Robot Claw

A few weeks ago I purchased this in an antique store:

A sealed box of Star Trek: TNG ‘Stardisc coins’! Released in 1994, this was a product I don’t remember but likely would have ignored at the time since ‘stardisc coin’ is just another synonym for ‘Pog’. Yes, this is a box of Star Trek Pogs!

The box contained 36 packs, each of which has six Pogs. I paid $21.75 for the box, or $0.10 per Pog. Would you have bought it?

The packs promise much: “A must for the true Trekker”! Note also the spelling of ‘colour’ and the tease of rare gold versions. I tore open the first pack with some dread…

Each pack contains three cards, each of which has two Pogs. Immediately this seems to be a second-rate product, since you need to punch the Pogs out yourself. This is tedious, and even after opening only two packs I hardly wanted to start.

Each pack also includes a checklist and instructions on how to play a ‘game’ with the discs. These are of course laughable, and I very much doubt the writer ever believed anyone would play it.

The checklist is important since the Pogs themselves don’t have any name on the back, which is unusual since they are uniquely printed (with a number) so they could have easily added the name. Also it’s worth mentioning that the quality control wasn’t great, and more than a few of the ones in my packs were damaged:

The back of the wrapper includes this laughable statement:

At a 1/72 rate, I had a 50% chance of opening the gold Pogs, so I was surprised that I got them in only my third pack! Here they are:

At this point you’re noticing that each card contains two Pogs, which means that for the set of 60 there’s only actually 30 unique cards (since the same two are always on the same card). So in the box of 36 packs, there are 108 cards which could – in theory – net more than three full sets. These statistics seem to hold up, since I was able to complete the set in half the packs, and I completed a good quality (no damaged Pogs) set in about 2/3rds of the packs:

This is a terrible product. The print quality is high, but who wanted these? No one ever played the game with them, and ‘collectors’ would have just put them in a box and forgotten about them immediately. They’re just a ‘thing’ that has no use or even purpose, manufactured and sold simply to profit from that bizarre Pog craze of 30 years ago.

I’ve got a few unopened packs left. If you want one let me know. Even if you don’t, maybe I’ll send you one anyway 🙂