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Children's Popular Culture

POGs

Introduction 

Pogs, also known as milk caps, was a children’s game played with cardboard milk cap disks, usually decorated with pop culture graphics. The name ‘Pogs’ came from a brand of juice, in which the juice caps were used to play the game. The game is played with types of disks: the actual pogs, which are stacked, and slammers, which are heavier objects in similar shape as the pogs, which are dropped on top of the stacked pogs to try to knock it over.  

The rules of the game are simple: The players contribute an equal number of milk caps to build a stack. Players then take turns throwing the ‘slammer’ on top of the stack, causing the milk caps to come apart. Each player keeps any milk caps that have flipped over. After each throw, the milk caps which have not flipped over are then re-stacked for the next player. When no milk caps remain in the stack, the player with the most pogs is the winner. Players can decide whether or not they play for ‘keeps’, in which they keep the pogs they had won during the game sequence.  

This game originated in Japan during the 17th century with Menko, a card game similar to pogs, but the modern ‘milk cap’ based game developed in Maui, Hawai’i during the 1920s and 30s. When milk packaging evolved to not need milk caps, companies began to distribute the caps as promotional items. The fruit drink, Pog, did the same thing and eventually promoted their caps on the more populous island of Oahu, which helped generalize the name ‘pogs’ for the game. In the early 1990s, the game eventually spread to the continental United States and became widely popular.  

Scope and Content 

This collection has one binder with 48 pages of realia. There are too many to list, the graphics the milk caps have are vast. Some of them include The Tick (and Arthur), The Simpsons, The Family Circus, X-Men, Swan Princess, Power Rangers, animals, food, random quips, pog-specific quotes, Star Wars, Disney, sports, DC Comics, Nintendo, Sonic the Hedgehog, Looney Toons, geography and cities, cars, Star Trek, and many other graphics.  

Inventory

For a detailed inventory of this collection, see the POGs Collection finding aid in our Special Collections Finding Aid database.

How to Use the BPCL & What to Bring With You

  • BPCL's hours are more limited than the main floor, but we're open late on Monday and Tuesday.
  • We're an archive/repository, so most of our materials cannot be checked out.
  • Most of our collection is not open for browsing. You need to request materials at our reference desk with your university ID or a photo ID. 
  • The reference collection is open for browsing! It's one of the best places to get started with popular culture research.
  • We have a copier and a scanner available for copying/scanning materials that cannot be checked out.  There is a fee for copying, but scanning is free.