in Texas could not produce enough decks, Lionstone International turned to the United States Playing Card Co. in Cincinnati, maker of those ubiquitous Bicycle playing cards.

As it would turn out, the cards issued to the troops featured a pair of traditional Jokers, known as the Hoyle Joker, for which United States Playing Card holds the copyright.

While it's OK for the Pentagon to use the Hoyle Joker for its cards, only the Cincinnati company can sell decks featuring the familiar jester.

A deal was struck that allows Lionstone International to lay claim to the only truly "authentic" deck of Iraq's Most Wanted cards, a fact the company plays up quite heavily on its Web site, www.greatUSAflags.com .

"We're the only ones," Jack said. "Anyone who wants to get a deck that is exactly like the cards given to the troops has to get it from us."

In addition to the Internet, retailers such as Walgreens and Eckerd are selling the decks in some of their stores. They also are being sold at hobby shops, bookstores and comic shops around the country, Jack said.

Doug Adams, manager of Comic Book World, 6905 Shepherdsville Road, said he has sold four of the five decks he ordered from his distributor, at the marked-up price of $9.95. He said he sees signs that the fad, like America's interest in the war, is starting to cool.

"We got them in two weeks ago, and by then it was probably starting to wear off," he said. "If we could have gotten them right when they came out, they might have been a bigger deal. You've got to get product out when it's hot and people want it."

Jack couldn't agree more. There are no plans to have more decks printed, given the shelf life of fads. Instead, Lionstone International is moving on to other things, including a deck featuring "heroes" of the war, such as President Bush, his generals and foot soldiers from the various military units involved.

"You have to move fast," he said. "You have to be in the right place in the right time, and ride the bubble."

Copyright © 2003. The Courier-Journal.