POGs: The Hawaiian “Milk Cap” Game

Starting as a simple math game created by a teacher in Oahu, POGs slowly evolved into a pop culture sensation. In the early 90s,  Blossom Galbiso (the math teacher in question), took inspiration from the Japanese game of Menko but adapted the game pieces using classic milk bottle caps from Haleakala Dairy. However, the game wasn’t only used as entertainment, but also as an advertisement.  In the early 1970s, Haleakala Dairy was ready to roll out a new juice with passion fruit, orange, and guava juices; POG for short. But, the company needed some way to advertise POG. Fortunately for Haleakala Dairy, the game Blossom Galbiso introduced was gaining popularity throughout Hawaii, so popular, that even though milk caps weren’t being used the company was still being asked for them. Haleakala Dairy took advantage of this situation and produced milk caps to advertise their new products. To appeal to the children, a marketer within Haleakala Dairy named Charles Nalepa created a marketing campaign that doesn’t only involve plastering the name and logo of the new product onto milk covers, but also the creation of a whole new mascot just for the juice. Named the “Poglodyte,” Napela along with a Walt Disney Co. designer worked together to create the POG character, a sun-shaped dwarf creature with skinny arms and legs very similar to Mickey. Later on, when POGs were popularized outside of Hawaii, the character underwent a design change by Mitch Shauer, but, ultimately the original design was used the most. 

POGs are a piece of Hawaiian history that not a lot of people know about, despite being mainstream. There’s a huge domino effect that started with a school teacher and then ended with a game rooted in pop culture. But, most importantly, from a design standpoint, a lot of companies took advantage of the popular game to advertise to their consumers uniquely, making new characters and designs to market their products even more. POGs innovated with packaging and marketing design while simultaneously opening up Hawaii to the world through popular culture. 

Works Cited: 

Fiedler, Jennifer. “The Juicy History of Pog.” Imbibe Magazine, 31 Aug. 2022, imbibemagazine.com/the-history-of-pog-juice/.

Museum, Makawao. “The Strange History of Pogs.” Makawao History Museum, Makawao History Museum, 30 July 2020, www.makawaomuseum.org/blog/the-strange-history-of-pogs.

“Nalepa, 76, Popularized Pog.” Mauinews.Com, Maui News, 12 Aug. 2014, www.mauinews.com/news/local-news/2014/08/nalepa-76-popularized-pog/. 

Taylor Sagario @_typedbytaylor