Pogs are a totem to 90s culture as the Rubik’s Cube was to the 80s … except no one actually ever played pogs. They were a thing you collect, a surface that was good for licensing popular characters onto, with the goal of eventually playing a game where you, I don’t know, slam pogs and win pogs, as I remember it. Remember Alf? He came back in pog form! Brooklyn has certainly built up a reputation of being a place where everyone can live out their dreams of nostalgia — good bad and horrifying — from their youth, from cereal bars to kickball to saturday morning cartoon parties.
It was only a matter of time before a tsunami of nostalgia brought with it a place dedicated to pogs, the fad that never quite was: a store called Brooklyn Pogs in East Williamsburg says it’s holding a grand opening of New York City’s ONLY pogs emporium on Aug. 31. Luckily, it’s almost certainly a joke. Millennials, you’ve been blinded once again by your love of pogs. [UPDATE 9/1: The store posted this photo, officially confirming it as a joke].
The “store” (which we first read about on Reddit) advertises itself as “a pog store in Brooklyn where pog enthusiasts can browse, purchase, sell, trade, and most importantly, PLAY pogs! There’s an amazing world of pogs out there, with tons of rare and unique sets that are perfect for collectors. Pogs are BACK!”
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Barring the fact that the there is no such thing as “pog enthusiasts,” no address is listed on the website, and the address listed on the Facebook page is a residential address on a totally residential block. We searched the business license database and found no record of Brooklyn Pogs (or any pogs-related business, for that matter. Sorry, pog enthusiasts). An email sent to the address listed on the Facebook page bounced back; the domain name was registered anonymously through a third party.
The Facebook page contains statements like “Come to the store and check out the rest of our pathetic pogs!” and the site contains goofy 90s kids jokes like teasing marathons of Step by Step and charging for bowl/spoon rental when you buy some cereal.
The world is full of fake businesses that exist to troll the stereotypes people have about Brooklyn/millennials, so if this is a big prank, we’ll happily tip our hats to this crew for finally Going There with pogs (and already tricking some outlets into covering it).
There is nothing inherently wrong with nostalgia or wanting to bring back stuff from our youths, but we hope this fake store exists to point out that if we don’t let go of our 90s obsessions now, we’re doomed to be as bad as our parents, whose Baby Boomer cultural hegemony has ruled with an iron fist for decades.
But if it does turn out to be real, go ahead and enjoy it, and while you’re there, please take your finest, heaviest pog and slam it directly into my eyelids forever.
At least I’ll be thinking of this all day: