They’re a lucrative collector’s item now, if you’ve got ‘em. I’m talking about POGs. The popular school yard game that consumed millions of recess hours (and our parents’ paychecks).
What are POGs? The game of POGs is believed to have originated in the early 1900s in Hawai’i. A game once referred to as “Milk Caps.” The Acronym POG actually stands for the 1970s fruit beverage containing passionfruit, orange and guava juices.
Fast-forward to the early 1990s and we have ourselves a highly-addictive game of strength, skill and chance. Strength if you had a badass “slammer.” Skill if you had good aim. And chance if you lost.
The game play.
The object of the game is to collect as many of the milk caps (or POGs) as possible by slamming the heavier milk cap onto a neatly stacked pile of lighter milk caps. The ones that overturn, you keep. The milk caps that are not turned over are restacked and the next player takes their turn. This repeats until all milk caps are accounted for. The player with the most milk caps at the end of the game is declared the winner.
The designs.
From glitter, to holographic, to neon, to famous branding, the POG design never disappointed. And if you had too many to carry in your change purse or fanny pack, you neatly stored your POGs in a nifty POG binder! Liken this to collecting baseball cards. Pretty sure I had a few Rocko’s Modern Life POGs from the Nickelodeon collection. Didn’t purchase them though. I won them.
The fights.
When you introduce gambling to school kids, a game to play at recess, it really can’t be surprising that kids would get into tiffs. When one kid loses his favorite POGs to another (under the pretense of cheating perhaps), tempers flare. And when tempers flare, there’s name calling and even some serious punches thrown. I personally can remember kids coming back in from recess with bloody noses and sure enough, a fight had broken out over a game of POGs.
The ban.
The fighting (and alleged gambling) at school apparently became so common, that one school district at a time, across the country, banned the game entirely. No more POGs on campus. Period. And just like that, the POGs craze was over.
POGs today.
They’re a lucrative collector’s item now, if you’ve got ‘em. The official website still sells collector’s sets. And not so shockingly, there are still many sellers on eBay.
Although… I’d be very curious if this ever sells.
Collecting POGs was certainly fun. Playing POGs? Well, I never ended up with a bloody nose. Everyone had them and it seems as if (almost) everyone threw them away. And for those trying to sell their collections? I do wish you well!
