Life Hackery

If you grew up in the 1990s, you may be familiar with that wonderful game called POG. Kids of all ages flipped POG with heavy plastic slammers, to pass the time away, especially during class breaks. POG became so popular that some schools banned the game, although many people still collected the cardboard milk caps and commemorative slammers.

With the introduction of computer games and hand-held consoles, POG chips and slammers have slowly gathered dust and mold. You may even have some POG chops lying around somewhere in your room, waiting for the right time to be played or to be turned into something useful. Before you throw those chips away, here are five great ways to have fun with those old cardboard milk caps.

1. POG Poker Chips

You may decide to hold poker night at your house, but you realize you don’t have poker chips. You don’t need to go to a novelty goods store at nine in the evening just to buy a 300-piece casino token set for a night at the kitchen table. If you have 300 old POG chips hanging around, you can use them as tokens. You may need to check if you have rare, collectible POG chips, because it’s a shame to have to write dollar values at the reverse side. You can use these collectibles as poker chips over and over again.

2. POG Musical Instruments

You can use old POG chips as musical instruments:

• To make a big percussion rattle, dump 20 or so POG chips in an empty plastic gallon bottle.
• To make a guitar pick, glue a couple of POG caps together. After the glue has dried, cut a triangle big enough to serve as a guitar pick.
• To make a tambourine, pierce holes at the center of some soda bottle caps and old POG chips. Thread a bottle cap into a length of thick-gauge wire, and follow it up with a POG chip. Repeat the process until you have enough bottle caps and POG chips to make a cool-sounding tambourine.
• Tape a POG milk cap at the center of each piece of your drum set (except the cymbals) to give your drums a low, crisp-sounding beat.
• To make a scratch pad out of POG chips, glue a row of the chips on the body of the guitar, right below the dead string. Fill in the gaps with cut pieces of POG chips.
• You can also use POG chips to decorate the body of your acoustic or electric guitar.

With enough chips, you can fit an entire band with custom musical instruments and aids with stuff made from POG.

3. POG Shooting Targets

Few things can let go of pent-up aggression as well as recreational shooting. In the Old West, sharpshooting cowboys made names for themselves by shooting a hole at the center of a silver dollar thrown in the air. You can try this trick with a pellet gun, or if you’re really confident about your shooting ability, you can use a blank bullet. POG chips can also help you work on your accuracy and shooting skills.

If you’re not comfortable or confident with holding a real gun, you can use a lot of things to shoot down POG targets, like blow darts, spit-wad launchers, or a slingshot. Another neat trick you can pull off is to hit a POG chip thrown into the air with another POG chip or a slammer. Just make sure that everyone is out of the way when you pull off this trick.

4. POG Stoppers

You can use POG chips to make sure that your appliance is level. POG chips are also a great way to prevent home appliances from ruining your carpet or your floor. All you need to do is glue a couple of POG discs on the bottom of a heavy appliance (like a refrigerator or a dishwasher) whenever you have to move it. You can also glue POG under the legs of kitchen chairs and dining tables.

5. POG… The Way It’s Meant To Be

Perhaps the best way to make good use of old POG chips is to play with them as you did back in the 1990s. Relive your childhood days by stacking up POG chips, and then flipping them over with a powerful, well-placed shot of a plastic or metal slammer. You can stack POG chips as low as you want, or as high as you want. You may find yourself so good with POG slamming that you can join international tournaments, like the ones held by the World POG Federation.

Make no mistake about it — you can add a touch of the 1990s in your life with these fun, useful, and very versatile cardboard milk caps.