Who said white men can't jump?

June 14, 2004 1:29 AM

Pogo Pr0n Coming soon is a pogo stick that can supposedly get you up to 4 foot in the air and was chosen as one of strangest new toys of 2004. Quite possibly replacing the scooter as the fad you can ride, or maybe we will end up designing cities around them.
posted by drezdn (23 comments total)

On the recent Disney WWII compilation, there's a short which extols the virtues of pogo sticks for getting around the restrictive fuel rationing of the time.

Strangely, with the current gas hikes, that cartoon may have been prescient.
posted by pandaharma at 1:34 AM on June 14, 2004

Anyone wanna give a rundown on the basic (in lay terms) physics of this sort of thing? Seems to me that you've got the height that your legs can make you jump upwards, an ideal pogo stick conserves that height (when you come back down, you bounce back up with all the energy of your fall converted into pushing you back up to the height you fell from), but you've pumped with your legs again on the bounce to add (again) as much force as you did the first time, sending you higher, and so on. Given an ideal pogo stick, could your legs eventually generate escape velocity? But you'd not survive the acceleration of the bounce long before you reached that point. Real-world pogo sticks have an inefficiency that probably gets progressively worse, and then there's other limiting factors. So what would make this pogo stick so much more effective than others? Higher overall efficiency or a higher efficiency at a crucial energy level? Or what? Physicist in the house?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 1:45 AM on June 14, 2004

We have a prof here at CMU, Illah Nourbakhsh, who really likes pogo sticks. His entry in the super-pogo race is called the BowGo.

IIRC, he made a motorized pogo (or several) that could send people over six feet. Gave folks a few bruises, but it was supposed to be a lot of fun.
posted by tss at 4:02 AM on June 14, 2004

"maybe we will end up designing cities around them"

That was my morning laugh. Thanks Drez.

As for the stick, yet another Xtreme sport is born.
posted by Outlawyr at 4:14 AM on June 14, 2004

I liked the link to Andy MacDonald. His robocop story is so familiar. Other than the anarchy signs and the wax all over the concrete, what's up with all the "no skateboards" bs we still see today. On an aside, I hear Philly is resisting opening the park back up to boarders. Must be the new "damn hippies" of the generations. :-)
posted by nofundy at 5:40 AM on June 14, 2004

It'll be in the Olympics next. I do like the idea of re-engineering what were essentially kids toys to be more fun though.
posted by carter at 6:21 AM on June 14, 2004

It feels like it might be some kind of outlaw device, like motorbikes used to be.

Dig, if you will, a picture.

A sleepy town, somewhere in, oh, North Dakota. A crazy paradiddle on the edge of hearing gets louder and louder until the angry spring-loaded bounce of angry bearded leathermen straddling their sweaty Pogs, their pogo mamas riding piggyback, stomps and shproings down the main drag, every leap bringing the rider up over the heads of the gawking passerby.

It would be a scary and wonderful sight, unless you were under one of those suckers. That would be bad.
posted by chicobangs at 6:58 AM on June 14, 2004

sooo cool.
posted by Quartermass at 7:02 AM on June 14, 2004

Lawyers will be the end of this promising device.
posted by troutfishing at 7:25 AM on June 14, 2004

But trout, if pogo sticks are outlawed, then only outlaws will have pogo sticks.

I've recently joind the NAAPS, and their literature is very informative.


Still. Four feet high and rising? Fergodsake, don't let the President have one.
posted by chicobangs at 7:53 AM on June 14, 2004

For an even more fantastically dangerous way to jump six feet in the air, see the Poweriser.
posted by sfenders at 7:54 AM on June 14, 2004

Sobe is giving away 2,000 Flybars, and has a video of people using them on their site.

I predict that they'll be of immediate interest to many people, after which they will be banned practically everywhere in public.
posted by insomnia_lj at 8:18 AM on June 14, 2004

Robocop is all over this thread. 2/3rds of the links (Skater vs Robocop and a banner for the Robocop DVD set) and now the Blue.

So now I can't help but imagine Robocop on a pogo stick. Pogocop, I'd buy that for a dollar!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:19 AM on June 14, 2004

maybe we will end up designing cities around them.

Doorways 12 ft high, and ceilings too. Adverts on a whole new level. Literally.
posted by nofundy at 8:30 AM on June 14, 2004

It should be very possible to incorporate a battery pack into such devices which would lend an extra "kick". Further, the Pogo-er could opt to store potential energy, as with hybrid car brake systems that turn intertial energy back into stored battery power.

This would dampen pogo-ing height to charge the battery, but then the pogoer could opt to use that conserved battery power to bounce over ten foot walls.
posted by troutfishing at 9:04 AM on June 14, 2004

Mmm... death.
posted by abcde at 9:17 AM on June 14, 2004

i thought the same thing as Outlawyr. Xtreme Sports^TM jump the shark. literally.

i can't imagine these will very be popular b/c you can't *go* anywhere but 4-6 six feet up. traveling must surely be slower than walking.

i feel sorry for Flybar's liability lawyers. (in theory.)
posted by mrgrimm at 10:23 AM on June 14, 2004

all i could think was: groin injury machine.
posted by th3ph17 at 11:46 AM on June 14, 2004

maybe we will end up designing cities around them.

I have it on good authority that when Steve Jobs heard about this, he shit his pants.
posted by soyjoy at 12:42 PM on June 14, 2004

"'maybe we will end up designing cities around them.'

Doorways 12 ft high, and ceilings too. Adverts on a whole new level. Literally.

But think of the hidden fruit we'll more easily discover!
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:45 PM on June 14, 2004

groin injury machine.

This isn't just a good get-rich idea all by itself, but also my favorite Nine Inch Nails album.

th3ph17, get thee to a patent office, stat!
posted by chicobangs at 1:37 PM on June 14, 2004

Chicobangs, wasn't that Nivek Ogre's remix of Pretty Hate Machine? Or was it David Lee Roth's? I can't remember.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 1:54 PM on June 14, 2004

Gawd, EB, I know. It's so easy to get Skinny Puppy and The Mighty DLR mixed up.

My memory is spotty since the treatments, but I'd lean toward Roth, if only because he made a lot of very high jumps and I suspect something involving landing awkwardly on a Marshall stack or a dragging mic stand or... something.

Uh, Panama!
posted by chicobangs at 2:21 PM on June 14, 2004