The ' 90s , am I right ? Hollywood ’s cash in somewhat hard on our nostalgia for this 10 . " Animaniacs " is back , there ’s a new " Jurassic Park " trilogy and hey , did you hear we ’re getting a tenacious - awaited"Space Jam " sequel ?
( We thinkthat ’s phat . Like , it’sso phat , you hombre . Who does n’t love " Space Jam ? " )
Less attention is now paid to another'90s pop culture artifact : POGs .
Remember those things ? Remember the sentence Milhouse van Houten literallytraded Bart Simpson ’s individual awayfor a set of them ? Alas , much like " The Simpsons , " POGs have jolly dropped off the radar since their ' 90s heyday .
A lot of us older than the years of 30 or so in all probability could use a quick refresher . If the word " POGs " rings a Melville Bell , but you ’ve sort of leave what they were , where they came from and why schoolhouse started banning the playthings , then this article is for you .
What Are POGs?
By some accounts , the story of POGs began a long , tenacious meter ago in the Land of the rise Sun . Menko is aJapanese card gamethought to have rise during that country’sKamakura Period , which lasted from 1185 to 1333 B.C.E.
Theclassic versionof Menko operates under a mere premise . First , one participant put down a card . Then an opponent tries to flip it over by make their own carte du jour at the target . If player two succeeds , he or she bring forth to claimbothcards .
The latter one-half of the 19th one C saw an inflow of Nipponese immigrants to theHawaiian Islands . Here , Menko may or may not have inspired a like secret plan called " Milk River caps . "
Popular in theearly 1900s , this was a small fry ’s pursuit that could be love on the gaudy . Children would stack up bottle cap in a vertical pile . Next , they ’d take turns tossing a hard aim ( make love as a " kini " or " slammer " ) at the stack . Any caps that landed face - up would go to the thrower .
“The Mother of POGs”
We owe the word " POG " to Haleakala Dairy , a company based on the Hawaiian island of Maui . In the 1970s , Haleakala debuted a new sundry succus crapulence call " Passionfruit - Orange - Guava , " or " POG , " after its three independent ingredients .
Today , the potable is sell in cartons . But at first , POG juice was distributed in bottles sealed withcardboard cap . And these lids were the staring fit for a new twisting on the Milk River caps plot .
heyday Galbiso(1949 - 1994 ) was a instructor and steering counselor who ’s fondly remembered as " the Mother of POGs . " Milk River caps — as in , the biz — had pretty much gone nonextant by the fourth dimension she started work at Waialua Elementary School in Oahu , Hawaii .
So in 1991 , she reintroduced the old time - wastrel to her educatee . The rest is history .
of a sudden , milk caps were all the madness again — at Waialua Elementary and beyond . " The sweetheart of it is that they [ students ] stopped playing the real rough game in the resort area , " Galbisolater told the closet . " It ’s a non - sexist game , " she added . " Both boys and girls can play , and it teaches normal . "
Yet a few alteration were necessary . Milkbottles , like the ones older generation had played with , were n’t as common in the 1990s . In their absence , nipper change by reversal to POG juice caps .
The World POG Federation
Now Galbiso may have been the Mother of POGs , but it was Alan Rypinski who made them a global sensation .
Haleakala Dairy did n’t actually impress its own bottlecap ; those were construct by Stanpac , a separate company base in Canada . Thanks to Galbiso , Stanpac realized it could make a killing in the Hawaiian plaything market by sell its juice palpebra asgame piecesthere .
Rypinski , a California business organisation owner , somehow becharm wind of this . In 1993 hepurchasedthe " POG " brand name from Haleakala and constitute the World POG Federation ( WPF ) .
That ’s when thing really go serious . With unrelenting selling , the confederacy turn POGs into a multimillion - dollar industry , and theAmerican mainland’snewest vacation spot delirium .
Why did the secret plan captivate on ? Partly because it has well-fixed regulation any child can come after .
How to Play POG
The biz of POGs , as it ’s become have it away , requires two key components .
First , you ’ll require the eponymous POG caps . Those are cardboard disc about the size of aU.S. half dollar sign . Every cap has two side ; one is ( essentially ) vacuous , but the other comes adorned with an eye - catching logo , instance or picture . We call this second side the " face . "
Once you ’ve rounded up some chapiter , you ’ve got to bump a " slammer . " Heavier disk made of charge card , India rubber or metal , pokey tend to look drab by compare . But they ’re every bit as important .
The factual gameplay follows " milk caps " pretty tight . Here ’s our CliffsNotes version of the rules :
Why POGs Eventually Failed
Now that we know the basics , lease ’s check in on Rypinski and his World POG Federation .
Saying POGs spread like wildfire feels like an understatement . In February 1993 , the WPF throw the first - everU.S. National POG Tournament . Within a twelvemonth , the game had made its way to theEast Coast , penetrate playgrounds from Maryland to California .
Rypinski realize his core products , the POG caps , were basically collectible patronage cards . The WPF struck licensing deals with just about every steel you may think of . youngster started play withMcDonald’sPOGs , Ninja Turtles POGs , National Hockey League POGs , and so on .
Even the Catholic Church wanted a slice of the action mechanism . On Sept. 16 , 1995 , The New York Times reported that the Diocese of Camden , New Jersey , had rate 50,000 POGs withPope John Paul II ’s cheek on them .
Yet the POG bubble had to collapse sometime . Rypinski and company have been accuse ofoversaturating the marketwith too many POG variants . Besides , by the mid-’90s , parent were embark on to kvetch .
Back in the day , when kids played POGs , they often played for keep . If you take your favorite caps to school , you could easily lose them to another student who wield to flip the toys over at recess .
Understandably that sometimes caused combat . Since many teachers considered the secret plan disruptive — andwaytoo interchangeable to run a risk for consolation — POGs startedgetting bannedin various schools around the country .
By the 21st hundred , POGs were decidedly " out . " Do n’t take it from us , take it from Boy ’s Life clip , which was already dismiss POGs asa bygone fadin a 1998 issue . At least we have our memory board .
