Questions for Pogo Stick owners (past and present):
- Are they fun?
- Do you (did you) play with it a lot?
- Were you any good at Pogo Sticking?
- What qualifies as an amazing Pogo-related achievement?
Yes. I had one as a kid and I can still hear the ryrhmic squeaking of the internal spring. I would time myself to see how long I could keep it going - maybe 5 minutes or so. My neighbor was using it one day when she lost her balance and fell forward, and broke her arm right in front of me. I can still see her writhing on the sidewalk in pain. That was the end of my pogoing.
I’m one of four kids and we always had at least one pogo stick and several pairs of home-made stilts around the house. At the age of 12, I could walk around the block on stilts or bounce around on the pogo stick with no problem…and they were big blocks.
When I went away to college, they were all left behind. As a joke (more or less),my mother gave me a pogo stick on my 19th birthday. You can imagine how popular it was around the dorm. It served valiantly and I was able to get to the point where I could go up a flight of stairs on it.
It did not survive going DOWN a flight of stairs. Acohol may have been involved.
Never had or saw any injuries, but otherwise about the same as @snowthx.
Like most kid toys, the novelty wears off pretty quickly. It certainly wasn’t practical transportation. Unlike my bike, I never considered pogo-ing the mile to the nearest shopping center.
There’re not really any sort of tricks you can do with it, so once you’ve mastered basic balancing, it’s mostly just repetitive.
ETA: ref @ZonexandScout. I was a daredevil kid. The idea of pogoing up a set of stairs was waaay beyond the pale. Although in the mostly flat world I inhabited, the only stairs were inside houses. The broader, flatter stairs in front of a public building don’t sound too daunting. We just didn’t have any nearby.
I had one as a boy. I was never any good at it.
There are actually quite a few “tricks” you can do with a pogo stick, and several involving stilts.
The key to getting UP stairs (and the dorm stairs had slate steps) is to get a 2-2-2-2 rhythm. Bounce four time at the bottom of the stairs, then a big hop to the first step. Bounce there twice, then another big hop. Bounce twice…but you get the idea. I don’t think you can just bounce up once per step. At least, that never worked for me.
Science!
Ha!! I’ve often thought what a shame (a blessing!?) You Tube was not in existence during some of our more … unsupervised moments.
I think the second sentence is the key.
My sister and I (ages 8-10 maybe?) had pogo sticks and after the initial “thrill” of bouncing up and down we tried being more creative. We tried going to the mailbox (down a dirt driveway about 1/8th mile long), retrieving the mail, and going back to the house without stopping the bounce or dropping any mail. That ceased being fun before the first run was over.
We did have more fun seeing how many times we could bounce up and down the five or six steps of our front porch without stopping. The repeated loss of knee and elbow skin caused our parents to put an end to it.
We had a pogo stick when i was a kid. I don’t think my knees would let me do that today. It was mildly fun to see how long you could stay up. I guess i never got really good at it. No one got badly hurt with ours, we just lost interest.
Final bit of free advice: Do not use one of those ridiculous “two-handled” pogo sticks. You know…the ones that have handlebars and two grips. The old-fashioned pogo sticks with a single center post work much better. They center your hands and make it easier to balance.
And the “handlebars” are perfectly positioned to stave in a rib or bruise a kidney when you fall. I had a few impressive bruises there but fortunately never anything deeper.
I had one, and even reached the point where I could go up stairs one bounce per step. But these were the stairs to our porch - a total of just four. (Indoor pogo-ing was heavily frowned upon.)
I remember running across an article that mentioned the Hop Rod - a gasoline-powered pogo stick. This seemed like an obviously excellent idea, and I lusted after one. But it was expensive, and my father - generally permissive about risky pastimes - drew the line at this.
Googling yielded this video on the Hop Rod (to avoid long intro, skip to 3:58).
I had one as a yout, but never put much effort into it and never got beyond a bounce or three.
mmm
Me three. I was a fairly inactive and lazy child and never got any pleasure out of this kind of exercise. Walk or ride a bike, sure. Jump up and down while working to balance myself so I can keep jumping, not so much.
I couldn’t do a hula hoop properly either.
My parents bought us kids a set that had a pogo stick, stilts, and a unicycle. The pogo stick and stilts were fun and got a lot of use. None of us could ever get the hang of riding the unicycle.
I had one as a kid. I was okay at it. I got good enough that I could bounce until I got tired.
I remember I used to like jumping off of it mid-bounce and propelling myself into the air.
I don’t recall ever being hurt, definitely never seriously, and I played on it a reasonable amount.
Now, my Pogo Ball on the other hand sucked and never worked right.
I had access to a pogo stick. I can’t recall if it was a neighbor or at a relatives house.
I can remember bouncing on it and losing my balance. I didn’t have enough interest to ask my parents to buy one for me.
My big interest was yo-yo’s. I got good enough to do most of the standard tricks. I had several yo-yo’s. One lighted up.
There was one in the garage, technically it was one of my older siblings’ but not sure which one.
Didn’t play with it much. Stilts were more popular— we had store bought metal ones and homemade wood ones.
Brian
I had one as a young boy but was so uncoordinated I never got past the first Po -
Another “had one as a kid, never got any good at it.”