Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 9, 1995 TAG: 9503090042
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS HENSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
We played three quarter hockey. We played finger football with a sheet of paper folded into a tight triangle. We played scissors-paper-rock. We played brick-brick. And we hid Ms. Vicar's glasses.
Kids today don't play any of these games. No marbles, jacks or parcheesi.
No Pac Man, no Space Invaders, no wiffle-ball, for Pete's sake.
No.
Now it's POG.
David Driver, 10, of Roanoke, says the teachers don't let kids play POG in class, either, "but we kind of sneak and play it," he says.
"He just came home from school one day talking about POG," says John Bumgardener of his son Josh. "I still don't get it."
POG comes from Hawaii. The Haleakala Dairy used cardboard bottle caps with a picture of a surfer on them.
Kids on the island began collecting the caps. An elementary school teacher devised a game to teach her kids hand-eye coordination. The game spread to California and Texas about two years ago.
Last September POG fell upon Roanoke by way of MJDesigns, a craft store on Town Square Boulevard.
"The national office prepped us for it," says Jack Slattery, the store's art department manager. "They explained what it was, sent us a videotape to show us. They said it would be big."
Big indeed! It's POG-tacular! He figures he sells between 5,000 and 10,000 POGs - a week.
POGs are silver-dollar-sized cardboard disks. They are adorned with every image you can think of: bugs, Disney characters, road kill, radioactive waste, skulls, skulls, skulls - and, my favorite, the retro-'50s POGs with sayings like "Gee Sally, your hair smells like POG!" and "All my men play POG."
POG is also a simple game. Two players make a stack of at least 10 POGs face down. They take turns knocking the stack over by throwing a slammer onto the stack. A slammer is a thicker POG made of plastic or metal.
The slamming player keeps the POGs that land face up. The remainders are stacked again, and play is resumed. The winner, naturally, is the one with the most POGs at the end of the game.
Saturday afternoon at MJDesigns is bedlam. Brice Lugar, 7, is sampling the slammers. He's checking out one that looks like an Oreo. He likes it because it's heavy. Does he think a real Oreo would make a good slammer? "No, I'd probably eat it," he says.
His mother Brenda Lugar thinks POG is a good game for kids, but she also knows the real score. "I think someone's making a lot of money off these things," she says.
It's true. The caps couldn't cost more than a half a penny to make, and they sell for nine cents apiece. Throw in the POG collector cases, game boards, fanny-pack, and POG-pourrie packs and you've got a self-promoting money machine. The collectibles, Lion King, Star Trek, etc., are a bit more. A slammer POG sells for around a dollar or more.
There are essentially two types of POG people:
Claire Hodges is very particular about her POGs. She's a collector. Her first visit to MJDesigns was an hour digging through four horse troughs filled with tons of them. She came away with six. "I have about 40 now," she says. How many will be enough? "Probably a million," she says. "Maybe 280."
Then there are the competitors like Jeremy Wine, 11, of Roanoke. The games can get quite spirited.
"We were playing on the school bus, me and Shane Carr," he says. "I was just slamming really hard and hit Shane in the head twice."
Fine, but is Jeremy any good with a slammer? "I beat my brother Tommy," he says. "And, he's 15."
"He just got real lucky," says Tommy in defense.
POG is the trademark of The World POG Federation - the original manufacturer. It stands for Passion fruit, Orange, Guava. There are other companies entering the huge market. They make Sky Caps, Alley Caps, Whacker Caps, Trovs and others.
But POG is the word.
MJDesign will host a POG tournament April 1. Slattery, Roanoke's foremost POG-tologist, POG-nosticates that the future of POGs is rosy. "I figure we'll see a leveling off of sales," he says. "But I think its strength lies in its collectibility. It'll always be around."
Sure. And G.I. Joe will always be 11 inches tall and have life-like hair.
OFF THE CLOCK BONUS GAME!
Direct from J J Kelly High School, in Wise, Va., here are the rules to Brick Brick:
In normal conversation follow every word you say that begins with the letter "B" with the word "brick." If you miss a "b"-word someone can call "brick brick" on you and hit you on the arm really hard.
Example:
"Just last week I was baking brick a chocolate cake, but brick before brick it was even cooled off my brother ate it."
"Brick brick!!"
"What? ... OW!!!"
You see, the offending word was "brother," which was not followed by neutralizer word "brick." Once "brick brick" is called, the hapless individual is due the traditional "Hurtz Donut" on the arm.
Note: I believe that hitting games were developed so that Doc Howell could sock me in the arm me during gym class. He was good ... very good.
by CNB