Pogo stick
A pogo stick is a device, usually considered a children's toy, used for hopping up and down. It is said to have first been patented by George Hansburg in 1919 [1]. It consists of a pole with a T-bar handle at one end, and spring-loaded footpads on the other.
The pole juts down some distance below the footpads and has a rubber cover at the bottom end for traction. The operator places his feet on the footpads while balancing on the pole, then jumps or presses down on the footpads to compress the spring. When the spring has been fully compressed, the operator lifts his weight aided by the recoil of the spring and the pogo-stick; and hops several inches or even feet into the air. This process is repeated to create a hopping action. The pogo stick can be steered, with some difficulty, by shifting one's weight; and becomes an interesting form of locomotion.
Later, improvements on this concept have been made, including the Vurtego, Flybar, and BowGo (not yet on the market), which allow operators to jump much higher than with a regular pogo stick.
The name is derivered from the name of manufacturer "Pohlmann & Goppel" from Springe in Lower Saxony, which produced many pogo sticks and exported them to the United Kingdom. On a side note, the German verb springen means to jump.
TV shows
- In Popetown, the Pope uses his rod as a pogo stick.
- On the 100 greatest toys countdown on VH1 called I Love Toys, the pogo stick grabbed the #38 spot.
Video games
Video games featuring pogo sticks or pogo-action include:
- Pogo Stick Olympics
- Pogo Joe
- The Commander Keen series
- DuckTales and DuckTales 2 have Scrooge McDuck using his cane as a pogo stick.
- Tekken's demonic samurai of the woods Yoshimitsu uses his sword as a pogo stick.
- In the Super Smash Bros. series, the Hylian Link has an attack where he comes down with his sword, and bounces up again if he hits an opponent, mimicking a pogo stick. He also has this move the Gamecube version of Soul Calibur 2.
- In Fullmetal Alchemist and the Broken Angel and the sequel Fullmetal Alchemist 2: Curse of the Crimson Elixir, the player can transmute material into a pogo stick.
- In the SNES game Earthbound, there are enemies near the beginning named Pogo Punks who ride pogo sticks and attack you with them. They tend to fall down a lot.
- Hasbro released a pc game "Dog on a Stick" about a pogo sticking dog.
- In Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 5 for the Nintendo Gameboy, there's a boss named Quint which fights using a pogo stick.
Related terms
In rocketry and aerospace design, there is a type of hazardous oscillation named Pogo oscillation, in reference to the motion of a pogo stick being used. Large rocket propulsion systems are especially prone to it.
Songs
- The UK band Supergrass has a song "Late in the Day" which features the band pogoing around.
- The US Band System of a Down has a song "Bounce", which uses a pogo stick as a euphamism for orgies.
Patents
- Pogo stick — U.S.U.S. patent 2,712,443 — H. H. Hohberger
- Pogo stick — U.S.U.S. patent 2,793,036 — G. B. Hansburg
- Combustible gas powered pogo stick — U.S.U.S. patent 2,929,459 — G. Spitzmesser
- BowGo — U.S.U.S. patent 6,558,297 — Brown, Jr.; H. Benjamin (Pittsburgh, PA); Nourbakhsh; Illah R. (Pgh, PA); Zeglin; Garth John (Pittsburgh, PA)