There are roughly 20 million children in the United States between the ages of 4 and 8, and soon, it seems, every one of them will have a wooden back yard jungle gym.
You’ve seen them: huge-timbered frame structures, replete with swings, neon yellow plastic slides and fortress-like climbing towers. They are almost as ubiquitous in the suburbs as a basketball hoop in the driveway.
Weathered gray and comparatively spindly looking, the older models sometimes list a little and resemble the bleaching bones of a dinosaur skeleton. The newer, pumped-up editions, with their multilevel towers, decks and wooden roofs, are deconstructionist versions of the adult houses they echo.
Toys R Us offers a simple, lightweight model for $299. Hechinger’s in Philadelphia sells a hardware kit and precut, pressure-treated lumber for a build-it-yourself version for $615.
But the popular redwood structures–the ones with 40 square feet of raised deck space, the spiraling tunnel slides, the climbing rope ladders, the multiple swings, the trapeze bars and the tire swings, that can consume 300 square feet of yard space–can easily weigh 2,000 pounds and cost $3,000.
Add just a few more options–an extra raised deck and a slide–and the price zooms even higher. Superior Play Systems, with stores in Mt. Laurel and Norristown, Pa., shows a customized version of its Rainbow clubhouse, with two slides and three deck heights, for $4,067, marked down from $6,000.
Prices on other brands of premium-grade play sets–for example, those made by All-Wood Swingsets in Farmingdale, N.J.–are in the same ballpark as those at Superior.
Jeff Lieberman, salesman at Superior, is quick to point out that the firm offers 16 models for under $1,000. He’s also quick to offer a rationalization for buying the more expensive and elaborate sets.
“What does a family vacation cost? Two thousand dollars? And it lasts six or seven days, and it’s gone,” he says. The play systems (at this price, they aren’t swing sets or jungle gyms anymore) are guaranteed to last, maintenance-free, for 15 years. “When you get 15 years out of anything, it’s not all that expensive.”
Not yet persuaded? The Rainbow product catalog compares the cost of a $3,000 play system with the price of a hot tub (about $4,000), a snowmobile (ditto), a pool table (about $3,500), or a television entertainment center (about $3,950).
“Sales are through the roof,” Lieberman says, though he won’t get specific with numbers. At another point, he refers to sales in the “zillions.”
That’s hype, of course, but the popularity of the play sets is borne out by the number of places that sell them. Lieberman says that Rainbow Play Systems, the brand sold at Superior, has about 100 warehouse showrooms across the country, as well as distribution arrangements with other dealers.
Demographics have everything to do with the proliferation of the wooden play systems. Four to 8 year olds are about 8 percent of the population, part of a birth spurt that’s the largest since the Baby Boom between 1946 and 1964, which produced the parents now buying luxury play systems. The formula goes like this: Boomer parents, double incomes, highly cherished children and the busy schedules that come with two jobs.
Twenty-five hundred dollars for a swing set? No problem.
In addition to the demographics, sales of wooden swing sets and jungle gyms are propelled by the fact that sometime in the last decade or so, many high-end developers decreed that play sets could “only” be made of wood; metal swing sets were declared “declasse” in those communities.
Don’t think for a minute that the purveyors of the play systems don’t know their audience.
Superior Play Systems’ store in Norristown is Boomer parent heaven. The restroom features an infant changing table. Besides the dozen or more wooden systems displayed, the store is lined with shelves of developmentally challenging toys for children of all ages.
And the product catalog, recognizing Boomers’ desire for the best educational experiences for their children, touts the educational and developmental benefits of the big play systems.
“The Rainbow climbing rope and ladder, climbing rungs, trapeze and triangles, and monkey bars are designed to increase grip and finger strength; leg strength; upper body strength; gross motor skills; balance” and so on and so forth.
Another factor driving sales of the more expensive redwood and cedar sets is growing concern among some parents that the chemicals used to pressure-treat pine to make it resistant to insects and decay could be dangerous. The editor of Organic Gardening magazine appeared on “Hard Copy” recently, saying that enough arsenic sheds into dirt under pressure-treated play systems that a child who eats the occasional handful is “eating arsenic.”
All-Wood’s owner Russ Bohlin said his sales have increased now that he exclusively uses redwood and cedar. He discontinued using pressure-treated pine after parents cited their concerns about the arsenic.
But Jay Saunders, owner of Mulch-It in Langhorne, Pa., said he has sold more play sets this year, after switching to the lower-cost pressure-treated pine variety, built by an Amish-owned firm in Lancaster, Pa. His highest-priced system, complete with a roofed cabin, costs $1,650.
“You have to look at how long your kids are going to use a play set. It’s not a long-term investment–maybe 5 to 10 years,” he said.
So how do kids take to their elaborate play systems?
A drive around the Reserve at Lafayette Hill, a new development of stucco houses in suburban Philadelphia ranging upward from $300,000, revealed about 15 wooden play sets already installed–one in a yard where the grass hadn’t yet been planted. At the confluence of three houses with adjacent backyards, “all” were outfitted with elaborate play systems within a few hundred feet of one another–a conglomeration of at least $6,000 worth of play equipment.
But during a 20-minute drive through this neighborhood, on, admittedly, an excruciatingly hot day, no kids were spotted on the swing sets or jungle gyms. The results were the same in other suburban neighborhoods.
Nonetheless, parents say they are getting their money’s worth from the play systems.
“We absolutely love it,” said Mandy Kotler, who lives at the Reserve in Lafayette Hill (where anything other than wooden play sets is forbidden). The Kotlers just spent close to $3,000 to accommodate their 2-year-old and, eventually, their newborn.
Mandy Kotler concedes the play system was “a hefty investment”–and that her children’s grandparents were “flabbergasted” at the cost.
“We seem to put our kids first,” she said. “We would forgo something for ourselves, to purchase this for our kids. We look at it as an activity that we can all do together–it gives us the opportunity to be out there playing with them. It’s also something that’s never going to go away. The kids can play on it for umpteen years.
“The way we situated ours, I can just look out the window and see my daughter playing,” said Kotler. “I can be in my kitchen and never take my eyes off her.”
