<i> Pog </i> or <i> Trov--</i> Children Are Flipping Over It : Craze: The game, played with cardboard milk caps, originated in Hawaii. Some teachers are concerned about the passion it generates at school.

Forget soccer, and football and Nintendo. The latest craze sweeping Orange County is Pog, a Hawaiian-based game blazing the comeback trail.

It is a “street” game like marbles, but played with decorated cardboard milk caps. Kids love it, teachers are wary of it, but parents consider it a good game that keeps their children out of trouble.

If nothing else, its rising popularity in Orange County--where a pog tournament was held Saturday--is an example of supply and demand economics as old-fashioned as the game itself.

One day last winter, Orange stockbroker Bill Hodson became curious about the game, did some research, and decided to import it to the mainland.

He took it to some kids in his neighborhood--among them Dustin Montgomery, 11, and Robert Bobleaga, 13--and asked them to try it out. Meanwhile, a friend of Hodson’s went to a Newport Beach doughnut shop and passed out game samples to a few others, including 11-year-old Chris Pope.

Soon, they were introducing the game to their friends.

“Oh God, this is cool. And look at the neat pictures on the things,” Pope remembers thinking. “It’s something that catches on with kids. . . . If you go on our playground, all you hear is ‘klink klink, klink klink, klink klink,’ ” Pope added, imitating the sound of the cardboard chips landing on the pavement.

Hodson also persuaded a Newport Beach outdoor sports shop to sell the game. Soon, the shop owner’s son took it to his school, where friends took it to their neighborhoods.

On Saturday, four months after being introduced to the game, Montgomery, Bobleaga, Pope and about three dozen others gathered on the top level of the Lido Marina Village parking garage for a pog tournament. Last week, more than 100 players met in Buena Park.

Locally, the game is called Trov, short for treasure trove, and the trademark for the line of pog pieces developed by Hodson. Baseball card companies and others are also promoting the game, making the pog collectors’ items as well as game pieces.

Using a plastic pog called a “slammer” or “kini,” the object of the two-player game is to see which player can turn over the most cardboard pogs in a stack of 11. With the kini on their index and middle fingers, players forcefully turn their wrists to slam the kini onto the stack of chips. If the pogs land face down, the player scores points.

“Street” rules can be negotiated each time opponents meet. For example, opponents can play for “keeps” and risk losing some of the better pogs from their collections.

Hodson concedes that school officials became concerned when the game reached fever pitch on the playgrounds near the end of the spring semester.

But he said he tries to persuade teachers that the game can be an educational tool, such as using the chips as one would use flash cards. Also, he added, game tournaments might make make fund-raisers.

Having watched her sons--Steven, 9, and Paul, 6--learn the game and even fight over it, Newport Beach resident Cathy Bitetti said it has taught them how to compete fairly.

“It teaches them how to give something up” when they play for ‘keeps’ “and be a good sport,” Bitetti said.

During a practice game, her son’s competitiveness was tested when Laura Cummings, 8, threw down a kini and flipped four pogs to win the round.

“It was my third time beating him,” Cummings said with a smile. She had just learned to play a week ago.

Cummings was also on her way to spreading the game even more. On vacation in Newport Beach, she said she hoped to return home to Texas with her own set of pogs.