Epic Win: Pogs
Submitted by J Olsen, who collected milk caps before it was cool.
These circular bits of cardboard (and the thicker, heavier, plastic “slammers” also used to play the game) became all the rage in the ’90s, though similar games had been played as early as the 17th century. The gist was this: Stack your pogs up, face down, and allow your opponent to throw his slammer at the stack. If any of your pogs landed face up after the dust settled, they became his pogs (if you were playing “for keeps,” anyway). I remember these things were everywhere…for a very short amount of time. People moved on to Tamagotchis or something, leaving pogs to be remembered fondly by those of us who did most of our growing up in the ’90s.
“Tamagotchi”.
I think I might still have some pogs at home…we never actually played with them, only collected them, though (by the time the 90s rolled around we were a little old for them
).
OMG I had that POG maker! Those were the best…
I had that pog maker, too! I don’t even remember who bought it for my brother and I. For a while the bottom of every Slush Puppie cup had a free pog underneath the bottom. I drank a zillion of those things to get the whole Icee pog collection!
plus, dell taco had the “pogs pogs”
I still have my favorite metal slammer. ^^
my sister had a Beavis slammer
Somewhere I have a metal slammer with images of OJ Simpson in jail (slammer).
yes, I remember that one…The “O.J. in the slammer slammer”….classic
I was in a thift store awhile ago and they had an unopened set of O.J. “Trail of Blood” Pogs, I didn’t buy them but I still have my three foot tall tube of Pogs in my bedroom (I’m 24)
I had an OJ slammer that was like a coin. One side had the image of him smiling and said “Innocent”, the other side he was frowny and it had “guilty”. Ahh nostalgia.
Pooogggggsss!!!
I remember these. my mates and I used to use the Tazos that you got in crisp packets as pogs too. i remember i only needed about 5 to finish the collection, and they NEVER came in the multipack things
playing them was fun when we were young too… but gutted if you lost a pog you liked lol
I had about a hundred pogs… my cousin had literally HUNDREDS. I couldn’t figure out where she got them all. she loved 8balls. and so we played them constantly… not usually for keeps, she initialled all of hers
Pineapple Orange Guava
I remember when they were banned from schools.
I must have confiscated a couple dozen of these when I taught middle school. LOL.
Same here, in my shcool these had become a kind of currency with kids trading them for stuff. Finally they got banned because a kid was actually mugged for them.
I remember there was a huge cake-tin full of all the pogs the teachers conficated over the course of that year, that was auctioned off on the last day of term.
wow.. i can definitely say i feel REALLY old now!
i was a 90’s kid and i remember all the damn fads.. I collected pogs ( i had a thing for the 8 ball slammers and the saw blade shaped slammers)
and when the craze died i put all mine in a bucket and kept them on the shelf…
as for tomagotchis.. i at one point had a necklace of ten of them.. all healthy too.. and most of them i had actually obtained by trading my pogs for them!
so why does the video refer to the pogs as “milk caps”? is that what they were originally supposed to be?
If I remember correctly the fad started in Hawaii where a local milk company placed decorated disks in the caps, encouraging kids to collect them as a way to get them to drink more milk. Hence why they were referred to as milk caps.
Remember ALF? He’s back…in pog form!
win
I had a ton of those things. I remember playing with some friends, but I think I mostly just collected them. Looking back on it… what a stupid game. But it was fun at the time.
I remember I had a set of presidential pogs. My dad thought it would be educational. SOO did not go with my light-up glitter sound-making butterfly slammer.
I had a ton of pogs, mainly thanks to the slammer that my dad made for me out of a 3/8 inch thick piece of carbon steel ^_^
Lol, my dad did the same thing, except it was a chunk of brass.
Anybody notice the flagrant 90’s product placement on the pogs? Both Stretch Armstrong and his Dog, as well as the voice command water gun (or was it a Nerf gun?) were all on various pogs throughout the commercial! This is quite the 90’s commercial, huh?
They were named Flippos in the Netherlands (I’m guessing because you needed to flip them to be able to win) and you could get them in Smiths potato chip bags – that was before the brand was (re)named Lays. But at my school we hardly ever played it the regular way. We would just find the nearest wall and whoever managed to toss their Flippo closest to that wall would get to keep all the other ones in the game. I used to have two albums of Looney Tunes Flippos, and then later on they tried to stretch the hype with Pokémon Flippo’s. It sounds lame now, but back then it was considered really cool if you could toss it without it bouncing back from the wall
I think this was popular for at least 3 or 4 years, alongside the Tamagotchi and marbles. It still makes me smile to walk by an elementary school in spring and see the kids get out their marble bags 
We had those in bags of chips in Cyprus all throughout the 90’s.
Which is how I learned all the Pokemon in Greek, since that’s what was on them
I have some pogs at home! I remember my elementary school banned them because playing them was like gambling. Or something…They also banned snap bracelets…
Why have snap bracelets not been on this site? Someone who’s less lazy than me needs to submit snap bracelets
When I was in middle school, these were all the rage. In fact, the only thing I’ve ever shoplifted EVER was a pack of pogs from Wal-Mart. My mom found out, so they didn’t make it out of the store.
I think the Pokemom cards came after this, honestly. Never played either but I had a Tamagotchi.
loved them, actually still have a few that i liked so much i put sticky magnets on the back, they make great magnets, really
Yep. 4 of the magnets that grace my fridge are promotional pogs from seeing The Lion King at the theater.
I still have mine in a dark dusty corner somewhere.
wow just wow i actually found mine in my attic about 3 days ago talk about memory loved these things back then
I still have a shoebox full of pogs. Much win. A brief obsession with these was when I learned I should never, EVER take up real gambling.
OMG! I still have my 1238 of these and my slammers! What’s funny is that I have each one of those in the picture. I think the spinner (spiky one) is even in my “special Pogs” container.
I had a lot of these… most of them with skulls and the word “poison” for some reason.
Those were called “Tazos” in Spanish. You collected them from chips bags. I still have my full collections ^^
And yup, they were banned at school. It was such fun and risky playing with them in secret xP
Still have all of my pogs and slammers. My best slammer had a bible verse on it and is like an inch thick of brass. I’d mutilate everyone’s pogs. Kids in my neighborhood would bet pogs on bike races in the street. Where we learned this, I don’t know.
Last time I went on a holiday back to my home country, I couldn’t resist climbing on to the table and reaching to the ceiling to find my elder bro’s ’secret’ stash of pogs on top of the wardrobe. I used to admire these things as a kid, though my bro never let me play. He used to have all different kinds – even glitter and glow in dark and ‘lick me’ pogs (naughty). I remember when I went to school and some of my classmates traded pogs- I stole some of my bro’s and my own pokemon ones (still have loads!) for Sailor Moon ones. Still got all of them
Me and my sister were wicked into Pogs. There were mall kiosks and a dollar store that had 25 for a dollar or some outrageous amount of Pogs and my grandparents just bought us tons. This one location had Pogs w/movie and TV show images, so I had a ton of Dumb and Dumber, the Mask and Star Trek: The Next Generation pogs. I remember the hype that only the official POG brand could be called Pogs and anything else were “milkcaps” or “lids” but I had a decent amound of official Pogs and slammers and a playing board. I also remember how 8-balls, Poison, and skulls were very common themes. We had a huge 3-foot tube full of them and we mostly played each other. I think I played against friends and classmates like twice. If we weren’t playing the traditional way, we were throwing them across the living room to see how many landed on our sides or organizing them and divvying up the doubles. That tube stuck around until at least 3 or 4 years into moving into our current home, and they might still be in the basement somewhere. If not, they were either donated or thrown out.
These were the cool things my brothers used to play with and then never let me play with cause i was “too little”, they were like…Awesome. my brothers did give me a really cool metalic super slammer though, it was the best…
POGS were banned at my school because it was considered “gambling”. LAAAAAAAME!!!!!!
I still have several thousand Pogs at my father’s house to this day (yes, I was into them in a big way…). This almost makes me want to go dig alllllll those tubes out and start playing again.
What did YOU have for a Slammer? Was it a little dinky piece of plastic? Mine was a disc of brass about a 1/2″ thick. You could flip one sitting of Pogs with the damn thing.
Also, they were banned at my school as well, simply based on the fact that children would get into fights when somebody won, and the loser didn’t want to give up their pogs. I remember any Pog with foil graphics was highly coveted by the general school populace.
I collected them when I was a kid… I ended up with trust issues for a while when a friend in the apartment complex (who quickly turned into ex-friend) stole money and my favorite pogs from my room when I left to get drinks from the kitchen. It also killed my pog obsession. I have no idea where my collection went… but I mostly collected fantasy animal designs or animals.
Here in Mexico kids still play with them, onl that here the’re called “tazos”, and wothout the salmmers or the big plastic launcher. Actually, if you ever come here, and you buy a bag of lay’s (or sabritas, the name over here), you ma find one with a wrestler photo or something like that.
My son’s collected pogs, and they bought me Pog Barbie. No lie. Secretly? I hated pogs! They represented throwing money away. I stil have Pog Barbie, though. In that case, it was a very thoughtful gift, because of course I MUST HAVE loved Pogs every bit as much as they did!
YOU STOLE MY IDEA!!!!!!
I SENT THAT IN LIKE A MONTH AGO WITH THE EXACT SAME PICTURE! >=[
for this outrage, you must die!
I had the Apollo 11 gift set that some chain fast food place gave out in their kids meals (not sure which one – McDonald’s?) It also came with a Pog holder that was shaped like a rocket. When I went off to college, my mom and I cleaned out my room and found my whole collection in the back of my closet. Such memories!
I have a huge box of still-in-the-package genuine pogs I got at an auction. Probably gonna eBay the suckers.
you have to love how we loved pogs so much when really they were just little pieces of cardboard lol i had so many and my bro had the 8-ball and metal saw slammer lol
plastic “slammers”? i used metal slammers i could get a whole stack of pogs to flip over with 1 hit. oh the good times
I STILL HAVE MY POGS!
My friend used to have a bunch of these! She always let me have whichever ones I wanted. We mostly would just look at them and line them up instead of really playing.