Back in the good old days of my lost childhood, there was a game called POG. It was the latest craze among kids. The mascot was this hairy little dude with stick legs and he was pretty damn ugly, and the song in the commercials went like...
"POG, POG, POG IS THE WORD, POG POG POG, POG IS THE WORD..."...and pretty much that was the commercials. When POG became popular in 1994, it was very improved. It had different pictures. In the beginning of POG's day, there were different types of POG. There was POG Classic (a cheaper version of POG, with those 50's drawings of people eating pork and doing stuff, and for some reason, it had a staple in each one), and there was regular pog, which was a smooth cardboard disc with a cartoonish design on it. They would do crazy designs like "Robo POG" or anything crazy, it didn't matter.
You see, POG was like a really popular game, but it was also a collector's game. If you had every POG there was, you could brag about it.
So Milton Bradley set the stage for yet another popular kiddie fad. And I say fad, because not only is it not played or produced anymore, it was quickly banned in many public schools. Why? Well, like Pseudo_Intellectual said how POG is played, I can elaborate a bit more. You had a POG which had a special nickname, called a "Slammer". The cheap ones were basic POG slammers, about 2 times the thickness of a basic POG disc, but PLASTIC. There were also special slammers that were made of metal, but same thickness. There were even ULTRA-THICK brass slammers! (Made winning a lot easier) The traditional way of playing is put a pile of POGS upside down, and put the slammer on the tips of your fingers, and very VERY quickly, you SLAM it down on the pile, hoping to flip some over.
The rules were that 2 people minimum could play, and I think it was mostly kept to that. They would both put in an equal share of POGS into the same pile, and if one person flipped some over, he got to keep them (if you were playing for keeps).
Now, why was it banned again? I think it was quite big in the news, but I think I can explain why my school banned it. You see, the kids didn't really go on the playground or do anything else anymore. They sat on the pavement and played all recess. However, since this was a game of gambling among young, immature children, it became violent. I remember my friend had a thick brass slammer slammed down on his finger, and he got a purple blister. One time I was pretty emotional (hey, I was a kid!), so I said "scramble!" threw em out, everyone took them, and I cried...heh it's a funny memory. But the teachers banned it because of the violence involved. I still have the POG board game (just a board for playing POGS, with some POGS in it), and it is a reminder of what I did when I was a kid.
Yup.