The paper deals with the outdoor spaces for children’s play which were created in the 1970s and 1980s across former Czechoslovakia. It describes the difficulties connected with playground construction under the centrally controlled state-socialist building industry and focuses attention on several atypical projects that sought to break free from the usual rigid praxis and installation of universal, standardised equipment. The aim is to shed light on possible approaches to the design of atypical playgrounds, achieved mainly through the personal commitment of the creators and inhabitants in “betterment initiatives” (a kind of “people’s brigade” organised as a part of building up the socialist state) or through cooperation between architects, sculptors, sociologists, and sometimes even journalists. The paper will present several exceptional projects that managed to create wholly unorthodox, conceptually and artistically well-thought-out playgrounds that also remembered to offer children something new and unusual, including enough space for their imagination and interpretation. The paper attempts to describe the circumstances around the creation of these playgrounds, which essentially lie somewhere between being a functional object and a work of art. It also looks at the current state of these sites and, unfortunately, the lack of any systemic form of heritage protection for them.