Pogs - Popularity

Popularity

The game of pogs was played on the Hawaiian island of Maui as early as 1927. The 1990s revival is credited to Blossom Galbiso, a teacher and guidance counselor who taught at Waialua Elementary School in Oahu. In 1991, Galbiso introduced the game she had played as a little girl to a new generation of students, soon incorporating pogs into her fifth grade curriculum as a way of teaching math and as a nonviolent alternative to other popular schoolyard games, one of which involved throwing a ball at one's opponent as hard as possible. The game quickly spread from Oahu's North Shore, and by early 1992, STANPAC Inc., the small Canadian packaging company that had been manufacturing the milk caps distributed by Haleakala Dairy on Maui (the same caps that were collected by Galbiso for her class), was printing millions of pogs every week for shipment to the Hawaiian island chain. The game soon spread to the mainland, first surfacing in California, Texas, Oregon, and Washington before spreading to the rest of the country. By 1993, the previously obscure game of pogs, which had almost been forgotten, was now played throughout the world.

As the game gained in popularity, thousands of types of pogs were manufactured, covering a wide array of images of toys, cartoons, movies, games, sports, famous people and famous world leaders such as U.K Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S President Bill Clinton. Public awareness messages concerning topics such as first aid, safety, wildfire prevention, and drug use were also featured on pogs, and they were also used for fund raising for charities and organizations such as the Red Cross and cancer research organizations. The popularity of the game spawned pog prizes at major fast-food chains (see below), as well as knockoffs, such as "Slammer Whammers", a similar game released under a different brand name. Pogs can sometimes still be found on eBay and in game and card stores. During the early 1990s, a US national pog tournament was held every February 7 in honor of the game's inventor's birthday.

Also capitalizing on the success of pogs were corporations and governments. Fast food chains such as McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, Del Taco, Carl's Jr./Hardee's and Checkers/Rallys gave away free pogs with the purchase of a menu item. Fox television released a line of pogs with the debut of "The Tick" animated series. Disneyland produced limited edition caps for its "Go POG Wild and rollerblade Crazy" event in the spring of 1994. Knott's Berry Farm produced a limited edition set for the 1994 Southern California POG Championship. Kool-Aid also produced limited edition caps and slammers with the Kool-Aid Man imprinted on them, which were only available by mailing in a certain amount of Kool-Aid points. In an effort to curb drug use and crime, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program in California designed caps with the DARE logo and Scruff McGruff, as well as county sheriff badges.