Cold War playground equipment

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Cold War playgrounds used rockets, moons, and other space themes to spark kids’ curiosity about the Space Race. They appeared in both capitalist countries and communist countries.

In the United States, a Kiwanis Club in Ontario, California built a three-story rocket in 1959. Around 1962, Calwa, California, added a 26-foot Moon rocket, and the Calwa Rocket became a heritage property in 2013. A 1963 Life magazine issue described a space-age shift in playground design and even featured Fidel Castro on the cover. By that year, Philadelphia had 160 space-themed playgrounds with satellites, rockets, and submarines.

In Richardson, Texas, a space-themed playground opened in 1965 with a radar tower, Saturn climber, submarine, radar dish, planet climber, and a three-story rocket. When officials tried to replace it in 2008, locals opposed the idea. A task force found the rocket had limited play value and posed hazards, and it was dismantled.

Two toy makers known for space-style playgrounds were Miracle Equipment Company of Grinnell, Iowa, and Jamison Fantasy Equipment of Los Angeles, which made a moon rocket, a nautilus submarine, and a space slide. Fraser MacDonald wrote that Cold War symbols in toys helped make nuclear weapons understandable at home. In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, playgrounds also pushed space excitement and followed the same trend. In Baikonur, Kazakhstan, near Yuri Gagarin’s 1961 launch, rocket-themed playgrounds and other space mementos appeared. The equipment was often mass-produced with similar designs and lots of old tires.