GAMES AND TOYS: POG Power

▪ 1996

      The game of POGs, which had been played since the 1920s when Hawaiian dairy workers at the Haleakala Dairy on Maui flipped milkcaps during their lunch breaks, was reinvented in 1991 by a Hawaiian schoolteacher who brought the old-fashioned rules to a new generation that by 1995 had raised the game's popularity to new heights and spawned a big business in the process. The cardboard disks that were coined POGs, an acronym formed from Haleakala Dairy's popular drink made from (P)assion fruit and (O)range and (G)uava juices, turned up with designs that ranged from revolting (psychedelic one-eyed skeletons) to religious (Pope John Paul II's image adorned one). The craze quickly swept from Hawaii to the mainland and across the Atlantic Ocean into Europe. Part of the game's charm was that its rules were spread by word of mouth. Children were playing the game with their own milkcaps long before toy companies had recognized the marketing potential of POGs. Now laminated and about the size of a poker chip, POGs were produced in hundreds of designs, with depictions of skulls or cartoon characters especially coveted and usually selling for a higher price, though most POGs cost just 25 cents each and could be purchased at specialized kiosks as well as toy and department stores. The McDonald's food chain even joined in, packaging POGs with their "Happy Meals" for children in the hope of appealing to the 4-14-year-olds who had caught the fever. The World POG Federation, a California-based firm that had bought the rights to the POG name in 1993, boasted profits exceeding $140 million in 1995.

      Compared with the high-tech computer-generated games that evolved during the late 1980s and early '90s, POGs were conceptually simple and unique in the marketplace. To play, all a child needed was a stack of milkcaps; a slammer (also called a kini), which was slightly heavier and was used to turn the POGs; and a flat playing surface. Each player took an equal number of milkcaps, stacking them facedown, and used a slammer to strike the stack of POGs. Any milkcaps that were flipped over to show their emblems belonged to that player. Once each player had taken a turn, the one with the most POGs was the winner. Though these were the basic rules there were several variations, such as starting with the milkcaps faceup.

      Partly as a result of the nature of the game, the disks quickly became collectibles. POGs, like stamps and sports cards before them, were the most hotly traded items of 1995. Children began to play for "keepsies" and built huge collections of their favourite POGs. Once milkcap trading had caught on, some school systems banned the game, maintaining that it contributed to rowdy play and disagreements between students. Many parents felt, however, that POGs had brought back to playtime an innocence that had been missing for quite some time. (SARA N. BRANT)

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