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KUDZU : KUDZU LIFE

Playgrounds now vs. Playgrounds then

Charlie Berens | February 22, 2026

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This post currently has 50 comments.

  1. @kandeekane1

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    I am literally bawling my eyes out right now from laughing so hard. We had that 20 foot high metal slide that sat in the scorching sun all day. You would get 3rd degree burns if you dared to slide down it. We also had the 2 ladders standing up with the 3rd ladder sitting on top of them as our monkey bars.

  2. @songpoetry1

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    I love our local playgrounds. One of them has two of those "catapult" see-saws and a climbing structure made of rusty metal bars. Another one has tire sandpits and two "slides" that are just two parallel diagonal metal bars to hang your legs over. There's metal and rubber balancing equipment too. My 2 and 4 year old kids love those kinds of playground equipment more than anything, lol. I'm not fond of the grimy pebble ground though. Whoever thought that was a good idea? 😂 Some have proper sand though. Smalltown playgrounds FTW.

  3. @Da_Bud

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    My oldest school leaned a bit more on safety than fun, no swings, no merry-go-round, just slides, monkey bars, ladders, and a blacktop that took up half the area, but when I switched schools in 8th grade, we got the merry-go-round, and swings and it was so fun.

  4. @dreamareakoso3791

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    i live in a town that’s pretty damn old and is kinda a shithole so i’ve experienced both the ultra safe playgrounds and the old dangerous playgrounds, and let me tell ya the old dangerous playgrounds are a lot more fun

  5. @iYRiYRiYR

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    What they've don't to modern playgrounds is kind of scary: i think they forgot that the purpose was so children would exercise and grow (and toughen up).

  6. @dsanders5142

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    This all started with the 85 kids shit went down hill since then. Every mother wanted sissy boys because the men they divorced were too much of a man. Insanity f ing Insanity.

  7. @mrsbigbug

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    This one made me laugh out loud literally because it's so true. Grew up in the 60's and played on all that stuff. Survived just fine. Built character.

  8. @Insertname-gb4vc

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    The roundabout bro me and my friends used to spin it super fast and whoever lets go first has to not only eat it but they go down the metal slide without a shirt and have to lay back down

  9. @Enderspider3372

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    At my old school they had this tall triangle web like structure that was SUPER TALL they called it the spider and it was super fun to climb on it and I would spend almost every recess on it.

  10. @at7693

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    We had this thing at my school called a see saw snake, but we all called it the worm. it was like a hinged balance beam, and so many kids got hurt on it but by god did we still love it. it eventually got taken out for being too dangerous lol

  11. @LBee_washere

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    There’s a playground by my house and it used to have wasp nests all over it until some guy came in with some wasp spray and killed them all. No, he wasn’t an exterminator, he was just some dude with his kid and a bottle of wasp spray

  12. @mr.awesomenesscool

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    Two opposite evils in some ways and who the fuck uses fiberglass as a toy or some shit? One chip and then it’s a lawsuit for bleeding from a cut
    1:26 Young circle had (or have) a circle thing that’s at a angle and sometimes someone would go under and spin it with their feet and everyone else would hold on laying down but someone would at some point stand up and try to walk or run to keep up with the speed

  13. @oldhillbillybuckkowalski

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    As a kid in the 70s, we had a thing called the "Maypole". It was a 20ft tall steal pole with about 10 sets of chains attached to a swivel at the top. Each set of chains had a series of handles attached. The goal, apparently was to hang on while bigger kids held on to their handels and ran around the pole. A little kid could easily hit 4 ft off the ground while swinging through the air but nobody held on past 5 feet.

  14. @father2mother3

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    Someone online said that playgrounds were designed to intentionally hurt kids. Not as a malice thing, but just enough to teach them about situational awareness, personal safety and caution.

    It really stuck with me because of all these misbehaving teens on social media. All of these pranks and tomfoolery they do is because they think they're exempt from harm.

  15. @MuljoStpho

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    Also: McDonalds Play Places then vs now. When I was a kid in the 90s we had that whole network of tubes and slides with a ball pit. Somewhere around the 2000s or 2010s I noticed that a newly opened McDonalds just had a row of touchscreen TVs with mobile games as its Play Place. Nothing else besides those. Also around that time, I noticed in an older McDonalds that they had removed the type of Play Place I grew up with and replaced it with a collection of small things: 1) a 1/2 ft tall 1ft long slide decorated like a piano that makes noise as a kid goes down it, 2) a guitar shaped bench that makes noise when touched, 3) one of those oversized keyboards that you step on except it was attached to a wall so some kids would lay down in front of it and kick at it, and 4) one of the tables to eat at had lights built in that changed when touched. And that was everything. And nowadays that same location has the windows between the main area and the kids area blacked out and the door permanently closed, they just don't allow anybody to enter the Play Place part of the building anymore.

  16. @Connie_Fan12

    February 22, 2026 at 2:29 pm

    ours had:
    -Woodchips and asphalt for most of it (Took FOREVER to clean off)
    -Weirdly angled stairs (If you could climb those without holding the rails? LEGEND.)
    -The side with less wind was forbidden (like we cared, that place was PERFECT for drawing)
    -Two jail-like things with a bridge (The view from the top was IMPECCABLE)
    -Some trees (i guess?)

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