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Want to have incredible jumping powers without having any superpowers in the first place? Why look no further than wearing the good old spring coil.
In fiction, the spring coil is a guaranteed way to reach high places, among other things such as a powerful attack. A Rubber Man may be able to reshape himself/herself into a spring coil. Sometimes part of Tricked-Out Shoes.
Often accompanied by a notable Stock Sound Effects from string instruments.
See also Springs Springs Everywhere for when springs are part of the background, Spring Jump, and Hopping Machine.
Examples of Spring Coil include:
Anime and Manga[]
- Played with in One Piece, Bellamy's Devil Fruit Power is having springs for legs, which he uses to jump around and increase the power of his attacks.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Lagann used springs from its legs in the first episode to move around quickly. They seem to be drills stretching.
Comic Books[]
- The Flying Smurf tears another Smurf's couch to tie the springs under his shoes in one of his several (failed) attempts to fly.
- Spring boots are one of the trademark gadgets of Donald Duck's italian superhero identity Paperinik.
Film[]
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: after Judge Doom is revealed as a Toon, he uses Toon springs on his feet to jump after Eddie Valiant.
Folklore[]
- The mysterious figure Spring Heeled Jack was given that name due to his incredible jumping ability.
Live Action TV[]
- In the Three Stooges short "Hoi Polloi" (1935), Curly gets a spring stuck on his rear end while he's dancing. Every time one of the other dancers would bump into him and knock him down, he'd spring back to his feet again.
Newspaper Comics[]
- In a couple of issues of Heathcliff, an experimental cat treat allows Heathcliff to become the incredibly bouncy and flexible Elasticat! A springy coil is, of course, one of the things he shapes himself into.
Real Life[]
- Rob Cockerham from Cockeyed.com built a real-life pair of spring shoes out of mattress springs and Chuck Taylors.
Video Games[]
- Wario Land: Wario can turn into a spring that allows him to reach high areas.
- Banjo Tooie had spring boots used for jumping.
- Portal The protagonist, Chell, has a different type of spring (linear-flex) attached below her knees (via a brace). Rather than assist with jumping, these are meant to explain why the player never takes fall damage.
- Super Mario Galaxy: the Spring Mushroom. That encases Mario's whole body in a spring.
- In the first Commander Keen game you can only jump, until you find the pogo stick. Then you can "jump" while on the pogo stick to jump really high. You get to keep the pogo stick in future games.
- Spring Man from Mega Man 7.
- In the Japanese version, when you get Spring Man's weapon, Auto makes a joke about attaching the coils to his feet so that he could be "Super Auto".
- The first Mega Man Legends game has the hero use a set of coils on his leg armor to power up his jump.
- Coily in Q*bert.
- In the final stage of Plok, the "Secret Super Weapon" you have to fight the Flea Queen with a helmet, a can of Flea spray and a pair of spring boots. While they do boost your jump height, they have the problem of turning every step into a jump.
- One of the powerups in Serious Sam II found in one of the boss stages has them.
- Pokémon: Spoink
- Thing On A Spring: An obscure Commodore64 platformer featuring a little frog-headed slinky toy thing. Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- One of the tools your gruntx could get in 'Gruntz
- Donkey Kong Country 2 features Rattley the Rattlesnake, an animal buddy who utilizes this.
Western Animation[]
- One of the many Acme Products used by Ralph Wolf (Wile. E. Coyote's progenitor in Looney Tunes), in the cartoon "Ready, Woolen and Able"
- "Coil Man" from Hanna-Barbera'a The Impossibles
- In the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon, a cosmetics robot had springs built into her ankles.
- Spring coils from the shoes, legs, and hat are some of the many, many gadgets in the arsenal of Inspector Gadget.
- In the Superfriends (1973) episode "The Ultra Scam", one of the villain's has shoes with springs in the sole that he uses to bounce around.