A 7-year-old boy from Ballard and his family created a hit card game that has just been sold to a major toy and game company.
Alex, with help from his mom Leslie Pierson and dad Mark Butler, came up with the card game Taco vs. Burrito in 2018 while on walks around Ballard. The family was already big into card games like Exploding Kittens, Unstable Unicorns, and Boss Monster.
“The main thing we love in a game is strategy, so Alex was very focused on ensuring his game was highly strategic,” the family shared on their website. They tested out early iterations of the game while at Cafe Bambino in Ballard.
In Taco vs. Burrito, players compete to create the highest-value meal by building either a taco or a burrito. Each player takes turns drawing cards and playing ingredient cards into their meal, adding points, or sabotaging opponents with action cards like “Tummy Ache” (which subtracts points) or “Trash Panda” (which steals cards).
Players can also use wild or modifier cards to change the course of the game. The twist is that many ingredients are bizarre—like Hot Yogurt or Chocolate-Covered Shrimp—adding humor to the strategy. The game ends when the draw pile runs out, and the player with the most points in their meal wins.
Once it was ready, the family launched a Kickstarter campaign to help pay for the development costs, which raised $25,000. Pierson already had some experience with Kickstarter and product development—she went on Shark Tank in 2015 with her creation GoodHangups, which is a magnetic hanging solution.
Pierson and Butler put the game on Amazon under the company name Hot Taco, where it sold out in one week. Since its debut six years ago, they’ve sold a million and a half copies of the game.
Pierson told GeekWire they chose to sell in part because they were tired of the operational challenges around the holidays and the uncertainty of tariffs.
Pierson and Butler recently sold Taco vs. Burrito in a cash deal to PlayMonster, which is a Wisconsin-based company.
Photo: Taco vs. Burrito on Instagram