Slam Time
How Pogs Captured Millions of Kids and Billions of Dollars in the 1990s
In 1993, American playgrounds underwent a curious transformation. Amid the expected scenes of jump rope, basketball, and tag, circles of intensely focused children began to appear, hunched over small stacks of cardboard discs. With specialized metal or plastic "slammers" in hand, they took turns striking these piles, celebrating wildly when discs flipped over, and occasionally erupting into heated disputes about who rightfully owned what.
This was the Pog phenomenon—a remarkably simple game involving small cardboard discs that would briefly dominate youth culture, generate hundreds of millions in revenue, trigger school bans across the country, and then vanish almost as quickly as it appeared. The rise and fall of Pogs offers a fascinating case study in 1990s pre-internet fad economics, schoolyard social currency, and adult panic over children's culture.
