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Alan Rypinski, the marketing maven who made Armor All a household name, is banking he'll do the same for a vastly different product: wafer-like, cardboard milk caps kids flip, slam, collect, and so far, can't seem to get enough of. Through his company, dubbed World POG Federation, Rypinski plans to parlay the 72-year-old Hawaiian game of POG into a $500 million business in the next three years to become the third-largest toy company, behind $2-billion-plus Mattel and Hasbro. Now in its second year, WPF's worldwide sales have jumped to an estimated $175 million from $22 million recorded between April and December 1994.
If you're from the roughly 40% of the country that hasn't gone POG wild yet--say tuned. By Christmas, the craze that started in Hawaii, moved to California and spread east is expect to slam its way across the United States and into your neighborhood, aided by an array of merchandise: POG board games from Milton Bradley, a Mattel POG Fun Barbie sporting PGO earrings and her own five collector POG disks, POG stocking-stuffer promotions and, possibly, LA Gear POG shoes and a national POG animated kids TV show based on POGman, the toothy, orange-haired creation who serves WPF spokescreature.
Rypinski runs each of the eight WPF divisions as a separate profit center. Corporate, retail, and international divisions have been the powerhouses. Retail's charge is to broaden POG packages beyond toy stores to department stores, convenience stores, gift and hobby shops, and other non-traditional outlets. To date, POG is licensed for sale in 17 countries, but all of the creative and art design is done in the U.S. to maintain control, Rypinski says.
The corporate and institutional division sells to corporations, and helps them develop POG promotions. Disneyland gave away 300,000 POGs for a Spring Break promotion (collector's note: those POGs are now worth some $30 apiece); 5 million POGs were distributed during a two-month promotion with Coca-Cola and California's Del Taco. A series of Wayne Gretzky POGs was one of Coke Canada's most successful promotions; the White House gave POGs...