Mattel put up quite a fight when a game application called Scrabulous appeared on Facebook. But after losing the court battle towards blocking a game in the likeness of Mattel’s own Scrabble, the company has since welcomed the powerful branding opportunities that a Facebook application could provide. The latest gaming application from Mattel is for the well-known UNO, which is being launched with partner company Gamehouse.

As of today, the UNO application is in public beta. The application itself is simple enough: you can play the game, or leave feedback. There are no solo options for the popular card game; you’ll have to wait until there are enough available online players (4 players total), in order to participate in the UNO application. There is a live chat option so you can converse with fellow players during the game.

There is also a timing check put in place, so that any player that may have tabbed over too far or forgotten they were in the middle of a multiplayer card game will simply be dealt 4 extra cards and the round moves onto the next player. I think the timing check is very important for the UNO gaming application as there is only one role for game play at the moment.

There is also not yet an option to invite friends to play UNO, so the players you’re matched with are not of your choosing. The Invite option will be added to the UNO gaming application soon, but until then you’re unable to easily get your friends into the game. I’m a little bit surprised that Mattel launched the Uno gaming application without the Invite option despite UNO’s beta status, as this is the easiest way to leverage a player’s social graph within Facebook to gain new users.

In all the UNO game is fun and has a great interface for an enjoyable game play. I’d like to see some additional features for more social playing, and I actually think this game among Mattel’s others would be well suited for iPhone integration as well. Finding a good way to cross-link or promote other Mattel games would be worth the while of the company, and I think the platform approach to building out its gaming network could work.