Top Ten Toys of Yesterday: 1990s

As a new Century was preparing to begin, with huge advances in just about everything, including artificial intelligence, two of the most popular toys of the 90s were cardboard discs and water guns! Japan gave us a couple of our favorites and of course, most of the rest were highly advanced and revolutionary in nature.
Top Ten Toys of Yesterday: 1990s:

1. Pogs

Pogs are small cardboard discs with some type of printing, artwork or picture on one side. Children buy and collect these discs individually or as a grouping and bring their own personal stash to the game. Besides building their own stash of Pogs, every child wanted to own the coolest Slammers, a larger and heavier disc used in game play. These would typically be plastic discs with either an interesting design or printed side.

The play of the game was for each player to place an equal number of Pogs onto the playing surface. Those Pogs were mixed together and stacked upside down, one on top of the other. Each player would take the Slammer and "slam" it down on the stack. Of the Pogs that player was able to knock off the stack, they would "win" the ones which landed face up. The next player would take their turn and game play would continue until all Pogs had been "won." The winner of the game was the person who "won" the most Pogs. The reason for the notation on the word "win/won" is to acknowledge that many children did not play "for keeps," in other words, each child would leave with the same Pogs they brought to the game.

I threw a Pog Tournament for my oldest daughter's birthday one year. Pogs were so huge that year that twenty-five kids came to the party. I supplied all the Pogs and the children got to keep all the Pogs they won during the tournament. Besides purchasing a wide variety of commercial Pogs, I had a bunch printed with a birthday wish for my daughter. I bought two "Official Pog Tournament Mats," which were the official playing surface for tournaments. At the end of the day, my daughter and the child who won the tournament got to each keep one of the mats. The party was a great success and began my career of having to come up with interesting party themes year after year.