Pog (game)

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This picture shows a stack of caps and a plastic slammer.
Everything you need for pogs: caps and a slammer.

Pogs is a game in which you try to turn over stacked cardboard disks (called pogs, milkcaps, caps, tazos or chips) with a small disc made of metal or plastic, the slammer (also called kini, snipper or throwing disc).

history

The game's origins go back to the United States in 1927. At that time, Haleakala Dairy's in Hawaii launched a fruit juice whose bottles were sealed with small, round cardboard caps. Due to economic problems, toys were rare at the time, which is why the Hawaiian children began to collect the colorful cardboard discs and play with them. Even the name of the game, POGs, derives from this period because the fruit with the flavor P assionsfrucht- O Range G was sold uave.

For decades, POG remained a small, local, forgotten phenomenon until 1991 when teacher Blossom Galbiso, the Mother of Pogs, decided to share her childhood game with students in her class. As a result, POGs went viral again and reached the American mainland with California in 1993. It was there that the first tournaments and the first known manufacturers came about, which covered the growing demand for slammers and chips. The game's popularity and commercialization peaked briefly in the mid-1990s. The "World POG Federation", which was founded in 1994, is emblematic of the hype. On the one hand, it appeared as a manufacturer and distributor of the caps and, on the other hand, it massively increased the popularity of the game, which made the caps an international hit in 1995 and sold over 30 million times in Great Britain alone. However, the success story was short-lived, which is why the World Pog Federation had to file for bankruptcy just a year later.

The best-known manufacturers included the Original Pogs, Chupa Caps and Mad Caps, although at the height of the trend, the caps could also be found in Kellogg’s packaging and Nutella glasses.

Current situation

Nowadays there are several smaller, local game associations, which are part of a collector's scene, some of which pay high prices for rare caps and slammers. At the same time, efforts are being made to document and digitize the large number of pogs in order to preserve them for posterity.

Game style and rules

There are several ways to play Pog, the most common of which is the following:

  • Each player places the same number of caps, which are stacked face down in a stack .
  • The player whose slammer spins the longest starts ( spinning ).
  • When slamming, the players now throw their slammers one after the other on the stack and pick up all the caps that they have successfully turned on their side.
  • The caps that have not been turned over are stacked again before each throw.
  • The winner of the game round is the player who flipped the most caps.

Strategies and techniques

In the game scene there are at least 8 different throwing techniques that are used in the POG game.

  1. Dart: This is the standard technique in which the slammer is held between thumb and forefinger like a may arrow.
  2. With the slap shot , the kini is placed flat on the fingertips and released by the thumb as soon as the throwing hand stretches out.
  3. The googlie is similar to the dart throw, but the middle finger holds the slammer and the index finger only rests on the throwing disc.
  4. To turn the last cap, the Whammie is usually chosen, which achieves the best spin by using the index and middle finger.
  5. For official tournament games in America was Tournament designed; a type of throw that prohibits the use of the thumb.
  6. The slide shot is more like a flick than a toss, as the slammer is lifted up by the thumb like a coin.
  7. In Kini Kung Fu , the throwing power is increased by jumping into the air and should be understood more as a show performance than as an accurate throwing technique.
  8. The drop shot combines power with accuracy, as a squat during the throw places the kini at a lower speed.

Trivia

The Army & Air Force Exchange Service uses pogs as a possible means of payment. For example, the caps were used in the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war . The reason for using pogs as a currency is that the cost of overseas flights is very high and luggage capacity is limited. Coins weigh a lot more than the cardboard pogs.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jennifer Burke: Can You Believe It Was A Business? World POG Federation - Get Your Biz Savvy. Retrieved June 5, 2019 (American English).
  2. ↑ Washington Post: Deaths. Retrieved June 5, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Pogs, Tazos, Flippos, and Milkcaps - MilkcapMania.co.uk. Retrieved June 5, 2019 .
  4. ^ The World POG Federation ™. Retrieved June 5, 2019 .
  5. ↑ The 10 Rarest Pogs from the '90s1. No fear pogs. Accessed June 5, 2019 .
  6. ^ Génération POG - Le site référence des Pogs, Caps, Tazos et Flippos. Retrieved June 5, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Pogs - Official website of the [LAG] clan. Retrieved June 2, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Jason Page: The Unofficial POG and Cap Player's Handbook . Ed .: Bloomsbury Children's Books. London 1995, ISBN 0-7475-2417-3 , pp. 64 .
  9. ↑ Why pogs and not legal tender? (website) Stars and Stripes (Pacific Edition). February 6, 2007. Retrieved February 17, 2007.

Web links

Commons : Pogs  - collection of images, videos and audio files