Pogs & Pokémon

Back in my day, in Canada at least, we were obsessed with Pokémon cards; the generation before us with Pogs – personally I loved them both.

While sitting in a four-seat section on the bus from Kaisermühlen to Harrargasse, an army of little girls surrounds me on the remaining seats, also occupying the adjacent four-seat section. Instead of pulling out a deck of Pokémon cards or a container of Pogs, they all withdrew a magazine and at least a hand full of paper-thick, sharp-edged cards from inside their feverishly pink backpacks.

Being "culturally aware," I knew what little girls were blown away by at a global scale: Hannah Montana. The rock star by night, totally normal high school girl by day is plastered on literally everything they own, so it is safe they are hooked.

Unfortunately, unlike the Pogs and Pokémon, that I remember as harmless, the Hannah Montana epidemic is exploiting these little girls, leeching their every last penny from their Hannah Montana wallets.

Entertainment for them is placing these cards, which turn out to be stickers, on to empty rectangles. This way they can find out what happened to Hannah, as the stickers are actually sentences or pictures about Hannah missing from the magazine.

Evidently, the naïve little girls think they are helping Hannah solve something or keep her hidden identity safe, but actually they help Disney fill their wallets with hard earned money. I wonder if this is what Walt had set out to do, or more importantly if he’s stirring in has Hannah Montana grave.

- Dániel Glöckler