Milkcaps - "The game you collect"
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
What is a Milkcap?
Back in the 1920's milk bottles instead of having a foil covering like now-a-days, they
had a round disc of card which was waxed and fixed to the top. Some dairies would
place designs on the caps, and children collected them and came up with games to
play with their caps.
What games were played with the caps?
The main game which took off involved stacking a pile of the caps up, and the people
playing would take turns hitting the stack with another cap and try to flip caps over, if
you flip over caps you would take them away from the stack and rebuild the stack.
The game continues until all the caps are flipped over, the winner is the person who
has got the most caps, and all the caps are returned to their rightful owners. There is
another version called "playing for keeps" where by you can keep all the caps you flip
over. There were several different versions that people play but the list is to long too
describe here.
What happened next?
After a few years the game died out, but in the 1970s Haleakala Dairy invented a new
brand name for Milkcaps by putting the name of their tropical fruit drink called
Passion fruit-Orange-Guava or POG for short. The POG brand eventually went on to
become the most popular of all the Milkcaps. Collecting and playing with POGs did
not become popular until a teacher at a Hawaiian school saw children at play time
playing rough games and thought, "There must be a better game children could play",
and she remembered back to her childhood when she would play with Milkcaps, so
she
went to the Haleakala dairy and managed to get hold of four tubes of Milkcaps and
introduced them to the school. The children loved them and came up with new games
and strategies, and the Milkcaps revival began.
In 1993 Alan F. Rypinski, the founder of Amrmor All Corporation purchased the
international POG trademark and the POG drink from the Haleakala Dairy and set up
the WPF (World POG Federation) and introduced the game to the world as the "Old
Fashioned Game of the Future the Game You Collect." The game was played in the
same way except now a Slammer or a Kini was used to hit the Milkcaps instead of
another Milkcap, these were made of metal or plastic and where the same size as a
normal Milkcap except it was twice as thick. And so it took off with a load of extra
merchandise, official game mats, equipment to make your own POGs and tons of
different series to collect, as well as the usual rip-offs which were often cheap and
flimsy and badly designed.
There were two types of POGs available from the WPF; the designer POGs and the
Classic POGs. The Designer POGs were the most common one found, they are a fun
Milkcap look-alike with lots of colours and shiny foil treatment printed on the front
and back, and a majority of the designer POGs were numbered. The classic POGs are
the authentic POG Milkcap these are basically the same as the ones found on the top
of milk bottles. They can be identified as they have a staple, a thumb tab and a
paraffin wax coating on the back, they are also only in two colours.
If they were so popular why have I not seen any in shops?
This is because like all crazes or fads they died out, but ironically they were killed off by the
thing that brought them about, school. Even more ironically it was because they were
causing fights in the playgrounds. People would be playing happily and then when the
game was finished people would argue over whether they were playing "for keeps" or
not and fights broke out. So schools banned them and so with nowhere to meet and
play with POGs people forgot about them, and so shops stopped selling them and
craze was over.
A glossary of terms used by players of POG
Big Kahuna "The Man" who wins all matches and never smiles. Cool dude.Black Widow When a slammer hits the stack and sticks to the top of the
stack. "The stack is stung." The slamming player wins the entire stack.
Boff When a player misses the stack completely.
Con Cap Rip-off cap. "Just a disc." With unlicensed characters or without
limited edition status because there is no manufacturer's name and no numbering with
a collector card.
Criss Cross Players agree to hold the slammer in a pinching fashion, with
the middle finger crossed over the index finger.
Disc Jockey/Seller Owner of thousands of unlicensed discs.
Earthquake When a slamming player's hand hits the stack. Not legal.
Full Hood Lift Stack of 11 flips 360 degrees, and nothing lands facedown.
Granny POG When a player wants to add more POG milkcaps to the stack in
order to get better leverage to slam. He or she can add, but you cannot take away once
you have added.
Gray Matter Classic "No Keeps" matches with a special milkcap selected as
a prize.
Wannabe Any disc that is either a fake milkcap or carries no licensed
character. Definitely not a POG milkcap. Usually found in "bulk" purchases or bags
of 100 or more for a low price.
