Brief History of Poggers

[jojosue]

I've noticed that some people know little to nothing about this meme so I've decided to do some research and explain it briefly for those who are confused. i'll try to keep it short but the meme has a lot of history and background needed to fully understand it so bare with me.

CHAPTER I: Milk Caps

So way back when milk used to be sold in glass bottles, the bottles would have these little thin cardboard caps attached to them. People (mainly kids) would collect these caps and play a game with them.

I think the game was just called Milk Caps but the way you played was pretty simple. You and your friends would grab all the milk caps, except for one, and stack them up with all the caps facing down. You would then use the milk cap you kept and slam the stack from the top causing the milk cap tower to fall and spread out. The cap you used to slam the tower was known as a slammer. You would then keep all of the milk caps that fell face up and the rest of the downward facing caps would be stacked up again for the next player. You would repeat this until there were no more caps left and the person with the most caps would win.

CHAPTER II: POG
Eventually, milk stopped being sold through glass bottle and instead started being sold through paper or plastic container. Because of this change, the game was no longer as popular anymore since kids could no longer acquire the caps used to play. However, there was a sort of revival in the game around the 90's thanks in largely to a company called POG.

POG (which stood for Passion Orange Guava) started selling juice in plastic bottles but the bottle caps had the little thin cardboard caps that milk bottles used to have. The game became EXTREMELY popular and EVERYONE was playing this game. It got so popular that schools started banning them. Apparently, a guidance school teacher on Oahu’s North Shore, decided to teach her students this game which spawned the beginning of the POG game craze.

POG saw the popularity of the game and started selling the caps individually with different designs. The game then became synonyms with the company, so the game (as well as the caps) started to be known as POG or POGS.

CHAPTER III: Gootecks and the Pogchamp Emote
I won't go into who Gootecks is but I will just say that he was (and still is) a very well known competitive Street Fighter player and one of the founders of Cross Counter TV (the other being his friend Mike Ross). In 2010, Gootecks and Mike Ross uploaded a video blooper.

At 2:09 you can see Gootecks do the famous POGCHAMP face. When the video was first uploaded people went crazy over the face and started using it as an emote to express shock or hype, however it was not called "pogchamp" or "poggers" yet. The face started to gain popularity but there was no consensus as to what to call the face. It wasn't until a year later where both Gootecks and Mike Ross uploaded a promo video for the Mad Catz Fighting Stick.

This is where EVERYTHING ties in together. In the video Gootecks and Mike Ross start playing the POG game but at the end Gootecks uses the actual fight stick to knock over the tower. As a joke they say you can use the product to win POG tournaments and at 1:49 Gootecks says "Pogchampions." From then on the emote started being known as "Pogchampion" or more commonly "Pogchamp" and later abbreviated to just "Poggers." Eventually the emote was so popular that it was implemented into Twitch where people could now post the face in the chat for hype. Can we get some poggers in chat?

 

[Gilburrito]

I tried explaining this once, but I think Mr_Ganondorf still thinks it just means "play of the game"

 

[GlitchManMax]

How does this factor into the PCU (pog cinematic universe) ?