Today I would like to talk to you about two things. Two things that should have never been brought together, but for some ungodly reason... they were. These two things are Ping-Pong (the game) and Pigs (the farm animal, not cops). Combining a sport (well Ping-Pong is kind of a sport isn't it?) with an animal that is the very personification of "sloth" just doesn't make sense to me. Exactly how the two were combined is what is really disturbing. But first, allow me to talk about Ping-Pong and Pigs separately before we delve into the hellish hybrid known as PIG PONG.

Ping-Pong (also called "Table Tennis" by elitist schlubs who eat Fig Newtons and caviar all day long) has been around for quite a while, dating back to the late 1800's. It has been an event in the Olympics since 1988, but let's be realistic... who watches the Olympics anymore? Well sure, watching someone fail miserably after they have trained their entire lives for one single defining moment in the Olympics can be quite amusing. But other than that, most people these days would rather watch Battle Bots. (Battle Bots, for those of you who don't know, is a shitty show on Comedy Central; a station which is quickly becoming devoid of any "comedy" whatsoever). 

"It's not a 'cookie', it's a Fig Newton. And it's not 'Ping-Pong', it's Table Tennis!
Now Wadsworth, draw me a hot bath and fix me a cup of tea..."

In my early teenage years, my parents decided to get a Ping-Pong table. Although I would have preferred air hockey, the thought of having something to do in my house other than praying for death got me fairly excited. So I got home from school one day and there it was, all assembled and ready to go. There was a huge gap in the middle of the table because it wasn't assembled properly, but we were able to play anyway.

Now I don't know what it is about Ping-Pong, but that game has the ability to make even the most calm and collected people extremely violent. I would hit the Ping-Pong ball as hard as I could just for kicks... I mean, it was a light ball and it couldn't hurt anybody right? The thought of being able to pound the hell out of a little ball without breaking anything or getting in trouble was very appealing at the time.

So one day, I'm playing Ping-Pong against my mom. She was pretty damned good at the game too, so we were really playing aggressively. Being a cocky little bastard, I decided I would slam the hell out of the ball with the paddle. Little did I know that one of the most horrific moments in my life was about to occur.

I swung at the ball and it went flying across the room, along with the top portion of my paddle! The paddle went flying DIRECTLY into my mom's THROAT! She collapsed to the ground and gasped for air. She was trying to say that she couldn't breathe. I yelled as loud as I could "Call 911! Mom got hit in the throat with a Ping-Pong paddle!". Her throat was very swollen, but after she got over the initial shock of the situation, she was able to breathe a little better. It was still pretty sore for a few days, but she was lucky to have survived at all. I'm sure many people have died in Ping-Pong competitions due to a shattered throat injury.

German Ping-Pong legend Jorg Rosskopf prepares to kill his mom.

So yeah, Ping-Pong almost made me kill my mom. The next time someone says that video games cause violence in youth, you just tell them that Ping-Pong almost made me kill my mom! That'll shut 'em up once 'n for all.

Actually, it turned out that I didn't loose grip of the paddle, but instead it broke off from the damned handle! It was glued together poorly by the manufacturer, and looking back on it, I should have sued their asses so I could be rich and I wouldn't have to spend my time writing stupid pieces for this site. Damn!

Now let's turn to pigs.

Sadly, this movie was in the "employee pics" section
at an old video store that I used to work at. Kill me.

Pigs. Ah yes pigs. So much to say about pigs. Where to begin... Actually, screw that, I don't feel like talking about pigs. They're dirty, they roll around in the mud, they smell bad, and they eat too much. Why the fuck would I want to talk about pigs? I don't even like pork, so I can't even say that they're a good food source. So screw it.

Back in the 80's, some genius at Milton Bradley decided that combining the game of Ping-Pong with Pigs and calling it PIG PONG would be a hit with the kids. And the slogan for this genius game: "The Fast-Action Tabletop Game With A Pig-Powered Puff Ball!". With a slogan like that, the game was sure to do well with kids.

Trust me, if you were playing the game, you wouldn't look nearly
as happy as the kids on the box do. You'd probably be crying that your
parents didn't buy you that Nintendo system for Christmas instead.

So what was the idea behind Pig Pong? Well if you ask me, the idea was to remove any element of fun and/or skill from the game of Ping-Pong and replace it with pigs. Not only that, but instead of the cool bouncing sound of a Ping-Pong ball, you get a friggin' PUFF BALL! So where do the pigs come in? Man, I gotta tell ya, I feel sorry for 'em...

Brand new pigs without their sticker eyes applied, thus hiding
them from the horrors that they would soon have to face.

I'll ignore the fact that they're colored like the hippos from "Hungry Hippos" (a game far superior to Pig Pong) because these pigs really had it bad. The pigs came new in the box assuming that they were going to lead happy pig lives in which they got to roll around in the mud, eat slop, and stink all day long. They had no idea that they were born into a world so hellish that words cannot even begin to describe the agony they would soon have to endure.

The pigs role in the game Pig Pong is to have all their air crushed out of them in order to blow the "puff ball" to the other side of the net. So instead of paddles that could potentially kill your mom, you got to squeeze the life out of pigs just to blow a puff ball around for a little while. And don't forget, before you start the game you have to say the magic words "Ready, set, Oink!!!" (or at least that's what the instructions say). And you want proof that the pigs were in agony? Fine:

"KILL US! PLEASE KILL US NOW! END THE PAIN! END THE PAIN!"

Just look at them. One of the main problems with this game is that you had to apply "sticker eyes" on the pigs when you took 'em out of the box. It probably would have been better to just leave them blind so they wouldn't have to see the agony of their pig brethren as they were crushed to death. You see, within a week or so of playing Pig Pong constantly, the glue on the sticker eyes would start to wear off. This made it so their eyes would wrinkle up and often fall off. And there was no "1-800-NEW-EYES" Pig Pong Hotline for us to call. If we wanted new pig eyes, we had to buy a whole new Pig Pong game! So not only did they have the life squeezed out of them, but they were squeezed so hard that their piggy eyes burst from their ocular cavities. Nice life.

note: When their sticker eyes wore off, the pigs could also be held under water and then used as "Ultra Piggy Water Guns" as we used to call them. Actually, I never called them that, but I'll be damned if it doesn't sound cool now.

The Puff Ball (pre-assembly).

And then there's the puff ball. Talk about a PIECE OF SHIT. Just look at it! It was basically cheap styrofoam packaging materials with little cuts in it. And the ball would never keep its shape. It would eventually lose its structural stability (most likely from being stomped on during a fit of child rage) and then return to the original piece-of-shit-styrofoam-packaging-material form from which it came.

Although the game isn't being made anymore (gee, I wonder why!) you can still find Pig Pong on eBay from time to time for about 5 bux or less. So if torturing colorful pigs is up your alley, pick up the game known as Pig Pong. If the possibility of killing your opponent by accidentally lodging a poorly constructed paddle in his/her throat is up your alley, buy an overpriced Ping-Pong set. If neither of these things are up your alley, congrats, you actually have a life.

Yeah right, who are we kidding... you did just read this article after all.

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