31 thoughts on “best playground equipment, ever”

1. We had one in the park near my aunt’s house that was a rocketship that I swear was 60 feet tall. I can remember climbing up the ladder to the top when I was about 6 and someone having to come up and get me because I was terrified to climb back down the ladder. I never saw one of these though, I wonder if anyone ever bought one.

2. In San Francisco, there was a playground at 19th & Taraval that had a bona fide airplane in it. Everything was welded shut pretty well, but the cockpit was open and you could crawl all over it. They removed it because someone finally noticed (after a few decades) it was covered in lead paint.
   http://outsidelands.org/cgi-bin/mboard/stories2/thread.cgi?178,0
   http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/parenting/detail?blogid=29&entry_id=15564

3. Wouldn’t it have been better if the model number had been 1701?
   There was a playground we used in college by the nearby elementary school. It was a great wooden & tire layout that allowed us to run from one section to another without touching the ground, Although it was generally a circular layout, it did have multiple paths to some key areas. It also had a couple of climbing/hiding areas, large posts that could be jumped from one to another, inverted tires that could be crawled into (or run across), etc. Pretty common setup for the early 90s, but a large one that was well planned. So us college kids would head down that after dark, midnight was a common start time, and play “Playground Tag”. Running at full speed across this stuff, dodging whoever was “It”, scraping our shins or twisting our ankles from jumps we couldn’t quite make but thought we could. If you fell off and hit the rocks you became “It”. We had a great time. And it sure seemed like more fun than getting trashed on cheap beer at the bar.

4. I grew up on military bases, so our playgrounds were built by the Army Corps of Engineers. We didn’t have any of this wussy dirt and sand under our swing sets and jungle gyms. They used gravel. You fell off, you got scarred.
   We also had stuff like that spaceship — there was a wooden pirate ship by my apartment, and the woman who babysat me after school had a fort next to hers. Not dinky ones, either. Thirty, forty feet across, with enclosed forecastles and turrets.

5. I still had that ‘dangerous’ playground equipment when I was growing up, although I do remember when it began to get replaced. I believe I’m just a few years older than Nolan and Ryan, so that’d make sense, I suppose.
   But I thought you’d like to know that in my hometown, we still have a park with a giant rocket ship you can climb inside of. I wish I had a better picture, but I can only find a tiny one on the city’s website.
   http://www.st-charlesparks.org/links/kehoepark.htm

6. Hey Wil, we’re pretty much the same age so I am wondering if you ever played on one of those giant metal submarines? I wish I had a pic of it but the whole thing was made of metal tubes and had a giant steering wheel at the front. Strike any bells?

7. The stuff at our elementary school playground was so dangerous, I was in fear for my life at recess and lunch everyday! Damn, I miss that place…

8. I agree, the old stuff from the 70’s and 80’s may have been dangerous, but DAMN it was way more fun than the stuff built after liability insurance costs started skyrocketing. Diving boards were fun, also…every pool used to have one and now you NEVER see one unless it’s a private pool at someone’s house, or at a municipal pool.

9. Sarah..that is exactly like the one I was talking about. I remember it being a lot taller, though….

10. When I was little we had this park that had an actual fighter jet, fire truck and caboose you could get into and play on. It was sooo cool! Now everything seems to be all made of plastic and have the same stuff all the time.

11. I remember playing on one of those as a kid! I also remember that the bottom bit always totally smelled like piss.

12. I used to play in, I kid you not, a giant cement swiss cheese at this one playground my grandparents brought me to. Filled with cement holes to crawl through.

13. This is a great article about an awesome playground from the ‘good ole days’.
    Sadly, it doesnt have a happy ending.
    Even though ive seen a couple really cool looking ‘safeish’ plastic playgrounds, that article made me never want to even look at any of them again. 🙁

14. A few years ago, there were at least a couple of the ‘good’ parks left. Me and a few college friends used to go play at 3 i the morning when we were bored.
    Then the town gave it open/closed hours and locked it up.
    Meh.

15. I remember when they started cementing the top lvls of the the rocket ships closed because the bars were wide enough to squeeze through.

16. How the Heck did “we” ever survive childhood? Granted I’m a few years older than you but, the fact remains, my “guns” had small and some HARD parts that fired, my construction set had some sharp edges so you had to be careful, my chemistry set had stuff that could actually make you sick, GLASS pop bottles, Bicycle helmets didn’t exist. My “safety scissors” were made of metal(and still wouldn’t cut butter on a bet but the end WAS pointed). Lead paint every-freakin-where and you were taught not to eat the chips….
    How the (Expletive) did we live through it? Worse yet I don’t even want to imaging what my parents had.
    Playground? Big Metal monkeybars over hard packed dirt, wooden swings that promised to knock your teeth out if they smacked ya wrong, a “flying Jenny” that would leave gashes in your head if you fell underneath it…. Playing dodgeball with an over-inflated basketball weighing more than my bookbag….
    Those were the days.

17. A park near me has a very intersting piece of playground equipment. It is sort of like a geodesic done, but it is made out of rope and the interior is filled with climbing structures instead of just the shell.

18. My best friend’s dad had a construction business and had these massive dirt digging machines, caterpillars, and the like that he parked on part of his property. Most of these were not used very much and so the grass would grow up around them. I remember climbing all over them, into the cabs, pretending that we were building something with them. The old days of imagining and playing outside are quickly passing. Of course when we were younger we also didn’t have to worry about the air quality either. Many days it just isn’t safe to be outside.
    While the statistics of broken bones and chipped teeth have decreased, childhood obesity is on the rise along with diabetes.
    Gosh, I remember the days of summer not coming in until the parents absolutely made you, of sleeping porches, fireflys, and imagining.

19. This also reminded me of this park, that still has some of the strangest playground equipment I’ve ever seen, and it’s at least 40-50 years old, cause my dad used to play on it…

20. Wil,
    It seems that kids need to go outside and play more. I am an adult but I can see why they prefer a game and a snack. I never thought that I would ever hear the words children and fat in the same sentence.
    FG

21. Perfect timing! Just yesterday, I was looking at a picture of a young me riding a rocking horse that had big, exposed springs that would pinch the crap out of you if they caught you. You can bet they don’t make ’em like that anymore.

22. Hey Wil,
    Wishing you much growth, happiness and fun for 2008!
    Happy New Year!
    –Elaine

23. I hear you about the playground equipment. I used to love playing in those wooden playground structures. Now, as I drive around Rochester(NY), I notice that they’ve all been replaced with plastic equipment, and it doesn’t look as fun as the old wooden ones. It really is a wonder that kids would rather sit inside in front of the PS2 or X-Box instead of playing on the playground.

24. Those were the good old days! Nothing compares to those 70’s and 80’s playgrounds. I spent many an hour imagining I was on a starship, or in a castle, or hiding from enemy attack from the parents standing around watching us. LOL. I sure do miss those days. Of course we didn’t have playstations or anything to really compare to back then, so we had more of an excuse to go outside and play. But I also think the new plastic playgrounds of todays world leave little for the imagination. Even though they are technically “safer” and last longer, there is nothing quite like the old wooden or metal structures we all spent hours playing on when we were kids.

25. I hear you, Terry T.
    I remember steel frame swing sets, merry-go-rounds, “pull-up” bars we used to swing around by our knees before jumping off. Of course, we jumped out of the swings (which were flat boards covered in polyurethane) at maximum height. Or off the merry-go-round at full speed. I think we may have had a death wish. 😉
    And you had better watch out for those steel slides on sunny days – man, those things could get hot!
    It seems to me that our childhood involved more physical activity and more use of our own imaginations.
    I agree that kids today are so over-protected that they miss out on a lot of childhood experiences. It’s sad, really.

26. I broke my arm falling from the ‘monkey bars’ when I was in the 3rd grade, but I still get sad when I see how playgrounds have been neutralized over the years.
    What’s really sad is that when you realize that the parents who are forcing all of these changes are the same age we are, and went through the same things. 🙁

27. You can still find some of the good ol’ legbreaking equipment in many public parks in the midwest. Probably the most notorious are the merry-go-rounds: the big metal lazy susans with u-shaped rails that you could really get spinning fast with very little effort (I used to call them kid-apults).
    Ironically, at my elementary school in the 80s, they neutered the bouncy bridge on our playground equipment by installing rails underneath it to make it into a regular bridge. I say ironically because the rails made the bridge higher and about a month later, I broke my arm falling off it.

28. When I was in grade school, I think it must have been 3rd grade specifically, the playground was asphault with all metak equipment and there happened to be some rubber pads under the jungle gym (which was like half a geodesic dome in shape, but just all bars). These pads are probably used these days as anti-fatigue mats in industrial kitchens, just to give you an idea. Anyway, I fell off the top and landed on my head. I somehow recall *watching myself* walk inside and go to the nurse’s office.
    Yep, I turned out perfectly normal. 😉

29. Oh yeah, those old playgrounds were hawsome, our world is so sanitized and sterile now. Folks are sue happy and whine about everything.
    I have scars from exposed rusty bolts in my swing set, I once cracked ribs falling from the metal “balance” beam at school, and used to fall out of trees on a regular basis.
    I can’t remember the last time I saw a kid climb a tree. That was the best, hiding in the branches, taking up a snack and sitting with the birds and the breezes on hot summer days. Aw, now I have to go hug a tree…

30. I never had any awesome playgrounds like that, but growing up where I did nobody would know about the Enterprise anyway.
    I was looking on that site though, and I just realized that my first Barbie was actually a Marie Osmond doll. I still have her purpley dress too. And all these years I thought that she was Barbie with black hair.
    Anyways, playgrounds. The one across from the house where I grew up had a really awesome merry-go-round, one where you sit on these benches that form a hexagon around a big pole. The bench was connected to the top of the pole with chains, and someone on the ground would wind up the thing with about 20 youngsters on it, and when he couldn’t wind it anymore he’d let it go and we’d unwind and wind up again, over and over. It was super fun, if you didn’t fall off.
    We’d have contests to see who could stay on the longest, until one of my little friends got tangled in the chain and got his foot ripped off. Then they took it away. I guess that was probably for the best. I haven’t seen a merry-go-round like that since. Sad times.

31. I would like to build / purchase durable palygournd equipment similar to that of earlier days. Any hints where to go?

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