Stuff You Should Know - POGs: The 90s in a Bottle Cap

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

Today, Chuck and Josh go down a 90s rabbit hole with another in their classic toy series. This time, they tackle the odd sensation that was POGs. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there and Jerry's lingering somewhere out there and this is Stuff You Should Know.

It's Pogs. It's Pogs. That's right. That's how the theme song went. Actually, I think it was a little more extreme and in your face than that. Yeah. You know who is a big Pog enthusiast is friend of the show, Jesse Thorne of the Maximum Fun Network. I did not know that. Yeah. I've heard him talk about it. I mean, he's the right age for that wheelhouse and I've heard him talk about it on Judge John Hodgman and with great enthusiasm. My mom was like, what are Pogs? I've never even heard of these because I'm an old. Yeah. I mean, I'd heard the word before, but I had no idea what really they were, what you did with them, or anything like that. Oh, okay. So a little before your time too then?

Oh, yeah. A lot after my time. I mean, you had to basically be 10, 11, maybe 12. In the early 90s? I'll give you 13 between 1992 and 1994, maybe five. Very specific niche window, but these things were so big that it's just like if you were a kid in the 90s kind of thing, like you played Pogs. Everybody was playing with Pogs for like two years and it was kind of like the definition of a flash in the pan fad. Yeah. And we should thank howstuffworks.com, mental floss, firstwefeast.com. That was a good article. It was pretty good. And then military.com for our little cherry on top at the end. That's great. We'd like to thank the military industrial complex for the cherry on top as a whole. So you're a child of the 70s,

I'm a child of the 80s. We had our own thing, but again, this is a thing of the 90s. And with Pogs, like I'm trying to think of what fad that was like big when we were young. And I really honestly can't think of anything, nothing akin to this. I mean, like I want to say Nintendo maybe, the original NES, but I would hardly call that a flash in the pan. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, Pogs to me represents something different because they had two functions. They functioned as kind of trading cards of sorts, but it was also a game. And if you're listening and frustrated already, we should say very quickly that Pogs, these little circular disks, and we'll get into the ins and outs of them. And this is our one shot at explaining it

right here. And there was a game played around them, which we will get into as well, but they also functioned as things that kids would, were just obsessive about trading. Like you have a Pope John Paul Pog and I really want it. So I'm going to trade you my McDonald's Pog and my, I don't even know what was popular in the 90s, my Grunge Pog. Bewhys and Butthead Pog. Yeah, there was probably Bewhys and Butthead Pog. Oh, there definitely were. I've seen pictures of them on the internet. Sure. That means it's real.

I don't know if anybody went to the trouble of photoshopping that, but I guess it's possible. We should question everything we see on the internet, I guess. And this also crosses over with the Simpsons because very famously Millhouse traded Bart's soul away for a set of Pogs in one episode. That's right. And it comes full circle, Chuck, because there were a lot of Simpsons Pogs as well. Oh, I'm sure. Can you name the character that were on the Pogs that Millhouse traded Bart's soul for? Do you know?

Yes. What? Alph. Oh, Alph Pogs. Alph is back in Pog form. That's pretty funny. So what I was trying to get at earlier was like, there was like this, that Pogs were like a huge, huge flash in the pan fad that just burned

quite hot and then just went away very quickly. But the thing that makes them interesting is not so much that they were some, you know, neat two-year trend in the 90s, but that they were actually based on a much older game. And that that was actually based on a much older game as well. And that it was just almost like this, the most recent iteration of this idea for a game that just keeps popping up every few hundred years and makes you wonder when it's going to pop up again in the future. Yeah, which I think make is a good distinction that makes it kind of cooler and more interesting than your average Furby or unless there were ancient Furbies that we don't know about. They've yet to be discovered at Kettle Huyuk.

Yeah, that's a movie. Furby was discovered. Yeah, ancient Furbies. Those things were kind of 90s too, right? They were after our time. I think so. I don't know much about Furbies, but this is, you know, this is in a long line of our sort of pop-cultury toys, forgotten toys episodes. Yeah, now that you mentioned it, we probably should have saved this one for Christmas. Yeah, we'll find something else.

So we were talking about how Pogs, this game, these little discs that you play with were based on a much older game. And it turns out that there was a person, a woman who was a teacher and a guidance counselor in Hawaii at Waialua Elementary School in Oahu who in 1991, together around children, I noticed that you guys are playing a little rough on the playground that dodgeball has been coated with tar and broken glass. And I'm not very happy about that. I want you guys to try something different. Let's try something that my grandparents used to play and that I played when I was a little kid your age. And it's called milk caps. I'm going to show you how to do it. And she introduced these kids to this game of milk caps. And you would think it would be kind

of snoozy, but I think this demonstrates just how engrossing, but also simple, the game of Pogs actually is, that this old-timey game captured these 1991 school kids' attention and then just spread like wildfires it's been put. Yeah. Her name was, she's got a great name. Her name was Blossom Galbiso. Mm-hmm. Fantastic name. And this is, like you said, in 1991. And sadly, she passed away in 1994. Yeah. So she, I guess, got to see some of the light, bright burning of kind of what she brought to the forefront of the children's playgrounds. She did. I've seen interviews with her and there were plenty of photos of her. Like people knew where this came from as it was going on to. Maybe she didn't see it die off, which would be kind of really nice. Oh, yeah. Her last words were

Pogs are going to live forever. That would be really nice, actually. What a way to go. It would be. But yeah, she burned bright and hot and short like her creation. Should we, do we go back to Japan or should we talk more about this and then go back? Yeah, I think we should talk more about milk caps and then take it back from there. Because she used to play this as a kid and I think she was born in 1949. So she was playing this in late 50s, early 60s. But like I said, her grandparents, I guess like she said through me, her grandparents had played it as well. So this game of milk caps was just like Pogs. They were, you would use these little cardboard discs and they were called milk caps because they were actually the caps that you would get on a

bottle of milk. They would use a cardboard cap to seal the bottle of milk and then I think they would put like a rubber thing around it to hold the cardboard cap on. But for all intents and purposes, the cap was this little cardboard disc and it would have like the dairy's name on it and the information and probably like, you know, the latest date it could be sold by that kind of thing. But when you took these things off and you stacked them up into a pile, you could make a pretty good game out of them, a game called milk caps. Right. And we'll get to the exact gameplay in a second. But they were playing with milk caps mainly there on Maui from, or I'm sorry, in Oahu, from these milk caps from Maui, the Halea Kaladeri who, you know, they were sending

this milk all over the place. They were actually packaged by a, or getting packaging from a Canadian company that were actually manufacturing these caps and they were making the milk. It was just fine. I'm sure they did a great business. They did. But then they decided to make a new drink called Passion Orange Guava or Passion Fruit Orange Guava, P-O-G. And it was a, like it sounds, it's a little mixed juice drink. It sounds amazing. It does, doesn't it? Yeah, I can't wait to try it one day. I bet it's good. So those little caps, you know, that's where they got the name. It was Passion Fruit Orange Guava. So they became known as Pog Caps. And even though, you know, as the years trickled on, the very few years that it burned white hot, there were many other caps.

It was sort of like the Kleenex, like everyone called them Pogs, regardless of where they came from. Right. And I'm sure there's plenty of people who played with Pogs as kids and had no idea that it was an acronym for Passion Fruit Orange and Guava, you know? I bet most kids didn't know that. But because it was that dairy, what is it? I practiced saying it a bunch of times because we just screwed up so badly on our Hawaiian overthrow episode. I would say Haleakala. I think it is. But I think the accent's actually on the last syllable. Haleakala. Yeah. Okay. But so this, because it was a dairy, they were just using milk caps for their Pog juice as well because they were packaging it very similarly. But because people didn't really buy

milk and bottles anymore, the Pog caps were much easier to come by because everybody was drinking Pog because ostensibly, it was just a delicious drink. Yeah. So. So. Sweet juice. Exactly. So Blossom Galbiso and her young wards started like bringing these caps in from school and then eventually writing to the dairy and asking for them and then eventually writing to Standpac, like you were saying, and saying, do you have any more of these caps that we can get because we're, we could use them and we don't, we've drank so much Pog, we all have diabetes now, but we still want to play, but we just can't drink any more Pog. That's right. And Standpac, I don't think I named it. That was the Canadian packaging company.

Yes. Yeah. Which is still around today. Yeah. I looked them up. You can buy all sorts of lids. I cannot find those cardboard Pog inserts any longer, but if you want some to go coffee lids, Standpac is your company. This episode, by the way, is brought to you by Standpac. Do they still have the Pog juice? You can still get that, right? I think it's like in a carton now. Yes. I could not find it anywhere. I don't know if you have to be on the west coast to find it, but you can make your own. It's just equal parts, passion fruit, guava, and orange. I've also seen that it's best served ice cold. I bet it's good with vodka. I saw a recipe with vodka, yes, and then also one with aquavit and rum, which sounds pretty great.

It does. And now I'm seeing it's on a big box website that we dare not name. Okay. I don't think that that is Halea Kala Dairy's version. I think that's another company's because I saw that on the same big box website. And they can call it Pog? Yes, and we'll get to why. Oh, well, gosh, good point. Yes. Isn't it? Now we see it full circle on this big box website. All right. I think we should take a break because this is too much intrigue even for me to take. Okay. And then we'll come back after this and talk about its more ancient traditions right after this. Booyah. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikler. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was

born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,

I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So we're back. We got Blossom. It's early 90s. Blossom Galbiso is worried about violence on the playground, introduces these kids to this sort of antiquated, silly game, and they love it. They do. But how did this thing get to Hawaii to begin with? You may ask. I can tell you how it got there. I can actually tell you the date, Chuck. Let's hear it. February 8th, 1885, a ship called the City of Tokyo, spelled T-O-K-I-O, arrived in Hawaii with 900 Japanese immigrants aboard, looking for work in the sugar cane fields

of Hawaii. And that was the first Japanese immigrants in the modern age who showed up in the late 19th century and began this huge influx of Japanese immigrants. And you might say, well, what the heck does that have to do with milk caps? And I would say, calm down, settle down. We can tell you that too. And then I'd wait a little while until I'd gotten to the point where I feel like you have calmed down. And then I would proceed with, it's actually based, milk caps is based on a Japanese game that these 900 Japanese immigrants presumably brought with them because it was that popular in Japan. That's right. It was called MENKO, M-E-N-K-O, and it was a card game in Japan that came about in the Kamakura period from about 1185 to 1333 BCE.

That's old. That's pretty old. And so what happens in that game is a player puts down a card and then their opponent tries to flip that card over by throwing their card. It sounds really difficult because it sounds like it's just one card that you're throwing it another single card. It's way harder than Pog. And if you flip the card over, you get both of those cards. Again, not like Pogs in one way in the gameplay way, which we'll get to, but MENKO was very much like Pog in that these little cards actually had symbols of cultural icons in Japan. They had warriors on there and wrestlers. They were cardboard later on, but I think they were like wood or ceramic or clay earlier on. Yeah. And when they were a game called, I think, MENKO, they were made of clay

and they actually more resembled Pog chips or discs than they did than MENKO did because MENKO turned them into what looked like, I think they're considered the predecessor of trading cards, these MENKO cards, right? They are. But before that, when they were little clay tablets, they were little disc shapes and they had pictures and everything on them. So they seemed more like Pogs then than they did by the time they arrived in Hawaii. Right. But again, just trying to flip over a disc by throwing another disc at it, it seems really difficult to accomplish to me. It definitely does. So what the kids in Hawaii did with this game of MENKO was they turned it into this milk cap game using milk caps, which are widely available to them. And rather than one

milk cap trying to overturn another milk cap, you just stack a bunch of them together and try to overturn as many as you could. A lot easier. Way easier. So much easier that you could really get the interest of some like 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, again, as high as I'm going on this. That's the cutoff. Your old kid's attention, you know? Yeah. And it probably matters about your family and birth order because if you're, I could see maybe if you're a 14-year-old only child getting into it. But if you're 14 and you've got a nine-year-old little brother or sister, you're going to make fun of their pogs. Yeah. If you're a, what was it, a Juliet? Right. You're allowed to play pogs at 14. No, no, no. That's what I'm saying, the 14-year-old only child. Right. Poor little Juliet. So she's got

this game going. Blossom has got this game going. Or I guess they called her Miss Galbiso. Sure. And there was a man named Allen Rapinski who saw dollar signs. This is crazy. It is crazy. Because like we said, Stanpac was making these bottle caps in Canada. And he said, you know what? Kids are really liking this game. I'm really curious how he had his fingers so on the pulse. That's what I'm saying. He was in California and this is just going on in Hawaii. And it's not like Hawaii and California don't communicate at all or didn't in the 80s or early 90s. Well, it started to come over and when it did start to come over to the mainland, it definitely started in California first. So. Right. But I have the impression that he brought

it over to the mainland that he found out about some hot trend that had just started in Hawaii and got in on it from California. That's my take on it. Well, you know what doesn't help is every article I read says he somehow caught wind. Right, exactly. He might have gone over there on business or something, who knows. It may have, you know. What's this, what are all these kids doing throwing these bottle caps all around? That's either that or else somebody told him about it and he was like, wait, what are you, what are you talking about? I want to know more about it. He was a guy who had a real nose for potential. Like he was the man who bought the patent for a little leather protectant that was called Trinon, I think at the time, but he turned

it into Armoral. Yeah. He was the guy that brought the world Armoral. He didn't invent it, but he figured out how to market it and turn it into something huge. Remember that non-wrinkle spray? You could spray your clothes and it would get the wrinkles out. Yeah, sure. I think it was called wrinkle free or something like that in the 80s. He marketed that. Just a bunch of like interesting stuff. So he found out about pogs. He caught wind of it one way or another. I bet I know how it happened. How? I bet he went to Hawaii on business. Okay. Okay. He's always kind of keen to his, you know, goings on around him because he's always looking for that next million dollar idea. Sure. And he saw the first fist fight break out

with these kids over a set of pogs that they wanted to trade or a win or take all game. And he saw this bloodthirst and was like, I can make money off of that. Yeah. And then he did the other thing he was well known for. He ran over and broke up the fight by spraying both of the combats with Armoral and they just slipped right off of one another and couldn't land a single punch. And when they got wrinkled up, he sprayed them with wrinkle free. That's right. Great story. So yeah, you're probably right because that is kind of what the ultimate destiny of pogs was. And he was largely responsible for that because if Blossom Galbiso was the mother of pogs,

this guy was the father of pogs. He was the guy who, and as far as I know, you know, they were not in any way meritably related or anything like that. I don't think so. They were just related by pogs, but he took it and just introduced the world to it. Just as this marketing guy, and he actually formed a group called the World Pog Federation within, I think a year of Blossom Galbiso introducing this for the first time to her students in Hawaii, the World Pog Federation had been created by Alan Rapinski and his company. Yeah. And he did something very, very key to the story or in this story,

kind of when you mentioned about Haleakala and the fact that they did not have great financial gain from this. It's because Rapinski saw the writing on the wall and said, hey, why don't you sell me that brand name, that pog brand name? Because like, who cares? Like, you don't care, right? You're just pumping out this juice. You can still pump out that juice. Yeah. And they said, sure. And they sold them the pog brand name. And that was it. They were sort of cut out of, I mean, I guess for a little while, they still, people were maybe buying their stuff a little more than usual to get these pog caps. But they weren't like getting juice, no pun intended, from the rights to sell these things.

They were, as a matter of fact, from what I can tell, I think I saw in like a LA Times article or something from the 90s that they got 15%, 15% cut of rent. Oh, so he did cut them in? Yes. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. So it wasn't like entirely like, you know, this LA businessman fleeced some Hawaiian dairy farmers entirely. Like they were cut in. But I think the big thing is like that as far as the dairy was concerned, they had no real role in this other than accepting some money. Like fat checks for a few years, I guess.

Sure. Yeah, sure. And that's a bit of a, it was ultimately a misstep on their part. But Rupinski, he's very much credited with introducing this to the world, but he's also credited with making this thing burn so hot that it was just inevitable that it was going to last a very, very short time. And a lot of people kind of say, you know, that was a screw up. He shouldn't have done it like that. But I also had the impression that he knew that this thing, no matter what he did, it's not like Pogs were always going to be around, that they were the new baseball cards or anything. So I think he came along and was like, we need to get as much money as we possibly can out of this because it's not going to

last for very long. And he proceeded to do that. Yeah. So he created Pogman the mascot. Like he said, they started having these tournaments. Everybody, I mean, I was not kidding about Pope John Paul. I think they bought like 50,000 the Catholic Church Pogs when the Pope came to New Jersey in 1995 to give them out. Bill Clinton was on one. They had altruistic campaigns. They had the dare not to do drugs campaigns, started making Pogs. And of course, the major chain restaurants got involved in Del Taco and Taco Bell and McDonald's, Disneyland, everybody, anything that you could put on a Pog because, you know, these kids are holding these things and trading these things. It was like

liquid gold to an advertiser because they were everywhere and kids were fighting like literally fighting over them. So anyone and everyone tried to get an image on a Pog cap, even if it wasn't the official like licensed one. Yeah. I mean, like if you released a movie during the Pog era, you probably made Pogs for it, especially if there was an elf. Yeah. There's a set of pulp fiction ones that are pretty cool. Really? Yes, there are. I would think that would be just on a bubble. I would think so too, but nope. It was, I've seen it with my own eyes. Well, on the internet, somebody could have photoshopped them, but Jurassic Park had a set of hologram ones that were pretty cool. Yeah, those were cool. I think somebody tried to sell them for

a million million dollars on eBay and I don't believe they actually got a million dollars for them. People are going to give you a hundred. I think that's probably about how it went because, you know, people want Pogs to be worth a lot more than they are and they're just not. I mean, it's too recent and there's too many of them. One I saw that seemed legitimately like about a hundred dollars was a Stucey one, which was super cool. It's like silver shiny kind of hologramming. I like the surf company. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's got like the reggae colors on it and everything. It's a pretty cool Pog to tell you the truth. Yeah. I don't even know if I would have been in the wheelhouse. Like I think a lot of this depends on, and we'll get to this in a

second. Like you're playing at school some, but then the schools try and shut it down because it's very disruptive. So then you have to live in one of those great neighborhoods where there's thousands of houses and kids are just all over the place. And, you know, as I've said before, I grew up in the woods on two acres of land with nary another child in sight, except for my brother. So I think it kind of depended on that kind of after school trading in the cul-de-sac thing that I never got a piece of. No. You had to play Pogs with Dirt Friend, the pile of dirt you named your friend. I did have Dirt Friends. It's not funny. I wasn't trying to be funny. Okay. There is nothing funny about that, Chuck. No.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were another big one. Oh, of course. I'm sure those, yeah, that was a big deal at the time. Very huge. And then like, so yeah, if you wanted to bring into kids, this was a great opportunity to do it. Now legitimately, you had to go through the World Pog Federation because all these things were supposedly Pogs. And if you wanted to print your own Pog, it didn't matter who you were, you had to go license the ability to do this from Alan Rapinski and the World Pog Federation. The problem is, if you own the license, the trademark to a little cardboard disc that anybody could make if they wanted to, like the technology is really easy and low hanging to make these kind of things, that yes, it's going to be like a large business like Taco Bell,

who's just not going to be bothered with a major lawsuit that will cost them more than it would to license the rights to make Pogs and give them out as like, you know, some promotional tool. But anybody who's even remotely interested in the knockoff market just dove in head first into Pogs and the market became saturated really fast. Not just with Rapinski's officially licensed Pogs, there are plenty of those, but also just knockoffs galore. Yeah, there's a couple of staggering statistics here. It says here in California alone, at one point Pogs were selling $10 million a week in one state and then, and of course, Jesse Thorns from California. So it may have been, I mean, I know they were nationwide and then

worldwide, but I get the feeling that California was a real Pog hotspot. That's my impression as well. But in 1994, well, I guess there it is, 1994 Pulp Fiction year, 350 million Pogs sold. So it was, yeah, it was still going strong in 94. Yeah. So kids were trading GIMP Pogs. That's exactly right. Or ones that say like, I'm about to get medieval on. Yeah. So we can conclude then, Chuck, since they were still going strong in 1994, Blossom Galbiso died in 1994. So she did not have to see the end of the Pog trend. She went out on top. Look at that detective work. Isn't that great? And they buried her with a Pog of the back of Ving Reims' head. That's right, with a bandaid on it. You want to take another break?

Sure. Quickly though, I want to plug, since we're talking Pulp Fiction, I had Jack O'Brien of the Daily Zeitgeist on and we talked to Pulp Fiction and it's out in the world and it was a great discussion. So that's awesome. If you like Pulp Fiction and movie conversations, check it out. And Jack O'Brien too. Jack's the best. We'll be right back. you do. You've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangeisha together. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars,

if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on the sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so we're back. Pogs have burned bright. They've started to kind of fizzle though, right? Yeah. And I kind of hinted at it. One of the

reasons was that schools, they had to clamp down on this thing because there were fights over Pogs because if you played Playing for Keeps, that meant, and we'll go over the full, I guess we kind of went over the gameplay, but should we? Yeah, you want to now? Yeah, I guess so. The first thing you decide is, are you playing for Keeps or not? Playing for Keeps means that you go home with the Pogs that you collect from your friends and you don't, there's no gives these backsies. And those are serious games if you're 10 years old, you know? You know, what's funny is you just use two terms used for marbles, which bears a striking resemblance to Pogs as well, or at least the way you play marbles and some of the rules involved.

Yeah, because you collect these things as a kid and you really, if you have to give up that GIMP Pog, you're really upset that you've lost that thing. So fights would break out and schools start to have to clamp down and literally banned it in quite a few countries at one point. Yeah, because I mean, also, this is a game of chance. We're going to tell you how to play in a second. It'll become very clear that it's almost entirely luck. And so it's gambling. There's, you know, if you're playing for chips and these things are, or you're playing for Pogs, I mean, and these things are coveted, yeah, little kids don't necessarily deal with loss like that, especially sudden unexpected loss that they hadn't really anticipated the consequences of.

And yeah, you can get in fights, you accuse people of stealing. It's, it was, Pogs became problematic very quickly. But this was also during the same era where Bart Simpson, you know, touting that he was an underachiever, got t-shirts of Bart Simpson banned in schools. So schools were seemingly a little stricter back then in the early 90s than they are today, although I can't say that they are today. It just seems strict now in retrospect. Yeah, I think that's right. And I'm going to stop the people from emailing you right now. Okay. And do you a favor, my friend? Thank you. Because you said that it's basically luck and I guarantee you there are some 30 something to

early 40 something Pog enthusiasts that are really mad at you right now that had their Pog technique down that they claim was like superior to their friends and that there was skill involved. Well, I appreciate you saving me a bunch of time replying to all those emails saying you are wrong, wrong, wrong. You think it's luck? Yeah, it is luck. So yeah, so let's talk about how to play this, right? So when you play Pog, you need basically a flat surface and a bunch of Pogs. You need at least one other person. And from what I was reading on the internet, it seemed that that was usually how many people were in a Pog match. There's two. That was one on one. All right. Each person puts up the same number of Pogs and apparently the ideal stack of Pogs

is 12. So each person's ponying up six Pogs, whether they're coveted or not, I don't know. That's only if you want to follow the unofficial Pog and Cat Player's Handbook written by Jason Page. Exactly. Who probably knows what he's talking about, at least more than I do. So I'm going with his number. So you form a stack of Pogs and you get your hands on what's called a slammer. They're all face up though. You got to say that part. Oh, thanks man. So yeah, if you look at a Pog on one side is basically what you, is the design. On the other side, it's either blank or there's minimal design on it. It's very clear that there's one side that's like the face. And you said they're face up or down. You put them face up. So you've got your stack with Bill Clinton on top

and the other stack with the Gimp on top. Okay. Going head to head. And that is how you start the game. Oh, is it? Okay. So my understanding was that they were all in one stack. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Cheese. Okay. People are so mad at me right now. So then you put them up against each other, then you stack them all on one. Yeah. Okay. So you've got a stack of 12 Pogs. We should probably edit and redo this whole thing. No, I think this is good. And then you take a slammer and slammer is basically a Pog shaped object that it's almost like a mini hockey puck. It's made of heavier material than cardboard. So it's like a glass, like a heavy glass kind of thing or rubber or metal or something like that.

I wonder if there are restrictions on that. No, this is a free-for-all, man. Pog was a free-for-all, which is why the parents just didn't get it, you know, why they couldn't stand it. So you could bring in like an iron slammer? I think so. I saw it somewhere that it was frowned upon among players because the metal would often dent at least the top Pog. And if that was your Pog, you might be like, man, why'd you dent my Pog? Other than that, I don't think there were restrictions on that, although, you know, I'm sure informally there were. Like you've got a dented zipper. Exactly. But you would take the slammer and you would toss it down. Now, here's the part where you were referring to earlier that people were going to email in about,

because it does take some technique to slam this thing down. Because if you miss or if you actually don't move the stack at all, that's your turn. The other person gets their turn next. So it does take some technique to hit the stack in the first place, but then also to scatter them in a certain way, right? And it's the scattering that's the most important part of playing Pog. Yeah. And you know what? I know we're going to get emails. I guarantee you this is a game that had regional variations. It's just got to be. It's one of those kids' games where one playground might play it slightly different than another playground as far as the rules go. Sure. Absolutely. And I'm going to stand by that because I know we're going to get people that are going to

contradict one another and say that their version was like how they played it was the right way. But until I read that book by Jason Page, which I'm never going to do. Oh, I don't know. Maybe somebody will mail it to you. So yeah, you slam this thing down and this stack of Pogs, if you hit it right, is going to kind of scatter everywhere, like you said. And then some of them will have flipped over with the face side down. Some will remain face side up. And that is sort of the key to the whole game. Yes. So the ones that have landed face side up, you get to keep if it was your turn. Now those might be your buddies Pogs. They might be your Pogs. It doesn't matter. Then you take the ones that are still face side. However, they were stacked

up, I think you're saying. And then you put them back into another stack and now it's the other players turn. You keep going back and forth until all of the Pogs have been turned over and kept. And however many Pogs you turned over, that's how many you get to keep. And, you know, again, whether it's your Pogs or the other person's Pogs, ideally it's everybody's Pogs. And then there was another variation I saw that seems to have been pretty widespread. It was the Poison Pog. And these were usually like kind of a memento mori kind of thing, like scary skulls on fire and, you know, like an eight ball kind of thing. And it would say Poison Pog. And the Poison Pog, if you put one of those in the stack, if you flip that one over, then you got all the Pogs in that

stack on that one turn. Oh, okay. I didn't see that. And this is another frustration because I went to some YouTube videos of like gameplay videos. And I saw several that had described the gameplay differently than the others, which leads me to think that there were variations. Because I saw one person say that you get to keep the Pogs that are faced down. And that flies in the face of everything I had heard from everyone else. Right. Yeah. I think it just, it's flipping it over from the way it was before. I don't think it actually matters. But yes, you would want to, you keep the ones that you flip over, whether now they're faced up or down, who cares? Right. And then I saw another where they said that you stack them, every other

one is faced up or down. But I didn't see that verified anywhere else either. So yeah, I didn't run into that one. Yeah. I just, you know, people should say like these are Michigan rules, you know, or something like that. Right. So you know that slammer, the heavier object that you throw onto the Pogs stack, you can make them out of all sorts of things. And they have different, they often had different like imagery on them as well. But I saw one, I saw this in multiple places. There was an OJ Simpson one where it had a picture of OJ Simpsons behind bars. So he was in the slammer. So he was on the slammer as well. Yeah. That must have been a legendary slammer because I did, I saw that in a couple of places.

Yeah. The OJ slammer. I wonder if he got a piece of that. I don't think so, man. And I don't think he's legally allowed to keep it even if he did. And then one day he would break into a hotel room and steal those slammers. That's right. Give me the slammers. Get him back. Man, I saw a documentary on that robbery. It was nuts. Oh, really? Yeah. I guess it was, no, no, no. I'm sorry. It was that, what was that like five-part series on OJ and the murders and everything? Yeah, I remember that. Was it the 3430 that did it? I don't remember. I know it was just a documentary, I think.

Yeah, but the documentary series. But yeah, they covered that robbery too. And it was just just so casual and dumb. And so casually dumb too, you know? It was a smart one. No, it really wasn't. So let's see. I think we've explained how to play Pogs about as thoroughly as you possibly can, don't you? I think so. Well, let's talk about how they finally fizzled out. Well, like I said earlier, I think the banning on the playgrounds and then the banning or at school and then I think the US, Canada, Sweden, Iceland, Germany, the UK and Australia all banned these pieces in schools. And so that's going to put a damper on something if you're stuck at dumb school all day and you can't have your Pogs and you're just limited to the hours

between three and six when mom and dad call you back to eat dinner. Okay, on the one hand, but I also saw a contemporary piece of journalism in 1994 that interviewed the founder of Trove USA, which was a big Pogmaker at the time. And he speculated that those school bans actually increased Pogs sales and probably that but also probably prolonged the interest because if kids have been free to play these all the time, they would have lost interest that much, that much faster. I mean, I think ultimately that's what happened. It's like like any or it's like many kid fads that it just it becomes not cool you age out a bit a little bit and maybe the kids below you aren't interested and it just goes away. I mean, I don't think

there's a smoking gun here, do you? Besides OJ. Yeah, I would say OJ is probably the culprit for why Pogs went away. Yeah. I think they said in Boys Life magazine in 1998 issue of Boys Life magazine, they basically said it was it was done and not cool anymore. So yeah, they compared it to things like what's that one where you chase a hoop with a stick? Yeah, I know what you mean. Like that and playing marbles and all these old timey fads, they included Pog among them already. Boys Life said it in 1998, then it probably meant it went out by 1996. Exactly. It was super out by then. So we kind of mentioned Chuck that Halea Kaladeri did not really benefit from this.

They did financially, I'm sure 15% cut of all of that hundreds of millions of dollars that was flowing to the World Pog Federation for a couple of years definitely boosted their annual revenue, I'm sure. But if you talk to most people and say, what does Pog actually mean? They probably couldn't tell you. So in that respect, a lot of the articles that I think both of us have seen about this have pointed out quite rightly that the dairy really missed an opportunity to become like legendary or become a part of the trend and they were very quickly separated and Pogs became their own thing in isolation with no boost whatsoever to the dairy. Now there's kind of like this kind of retro nod to it that enough time has passed, enough people have written and talked about

it that the dairy's been identified as the source of Pogs originally, but it didn't happen at the time and this kind of retrospective about it is not really probably going to help the dairy very much. Which is sad. Yeah. And you know why? Because they were a dairy. Right. Like in this one article that they spoke with this creative director at a New York ad agency that was like, you know, this is why you really need to pay attention to what your consumer is doing with your brand. Like if they have off-brand uses going on, you need to know about to capitalize on it and look at McDonald's and like they're the perfect company with this stuff. And it's just like, man, they were a dairy in Hawaii. They weren't paying attention to that and they shouldn't have been expected to,

I don't think. Sure. No, no, and certainly not. And I think also it's one of those things where the only way that they possibly could have capitalized is if they had taken the gamble that this is going to be an enormous fad, which would take a tremendous amount of foresight. And then also would have had to have hired like a publicist like the guy that was interviewed or quoted in that article. They're not going to do that. Like they would have had to have figured it out and then they could have possibly bungled it. It would have been a big deal. But also, yeah, they're, like you said, they're dairy and that's not the way that they're thinking. But yeah, in hindsight, it's very easy to blame them. But regardless, I mean, it is a little sad that

they got kind of left behind, but I don't think that they were any like worse for the wearer from not having been on the pog crest along with the little caps, the little med caps. Perhaps. Should we go to our cherry on top here at the end? Yeah, thanks to the U.S. military for this cherry on top again. Yeah, this is interesting because I had no idea about this and I should talk to my brother-in-law because he's certainly been stationed overseas. So the Army and Air Force Exchange service stores, these are, let's say if the military is overseas in the Middle East or whatever, they're in Afghanistan and they set up these sort of temporary on base stores. They

started issuing pogs, these little cardboard coins in November 2001 because they were lighter than metal coins. You could ship them a lot cheaper overseas and it was supposed to be like a temporary thing and, you know, it said how much it was worth basically. But then they started having pictures on it and comic book characters and NASCAR drivers and stuff like that. People just can't resist. No, but they were essentially pogs and, you know, I don't see anything that they actually played the game, but they functioned as currency for American service people in Afghanistan since 2001 until just recently.

Yeah, and then this, was it military.com article? Yeah. Where they were basically, you know, they interviewed a few people who seemed a little like verklempt that these things had been phased out because they were like this kind of weird little part of their tour that had, that you just wouldn't find anywhere else in the world. And the whole reason the military adopted pogs overseas, at least in Afghanistan, is because it's just so much easier to ship them and to chip in using them. It requires less effort to toss them into the pot. But the, like, if you, I think $100 and quarters, I saw, weighs almost six pounds

and $100 in these little pogs weighs, you know, a fraction of that. So just in shipping costs alone, it made sense. But apparently these pog coins worm their ways into the hearts of the U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. I love it. I love it. Yep. Well, so long pogs and so long to the military reincarnation of pogs, there are no pogs anywhere now in the world at all. If you want to know more about pogs, just start looking them up on the internet and see what you think. And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail.

I'm going to call this slime mold enthusiast, and it's not from you. I know there's a fellow slime mold enthusiast. I'm one of them too now. Hey guys, loved your slime mold episode and figured I should crawl out from under the leaf litter and get in touch. It's pretty good, huh? I got slime molds about 10 years ago for a kid's lecture and started giving it away so other people could play with these funky, chilled out beings without having to fork over hard-earned cash. You can dry them out on paper, cut them into portions and pop them in the post, which makes things very easy. Things kind of snowball quickly. I've now posted it to, this means mailed for our American listeners.

I've now posted it to around 25 countries, ran stands at the UK's biggest science fair, giving out thousands of cultures, and I've gotten, and I've got 3,000 about to go to Milan for an art exhibition. I am even selectively breeding them. That's very awesome. He calls them his pets. He said they're much better traveled than I am. He said they're fantastic things for children and adults to play with, giving it a selection of different foods, seeing what it'll go for as a firm favorite with school classes of all ages. Would you like some guys? Yes, please. They're easy to keep. Same deal as everyone else. It's free and there's a website here. I don't know if this is just for us or if it's for everyone. Well, let's say it and then

we can edit it out if he's like, no, please don't release that. Okay. It's either you're either going to hear long beep or you're going to hear this. That's censorship. www.tinyurl.com slash slime manifesto. Nice. This has instructions in the back story. I bet that's for everyone. The only thing you got wrong, Chuck, is that it's www, period. Yeah, that's right. And we get mad at pet ants. Are you taking a passive aggressive shot at me right now? No, it's fully aggressive. Okay, good. Thanks to everyone on your team for your brilliant episodes. My job as a microscopist means I'm usually alone in the dark. Your podcast goes a long way to keeping me sane-ish. Cheers. That is from Ian Hans Portman. And then he adds this

little post script. I've accidentally tasted Fisarum several times. It's easy to do when a half square meter of it is hungry and gets loose in your bag. It tastes like a compost, heaps smells, but with the added bonus of being incredibly bitter. Wow. This is a great email, Ian. Thank you for this. Yeah, Ian, this is one of the tops of all time, frankly. It has it all. It has something that we're already interested in. It has an offer to give us something we're already interested in for free. It's British, and it includes accidentally tasting a live organism. Yeah, that could creepily take over your household. Yeah, or your body now that you've eaten it. That's right. Well, good luck to Ian surviving the slime mold tasting encounter. I hope that you

live long enough to send us some free slime mold because I will definitely take you up on that for sure. For sure. Thanks again, Ian. And if you want to be like Ian and be super cool, you can send us an email too. Send it off to stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through

life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever

you get your podcasts.