The origin of Pogs the game

  The origin of the nineties colorful collection game is unknown, but according to the article on Dictionary.com, Pop Culture Dictionary, it is believed to have started hundreds of years ago in Japan. The game then was called Menko, and is played the exact way Pogs are played, you are actively working to flip over your opponent’s cards. The game then traveled to Hawaii in the 1800’s, but this time, it was similar, yet different from Menko. Hawaiian’s played the game with milk bottle caps. In 1990, the game using milk bottle caps was named. It is credited to an elementary-school teacher named Blossom Galbiso for introducing it to her students. The students officially named the game Pogs, thus, the story officially begins, or does it? Another article, How the F*** Do you even play Pogs? states the origins in the United States stems from a juice that contains passion fruit, orange, and guava, thus, the shortened term was coined P.O.G. These juices came with lids that kids turned into the game pieces. Further into the fad, “When an enterprising Pog juice marketing agent named Charlie Nalepa saw the milk caps game gaining popularity, he printed Pog-branded caps just for the game” (Mcarthur, 2016).  There seems to be many similar games played for centuries, however, Pogs was played with milk caps in the 90’s, and can you guess what the game was also known as? Another name for this game was the milk cap game. SO the origin story may be a little confusing – don’t worry, I’m right there with ya!

Game Pieces

Pogs: Pogs are small circular discs of cardboard with designs printed on them, then glossed. 

Slammers: Slammers are small metal circular discs that are bigger than Pogs. These game pieces could come with stickers of characters or images on them in the center, painted/printed on designs, or typically they were engraved then painted. 

The brand POISON was the most popular and “coolest”.

Example of metal Slammers:                           Example of a stack of Pogs:

                           

Slammers                                                            Pogs stack

How it’s played

1. You begin the game by creating a stack, or tower, of Pogs faced down, it does not matter how tall the stack is – that is up to the players.
2. The first person takes their Slammer and will use their thumb and index finger to slam the Slammer on the pile of Pogs.
3. The Slammer then should knock over the stack, revealing face up Pogs. The ones sitting face up are the pieces you get to keep.
4. The next player then gets to use the Slammer on the pile that has now been created, and from there, will keep any Pogs they can manage to face up.
5. If it gets difficult to get Pogs to face up in the pile, then it is time to either end the game, or add more Pogs and create another tower.
6. The player with the most Pogs not only wins the game, but also gets to keep the ones they won.
7. You DO NOT have to play for keeps, but that rule must be put forth before the game begins, or you may just lose your favorite Pog!

 My Take on Pogs as a Gen Z

  POG’s started as a popular schoolyard game in Hawaii and were huge in the 1990’s. They were for all ages six to twelve, but teens were also huge fans of the game. This hands-on game remains a treasure for millennials today. You can think of POG’s as another collection and trading game like Pokémon cards. There are hundreds of different POG’s to buy, win, and trade. The most popular and “cool” Slammers were the brand Poison. The game packaging came in many different forms: some came with POG’s and Slammers, some came with only POG’s and you had to buy Slammers separately, and they all came with a little booklet of directions on how to play. This was a huge cultural game in the 90’s because this is when kids played outside all the time instead of inside on video games like today, as well as you socialized in person instead of online. Kids didn’t only trade during an active game, they also traded POG’s just because. My uncles played with Pogs in the late 90’s, and I even got a POG myself from them, as well as I have played the game with them. 

During this time, I was a volleyball player in middle school, and I was obsessed with the sport.

Here is my own personal Pog:

A little bit of Gaming History

The action of slamming the Slammer game piece down on the Pog game pieces is similar to the wrist action in an old outdoor game played using pocketknives in the 17th Century called Mumblety-Peg. (Mumblety-peg image)

Pogs are a good example of the games played in Bruegel’s painting, Children’s Games.

(Childrens Games painting)

The children in this painting are all playing games outside, in which Pogs were generally played outside. Just as the children are playing with multiple people, Pogs was also a game played with two or more people. You can also make up your own fun with the game just as children do with their imaginations in Breugel’s painting. The position in which you sit with Pogs looks most like the two children in the bottom left corner of the painting that are playing Knuckle Bones – basically the game jacks, just including knucklebones from sheep; you sit on the ground in a circle around the game and play.

Promotional

Many brands, fast food places, shows, and more took this fad as an opportunity to support themselves. Places, such as Wendy’s and McDonalds even served these as toys with their kids meals which included popular TV show characters on them at the time. There were very many promotional opportunities for Pogs: 

McDonalds promote themselves on Pogs:

 

 

 

(McDonalds Pogs)

 

 

Taco Bell and Carl’s Jr. promoted themselves on Pogs:

(Pogs)

This is an actual Pogs set from Wendy’s kids meals that included a Slammer!

(Wendy’s Pogs)

It was a missed opportunity for any franchise that did not use Pogs to promote themselves. 

       My uncle, who is 31 years of age, was once one of these teenage boys who were obsessed and crazed over Pogs. 

“I owned so many! I would play for keeps after school almost every day with my friends, sometimes, the ones we lost in the process were  hard loss” (Pliler, 2022).

I asked my uncle if he could show me his Pogs, however, it seems he had lost them all in the 30 years it has been. He did, however, show me the binder of Pogs he had acquired from eBay which cost him around $200.00 in 2010. You can see these images below:

 

 

The end of an ERA

  The fad quickly died out when schools began to ban the game. The company soon faced bankruptcy in 1995, so the craze only lasted about five years before it began to quickly keel. Today, old school Pogs and Slammers sell for different prices on the web – eBay, Facebook marketplace, ect. These range from $8.00 for maybe five Pogs and one Slammer, to $100.00 for a binder of Pogs and so many Slammers – they are also sold separately. Online stores, such as Amazon, currently sell new Pogs for cheaper prices, but it’s really all about the OG’s. 

 

                                                    Thank you so much for reading!