I don't like to get my awesome vintage playground news from crazy, old post-war magazine articles about those crazy foreigners making fortunes from their crazy gadgets, but in this case, I'll let it slide. So to speak.
The Nazis chased sculptor Egon Möller-Nielsen out of Denmark, and a generation of Swedish playground denizens have been thanking them ever since.
Starting around 1949, Moeller-Nielsen created wild, biomorphic concrete play sculptures like Tuffsen, the cave/castle below, which was [is?] in Reimer Holm Park in Stockholm.
And The Egg, which went into Tessinpark in 1951, is obviously still going strong in 2007, as Jaime Silva's flickr stream proves.
Fortunes in Foreign Gadgets, Mech. Ill, 1953 [modernmechanix]
images tracked down via playscapes, the excellent playground design blog [playgrounddesigns.blogspot.com]
wow! awesome! the bottom one makes me think i might have encountered something like this in my childhood or maybe it's like part of something bigger i've seen... either way, thank you!!! supercool