If you were a ‘90s kid, there is one thing you’re probably certain of, and that is that it was one heck of a time for weird toys. Who remembers Maximum Sweat WWE figures or the burnt hair smell of baking your own Creepy Crawlers? But maybe the hardest plaything to explain to anyone who wasn’t there is Pogs. Don't believe me? Well, watch the cast of the upcoming thriller, The Housemaid, try to explain the novelty of the collectible cardboard pieces to Sydney Sweeney.
In a new video posted to ET's Instagram, featuring a roundtable with the movie’s ensemble, what starts as light nostalgia quickly spirals when Amanda Seyfried casually asks the group, “Did you guys ever have Pogs?” Sweeney, without hesitation, responds with the most devastating sentence imaginable: “What are pogs?” What follows is a slow, hilarious unraveling as Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar attempt to explain a phenomenon that absolutely does not survive contact with modern logic. Check out the video in full below.
The explanation starts with confidence and almost immediately unravels. Sklenar dives in first, doing his best to make pogs sound like a real thing that actually existed:
They came in a tube, like a cylindrical tube, and they were like discs. Little discs…And then there was a master pog, they were made out of like a thin wood, and then there was a master pog, that was like a heavy metal…
Watching Amanda Seyfried alongside him is half the fun. You can practically see her scrolling through old memory files, even gesturing in midair as if a pog might magically reappear in her hand. She jumps in to help and somehow makes things worse, adding:
Like rubber discs…Didn’t they [master Pog] have rubber around them?
At no point does this help. But if you want what might be the most ’90s introduction imaginable — outside of some of the best movies streaming from the era — do yourself a favor and check out the 1995 Pog Game commercial below.
The whole exchange feels like listening to someone describe a dream they had after too much sugar. Sydney Sweeney, to her credit, doesn’t laugh or interrupt. She listens, wide-eyed and visibly processing, before quietly reaching the only reasonable conclusion: this may require Google.
As a ’90s kid, I can only say this: Pogs made sense at the time. You really did have to be there. And honestly, for the effort alone, the stars of The Housemaid deserve a holographic Lisa Frank sticker or a cold Surge.
If you’re feeling ancient after the Pogs discourse, here’s the good news: The Housemaid is about to give you something very current to be excited about. The Paul Feig book-to-screen adaptation of Freida McFadden’s 2022 novel hits the 2025 movie calendar on December 19, with Sweeney playing Millie, a live-in housekeeper who takes a job with Seyfried’s Nina and quickly realizes the house is basically one big red flag with throw pillows.
Early Housemaid reviews suggest the film leans hard into the “campy thriller” lane, which somehow circles things right back to very strong ’90s energy. Not every critic is fully on board, but the consensus seems to be that you should come for the twists and stay for Seyfried and Sweeney clearly having the time of their lives. I couldn’t be more excited — even if you tried to bribe me with a full set of rare Saddam Gasman Pogs. They are very rare. You'll just have to trust me...
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