Red Army models

Just like chil­dren any­where in the world, the Soviet kids needed toys to play with. Cer­tainly the range of toys designed and pro­duced was an envi­able one, by some stan­dards. How­ever, the aes­thetic appear­ance of toys was not a pri­or­ity for Soviet design­ers — toys had to be func­tional and edu­ca­tional. Any­thing beyond that, like pleas­ant looks, was not con­sid­ered to be impor­tant and, more­over, it was seen as an unnec­es­sary indul­gence. The lack of com­pe­ti­tion from the imports due to the  planned econ­omy and severe short­ages  of qual­ity prod­ucts in the shops actu­ally resulted in the very poor deliv­ery and lim­ited vari­ety of toys. The Soviet par­ents were able to get only these kinds of toys as imported toys were lit­er­ally impos­si­ble to buy.

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