Really old thread but if anyone else has this problem here's what I found.
It seems to have to do with the Background that is selected in the Properties > Appearance Tab. I was messing around with settings and suddenly I started having the "4-year-old trying to see onto the table top" effect.
Played some more with the settings and found that if you set the background to 'Default w/Shadow' the icons don't bounce as high. I didn't test all the backgrounds but I'd guess that selecting any other one would put the bounce back to normal.
