Kevin David Creative

The 90s weren’t exactly subtle when it came to selling you an extreme lifestyle. And by extreme, I mean “x-treme,” because we were all simply too cool for words that didn’t start with an x. And while a pack of middle school kids tripping over their JNCOs trying to collect a pile of cardboard circles using a metal disc featuring Bill Clinton’s face on it doesn’t sound like a super radical time on paper, try telling that to the untold number of teenagers in detention doled out for playing pogs.

The rules are almost too simple: Players make a stack of circular pieces of paper, known as caps, and take turns dropping a heavier “slammer” object onto said stack. If you were lucky, the caps would go soaring into the air landing face up. Congratulations: You just bankrupted a kiddie casino and the pogs were all yours. Like a UFC fight where metal fists flew into paper faces, we all came out a bit bruised after taking a lost allowance on the chin.

The history of pogs can be traced back centuries ago in Japan with a novelty game called Menko. Like pogs, players would attempt to flip lightweight cards over with a slightly larger disc.

The tradition was almost lost before Blossom Galbiso, a teacher and counselor at an elementary school in Oahu, Hawaii re-introduced the game to her students in the early 1990s as a creative tool for learning math and an alternative to violent playground playtime like dodgeball.

At the same time, a local fruit drink called POG (dun, dun, DUNNNNNNNNN!!!!) proved to be so popular in Hawaii, producer Haleakala Dairy distributed its bottle tops across the country to further promote their hit beverage, where kids began crafting the caps into their own supply of makeshift mayhem. Not to be outdone by a child’s imagination, gaming companies took the caps and added their own creative touches like sick skeleton artwork or bubble gum scented slammers. Before long, plastic tubes of pogs popped up in every gas station and toy store looking to make their own stack of cash.

It’s hard to argue that pogs in their modern form was anything more than gambling for grade school kids. Despite Galbiso’s intention to use the game as a modern form of teaching, pogs were banned on busses and classrooms worldwide before the fad eventually fell out of favor for even MORE x-treme acts. Like Limp Bizkit. And waiting until 9 p.m. to make a cell phone call after running out of your monthly supply of 20 text messages. *x-tremely awkward cough*

Storied Press-Gazette columnist Doug Larson once said that “nostalgia is a device that removes the ruts and potholes from memory lane.” And if you think about your world from 30 years ago with enough fondness, it just might buff out that slammer-shaped dent from your Alf pog.