By the time Billboard wrote about kiddie rides in a 10-page feature package in 1953 (back when the magazine covered literal billboards and outdoor amusements, rather than music) kiddie rides were called “1953’s fast-growing business—a rare combination of wholesome fun and clever merchandising.” America’s rapid suburbanization had developed a whole new market for kiddie rides: the shopping center. Unlike the pinball machine, the other great coin-operated amusement of the era, the kiddie ride wouldn’t be relegated to the arcade or amusement park. Instead, it would be used to lure kids into stores, and along with them, their parents.



The Billboard feature—alongside a dizzying number of ads for kiddie-ride manufacturers and middlemen—was optimistic about the future of the technology. It told the story of a Greenpoint, Brooklyn, department store that tore out its soda fountain and replaced it with 14 kiddie rides, realizing there was more revenue in mechanical horses, rocket ships, and motor boats than egg-cream fizzes. (The article cites average weekly gross revenues of $375 from the rides—or about $5,000 in 2014 dollars.) There were explainers on how to set up your own profitable kiddie-ride business. There was quote after quote after quote from businessmen explaining that there was nowhere for the kiddie-ride industry to go but up.

There was also a piece about licensing the likeness of Trigger, Roy Rogers's horse, because a Trigger-themed kiddie ride sucked even more money out of parents' pockets. This would be part of the future of kiddie rides—slapping existing franchises on a kiddie ride seemed to make them even more popular. Everything from Arthur to X-Men would eventually get its own kiddie ride, as exhaustively documented over at TV Tropes.

Family entertainment centers like Chuck E. Cheese's, founded in 1977, provided another outlet for kiddie rides. While the intricacies of skee-ball may elude a 3-year-old, a ride in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's van does not.

Joe Mabel/Wikimedia

But there were signs of trouble for the kiddie ride. Bigger vending-machine operators specializing in selling soda and potato chips never took on kiddie rides, seeing them as a service hassle.

"Most professional vending companies never got involved in kiddie rides," says Nick Montano of Vending Times magazine. "They never became part of the mainstream vending world." Instead, smaller specialty operators, usually ones that had already taken on the gumball market, focused on kiddie rides. Vending Times estimates there were about 55,000 kiddie rides installed in the U.S. in 2012, versus 2.8 million soda machines and 1.2 million snack vending machines.

There's also the problem that the audience for kiddie rides is small, and only got smaller as the toy market has expanded. "The age span has shrunk," says Montano. "Kiddie rides used to be for for kids up to 7 or 8 years old. Now it probably cuts off at 5." After that, kids go off in search of something more sophisticated to sink their quarters into.