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Pogs: They Existed
written by nick and jon- november 25th - 2003
A QUICK F.A.Q.
It’s taken me a while to face the facts, but I have a gambling problem. It started with pogs.
Pogs was the first game I had ever played that involved putting something that belonged to me, EARNED WITH THE SWEAT FROM MY BROW, up for wager against another man’s property, to the winner go the spoil.
WHAT HTE HELL IS A POG?
A pog is a little piece of cardboard with an image on the ‘top’. The images on your pogs reflect what kind of person you are. Say you have Superman on your pogs, this means you’re lame.
HAY HOW DO I PLAYP OGS?/
Make a pile of pogs face down, composed 50% of your pogs and 50% of your opponents. Now take your SLAMMER and hit the pile. Whichever pogs are now face up are yours. Now it is your opponent’s turn.
WTF WTHA ‘S SADLAMMER////////////
Are you drunk?
A slammer is the tool you use to flip over the pogs. They vary in size and weight and typically have cool designs on them, basically just a big ass pog. The king pog, if you will.
HAY OYUOU HWEANT TO FIGHJT OF ORF SOMTHOING/?!@
Nick signed off at 10:48:12PM
Eight years have passed since the pog phenomenon.
Just as they
rocked the world of worthless collectable shit eight years ago, they are now
primed and ready to rock the Internet-based world of lol-nostalgists. We have
already raped and pillaged the 1980s beyond redemption with our photoshops of
Admiral Ackbar squirting He-Man in the face with a juicebox full of Ecto
Cooler. The giant merciless Internet death machine of nostalgic entertainment
is like a race of hostile aliens who move from planet to planet, consuming every
resource until the planet’s sucked dry, and move on.
This is a screenshot from the movie I am alluding to, which is Blank Check.
So it was
imperative that Nick and I rape this goldmine of “old = lol” humor before anyone
else could get to it. We’re running off with it like we just cashed a check for
one million dollars and stuffed the cash in our backpack before Tone Loc and the
guy from the Ditech.com commercials can catch us and stop us from bidding on a
mansion with a computer that has sore-throat-it is. Cuh-huh. Cuh-huh.
The time was ripe for a shitty gimmick.
In 1994, Major League Baseball players decided to strike, and it was numbing. I spent the first two months after the strike pointing out to everyone that it was quiet ironic that the final pitch thrown in the 1994 season was, indeed, a strike. After that, though, my love of baseball, at least for the time being, died. Consequently, I no longer felt the need to add to my collection of baseball cards, and I quickly realized that I needed a new worthless cardboard medium to throw my money toward.
Pogs were that medium.
God-Pogs and me.
For the uninitiated, pogs were cardboard discs about an inch in diameter which carried some sort of design. Within a couple of months of their introduction, they were being licensed and sold by any company that ever made anything, ever. I was in a Christ-fearing family, so I made frequent family trips to the local Christian bookstore, and the Christian media empire never fails to exploit a trend. Over the years, these trespasses have included, but have not been limited to, ripoffs of designer clothing manufacturers such as FUBU and Tommy Hilfiger.
PRAISE JESUS.
And of course, as soon as pogs became the latest trend, the caring evangelical Christian bookstores immediately began stocking God-pogs as a tool for winning souls for Christ, and not at all as a way to make a quick buck. I’m pretty sure they replaced their Bible section with a pog section, which was okay by me, because God-pogs rocked my fucking socks off. I bought the eight-pog set that detailed the seven days of God’s creation of the universe.
My favorite, though, was a pog that had a cartoon of a guy with a hand growing out of his back, his head upside-down, and a knee bending the wrong way. It read, “EVOLUTION?!?!? HA HA HA HA HA”. The argument was so coherently and logically constructed that whoever played with this pog would have no choice but to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior and pry the bumper ornament of the Darwin-fish eating the Christian fish off the family car without asking his parents, who were probably divorced, I bet. I couldn’t take a picture of the pog for this article because whenever I would try, it would transform into a dove and fly away.
The pog-market crash of 1995.
The entire history of pogs, or at least the span of time in which they rocked my world, lasted for about twelve months. By Month #4, collectors were beginning to assign values to the pogs. The three characteristics of value to look for in a pog were “holograms” (read: shiny foil), pogs that read, “DA BOMB”, and custom-cut edges. But by Month 11, the value of such prospects plummeted, and all across America eleven-year-old kids were jumping off window ledges in despair. But not yours truly. I had something that all these other saps didn’t: the first pog ever made.
What you see here is what the first pog ever made looked like, only these pogs must be replicas, because there was only one first pog ever made. I had managed to scrap together the entire set of McDonald’s Power Rangers pogs and used them all in a pog match just to have a chance at winning the first pog ever made, and as the fates would have it, I won the ultimate prize. I knew for sure that this was the first pog ever made, because the kid I won it from was an all-star Little League played who went to play a game in Hawaii, where the pog phenomenon was born, and he got the pog from a Hawaiian-looking kid there. I couldn’t believe my luck.
So while all my
friends were busy leaping off tall buildings and kicking tables out from under
them with their neckties strapped to ceiling fans, I sat patiently on my nest
egg, and surfaced with it once the hard times were over. I founded my own
Internet website. In fact, it was this very website you are reading right now.
Isn’t that amazing? I raised a wonderful family, who has stood faithfully stood
by my side in the winter of my life.
I’m the grandpa in the middle. The fat one who looks like he’s chuckling. Not the skinny one who looks like he’s sitting on a pogo stick. This is the end of my story about pogs.
Whoops, not
yet. I forgot to add that I became President and flew an F-16 to save my dear,
beloved family from aliens.
I'm a pilot. I belong in the air. OH CRAP MY GAS MASK FELL OFF.
BONUS POG BATTLE: Nick vs.
Jon.
Written in official pog-notation
Date: 11/24/03, Time: 5:46 PM
Ten (10) pogs in play, five (5) submitted per player
1. NICK slams with PLASTIC SLAMMER.
none flipped
JON slams with PLASTIC SLAMMER.
none flipped
2. NICK
slams with PLASTIC SLAMMER.
none flipped
JON slams with PLASTIC SLAMMER.
none flipped
3. NICK slams with PLASTIC SLAMMER.
none flipped
JON slams with PLASTIC SLAMMER.
none flipped
4. NICK glares at JON. Substitutes PLASTIC SLAMMER with HOLY EUCHARIST.
Pog flipped (1):
"OZZIE SMITH DOING BACKFLIP" from set: BASEBALL STARS
JON substitutes PLASTIC SLAMMER with RUSTY DOORKNOB.
Pog flipped (1):
"JESUS TURNS WINE INTO WATER" from set: MIRACLES OF JESUS
5. NICK substitutes HOLY EUCHARIST with CAR BATTERY
Pogs flipped (2):
"BLUE RANGER" from set: POWER RANGERS
"DERRICK THOMAS" from set: DEAD FOOTBALL HEROES
JON substitutes RUSTY DOORKNOB with MANHOLE COVER
Pogs flipped (2):
"FIRST MICHAEL JORDAN RETIREMENT COMMEMORATIVE POG" from set: MICHAEL JORDAN
RETIREMENT COMMEMORATIVE POGS
"JAY SHERMAN" from set: THE CRITIC
6. NICK substitutes CAR BATTERY with SWINGING SHIP AMUSEMENT PARK RIDE
Pogs flipped (2):
"IF IT DOESN'T FIT, YOU MUST'VE QUIT" from set: THE O.J. SIMPSON TRIAL
"THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING" from set: FAMOUS OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBINGS
7. JON substitutes MANHOLE COVER with HUNK OF PLUTONIUM
FORFEIT: Game reaches early decision due to disintegration of playing area and fifteen-mile radius
GAME: NICK
Nick in his Eucharist-slamming pose