jimisaacs - You're talking about the wrapping? That's not a new issue, the weird wrapping, and it's a known issue, and it's actually kinda better than it was in the non MP6ified days. Also in this case you're saying "When my screen is very very small, width wise, there's a lack of spacing and some overlap."
Here's 3.7:
* http://cl.ly/image/3A2j2X0c0542
* http://cl.ly/image/0i2p411Y0H0t
So this is actually an improvement to the vanishing act :/
And on 3.8 the Jetpack stats get goobered: http://cl.ly/image/3K1h1L232C2J
Though that said even on a mobile (where some menus vanish in a different way than a desktop resive) it's still not perfect.
Will there be a fallback? Probably not. When you switch something to JUST an icon, that icon has to represent what it is to all users, and if we make everything default to a gear, like we do for the admin sidebar, it would be too confusing on mobile :/
tl;dr? They need to update their plugins for 3.8 sexiness.
olyma - How old a browser are we talking about? IE 6 is SOL.