Did you ever have a pogo stick?
They had a brief resurgence of popularity in the 70s and all my friends were pogoing and I got one. I couldn’t even do one pogo. To make matters worse, I tried and tired and failed and failed. Then my mother got on it and was pogoing up and down and she was over 50 at the time.
I just couldn’t get that darn thing to work for me ERRRRRRR
I would pogo like it was going out of style.Sometimes with no hands!(not that I am bragging or anything.
)
Yeah, but the spring was so stiff, neither my sister nor I could really get anywhere. It seemed like such fun, but when you weigh fuck-all, it’s just a fancy stick.
We had one in the 60s. I never could get the hang of it, so I dropped the stick and stayed with Pogo.
In a 1943 Goofy cartoon, Disney advocates the pogo stick as the best wartime alternative to the car. (They show a bunch of silly transportation "inventions before getting to the pogo stick at around the 5:00 mark.)
Check out the Flybar, too.
Was there a trick to getting it to work or something?
I remember that mid-70s resurgence. I tried … oh, did I try. Nope.
So I learned how to ride a unicycle instead.
That’s really cool. Some of my Japanese elementary students have them as part of their recess. I have not yet successfully been able to do either. I can at least hula hoop and jump rope though, so hope is not yet lost!
The trick is to weigh enough. My folks got me one when I was about 8. Couldn’t make it work until I got up towards 100 lbs.
Yes.
And stilts.
I have no idea if I could use either today, but I definitely used both as a child. Pogo-ing was fun.
My heavy friend was able to do it way back in the 70’s.
My kids have an electric pogo stick.
.
[quote=“amarinth, post:10, topic:577859”]
Yes.
And stilts.
QUOTE]
LOOOVED my pogo stick.
Didn’t have stilts, but I had little overturned bucket things with strings. (Stand on the buckets, stabilize with string handles. Walk in a rigid way until bored.) I’m sure there were homemade versions, but mine were commercially made for the purpose. They were yellow.
So was my horse headed bouncy ball thing that I adored around the same time. (Probably a little earlier than the pogo stick. Kind of a blur.)
Good times.
[quote=“wonder_lust, post:12, topic:577859”]
Were those bucket things with strings “Romper Stompers?” I always wanted a set of Romper Stompers. The bouncy ball thing, I think, was a Hoppity Horse.
My dad made me some stilts. They were cool.
I read and loved all my dad’s Pogo comics, but I also had a pogo stick and could hop with the best of them. It was the only quasi-athletic thing I was better at than any of my friends.
I was the neighborhood pogo champion! I loved my pogo stick. 
I also had stilts my dad made me and I was pretty good on those too.
I, too had a pogo stick and homemade dad-stilts. The stilts were big, heavy things made out of 2X4’s.
StG
I think I tried pogo-ing once or twice on somebody else’s stick, but I never had my own that I can remember.
The stilts I had were made by my dad who called them “tom-walkers.” Anybody else ever hear that term for stilts?
[quote=“kath94, post:13, topic:577859”]
YES! Thank you for providing proper names. I spend most of my life describing things with silly made up adjectives.
I had one. Man, did I love it. I believe I got up to 840 jumps. I coulda got more, but my friend got tired of counting and yelled at me to get off.
I hadn’t thought of that in years, but yes I had a pogo stick and stilts as advertised in the 1982 Sears Wish Book. I had the best mom ever. These two toys made me the most popular kid in the neighborhood that year.