🥤 What Were POGs, Anyway?
🥤 What Were POGs, Anyway?
- POGs were small, round cardboard discs, often printed with colorful designs, cartoon characters, or brand logos.
- The game involved stacking POGs and using a heavier disc called a slammer to knock them down. If you flipped a POG, you kept it. Simple, competitive, and addictive.
- The name came from a Hawaiian juice blend: Passionfruit, Orange, Guava (POG). The cardboard caps from Haleakala Dairy’s bottles were the original game pieces.
🌺 Hawaiian Origins & Global Explosion
- The game traces back to 1920s Hawaii, inspired by Japanese Menko, a similar card-flipping game.
- In the early '90s, Blossom Galbiso, a teacher at Waialua Elementary, reintroduced the game to her students as a non-violent alternative to dodgeball.
- It caught fire fast—by 1993, POGs were everywhere: toy stores, cereal boxes, schoolyards, and even tournaments.
📈 Peak Popularity
- POGs became a collectible craze, with licensed sets featuring Bart Simpson, Power Rangers, and even NBA stars.
- Kids traded them like currency, and slammers became status symbols—metal, plastic, glow-in-the-dark, you name it.
- Schools started banning them due to playground drama and gambling concerns. That only made them cooler.
📉 The Sudden Collapse
- By 1995, the fad fizzled. Why?
- Oversaturation: Too many brands flooded the market.
- Lack of depth: No storyline, no digital tie-in, no evolution.
- Spoof culture: As with disaster films, the rise of irony and parody made POGs feel passé.
🧔 Coconutdaddy Was Busy
While kids were flipping cardboard and chasing slammers, Coconutdaddy was clocking hours and chasing paychecks. But even if he missed the playground battles, the cultural ripple of POGs was impossible to ignore.
