Thanks @spikeyxxx . My video “04” above (approach #4, and my approach #2) are very similar to what you describe. I just slid a long Plane (ribbon) along a curve, to get both the straight tail and spiral part. With animation I translated and rotated everything to get the right appearance. (I like using transparent shaders but didn’t need to in this case.)
A single plane helped a lot to get a smooth transition. I struggled with the spiral Curve until I found the setting “Twist Method Z-Up” (it’s a mess to do this by hand). The animations are a little tricky because some of them work against others.
