And Now For Some Off Topic Nostalgia: Pogs

For those of you expecting something about this:

I’m sorry to disappoint you. They loss, big whoop. I’ll wait until an inevitable Manny implosion before I start writing hilarious mock interviews with the boys in blue. Instead, it’s Friday, the weekend is coming, so why not celebrate it with some good old fashion nostalgia!

Remember pogs? Yes pogs. Those cardboard circle thingies that was popular for about 5 mins. Okay okay, they actually were popular for a much longer time, but why they were baffles me even today.

If you didn’t grow up in the 90’s, you probably don’t know what pogs were. Thus, I will take some time to explain the game of pogs. There are two components to pogging, the pogs themselves and slammers. Pogs were cardboard circles that were about 1.5 inches in diameter and probably 0.5 millimeters in thickness. A slammer was about 2 millimeters and 2 inches in diameter and was usually made of a hard, heavy substance like metal. The pogs and slammers themselves usually had images of something cool, whether it be skulls, animals, yin yang signs, whatever useless imagery kids were attracted to those days. Believe it or not, some were evenly mildly pornographic. I remember some kids on the playground thought they were the biggest bad asses because they had slammers with giant skulls on them. Douches.

The game itself was actually pretty simple. Kids would battle each other and wager their pogs in the battle. Say you had 3 Hello Kitty pogs that I desperately wanted (they were for my sister of course, heh heh), and I had 3 SWAT Kats Pogs that you really wanted (remember SWAT Kats? Oh, that’s for another nostalgic piece to come). Obviously, there were only 2 ways to settle this dilemma back on the school yard, A) fight to death for them, or B) pog battle. Thus we would battle, and you would place your pogs on top of my pogs in a little stack, face down. Then we would slam the pogs using our slammer. Slamming pogs meant that I would throw my slammer onto the stack of pogs and whatever pogs landed face up would be mine. Thus, if I was a good pog player, I could walk away with all of your Hello Kitty pogs. Basically, pogs were kind of like Jacks for retards.

I’m not really sure how the whole pog craze started. I just remember one day when I went to school I saw a bunch of my classmates playing, and like any other kid my age I had the simple logic of “if everyone else has it and I don’t, I must be a loser!” Thus, I needed to have some pogs, if not just to keep up with the trends. I never really remember playing with my pogs though because I was always too much of a pussy to gamble them away. Could you blame me? My parents wouldn’t spring five bucks for me to buy it, so this was my own hard earned money. Five bucks was practically my month salary back in the day. Why should I gamble them away? For other people’s pogs? That’s lame, they don’t even have any cool ones like mine. They just have a bunch of yin yang sign ones. Mine had snakes. Snakes are more bad ass than yin yang symbols.

Thus the pog fad was gone in sixty seconds for me. Instead, whenever I went to the trading card store and every other kid was buying pogs, I was buying football cards. My most prized possession at the time was a Rick Mirer rookie card that was valued at forty dollars when he was first signed by the Seahawks. Sadly, it is now worth five cents. Shit.

The other big controversy about pogs was that it promoted gambling. I always thought this was somewhat false. True kids were wagering their possessions on a game, but when in return they found out that the only thing they won were shitty cardboard circles, that rush you get from gambling disappears. All your left now is more cardboard circles that have no redemption value. If anything, it would turn you away from gambling.

Nowadays, you’ll be hard pressed to find any kids with pogs. It’s now just an obscure reference on the Simpsons, though I can agree with Milhouse that Alf is back… in pog form!

Instead, the new fad is High School Musical, which I will NEVER understand. I can understand the mild thrill of throwing down a metal disk at cardboard circles. I can even understand why virtual pets were cool (its like I have a pet but no responsibility for it! If it dies, the Humane Society won’t fine me…. awesome!), but seriously, high school kids singing and dancing on the Disney Channel? Doesn’t the Disney Channel do that like every single freakin’ day? What makes this lame ass movie so popular? God. Shoot me now. I guess it’s a little more enjoyable with Vanessa Anne Hudgens in it….

Or for the ladies, Zac Efron…

On second thought, he’s dating Vanessa Anne, so fuck that guy.

So there you have it, your piece of nostalgia. You may be asking, isn’t there more important things to talk about in the world like the economic crisis? Sure there is, let’s talk about our future right now.

Wow, isn’t that depressing? Sure really picked up my day!