Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 3, 1994                   TAG: 9411120009
SECTION: NEWSFUN                    PAGE: NF-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: NANCY GLEINER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

KIDS ARE FLIPPING OVER POG

POGs are cardboard disks about the size of a poker chip or a half-dollar. (If you haven't seen a half-dollar lately, it's a little bigger than a quarter.) You can collect POGs and play games with them, too.

POG stands for Passion, Orange, Guava juice, a fruit drink made at a dairy farm in Hawaii. People started playing games in Hawaii with the cardboard caps from the juice bottles more than 60 years ago.

Now, a company called the World POG Federation is making caps decorated with metallic foil patterns, skulls, creatures and characters who resemble some you might see at a video arcade. There are even Looney Toons and Power Ranger disks. And more of your favorite cartoon and action-figure characters are sure to follow.

You can even have your own face put on a POG, but it's pretty expensive. Some business people are having them made to give to customers.

There's already a POG character - an orange, furry creature with a purple nose, huge tooth-filled smile and big feet. And you can buy POG T-shirts, hats, fanny packs, backpacks and containers to hold your POGs.

If you want to collect POGs for future investment, just as you would baseball cards, limited edition POGs are numbered and can be kept in plastic sleeves in albums.

Playing POG is pretty cheap, so you buy some even if your allowance isn't very big. To play, you need a stack of POGs (they cost about 10 each) and a ``kini'' or ``slammer,'' a heavier POG made of plastic or metal, costing from $1 to $2.50.

Slammers come in different thicknesses, from single to quadruple. Some players prefer heavier, metal slammers. Others think lighter, plastic slammers work better.

You can buy POGs in POGpourri packs, which include four POGs and a kini for about $2. Limited edition POGS cost 75 to $1.

In the simplest game, each player stacks an equal number of POGs in one pile, face up. Players decide who goes first .

The first player throws a slammer onto the top of the stack. A hard, snapping-the-wrist motion works well. All POG caps landing face down go to that player.

Restack the rest of the POGs for the next player. Players alternate turns until all the caps have been flipped. The player with the most caps is the winner and keeps the POGs he or she has won.

Here are some of the finer points of the game:

Players must let go of the slammer before it hits the POGs.

There are a couple of different techniques for flipping the POGs. Some players think partly covering the top POG on the stack with the slammer works better than completely covering it. Others think just the opposite.

Everyone seems to agree that making sure the slammer is flat when it hits the POGs is very important.

Though heavier slammers may flip more POGs, they can also dent or bend the POGs.

POG should be played outdoors or on a piece of heavy cardboard. Slammers can dent table tops and floors. Then, they might be taken away by you-know-who.

There are many variations to the basic game. Some people play for points or make up special rules for specific POGs.

For example, a POG with a skull on it could be worth an extra point or allow the winner to take an extra POG or extra turn. Turning over certain POGs might force a player to lose a turn or extra POGs.

Inventing your own games is part of the fun of playing POG. It's also a good way to unplug from the TV or video games and play face-to-face with a friend again.

POG tournaments are beginning to spring up, even in Roanoke, where many people have not heard of them yet. MJDesigns will host a tournament on Oct 15 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. It's one of the few stores in Roanoke to have POGs on their shelves.

Other stores are beginning to get calls from people asking about POGs, and Capt. Party in Roanoke is waiting for its first order.

If you haven't heard of POGs yet, you can bet you will. As the people at the World POG Federation say, POG is ``the old fashioned game of the future.''