The Wooden Horse on Wheels

This myth­i­cal crea­ture of the Soviet kids’ child­hood, some­thing between a Cen­taur and a bicycle, has come into being within a Soviet man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try dri­ven by an over­pow­er­ing desire to “give all the best” to chil­dren. Most bril­liant minds of the Soviet sci­en­tists were work­ing on the cre­ation of the ideal cross-breed. The mutant was offi­cially labeled a “Pedal Horse” and its large-volume pro­duc­tion was finally kick-started by the end of 1950s. It became very pop­u­lar quite fast as it was really excit­ing to own a “real” horse that could move around in the street, a horse more real than a wooden rock­ing horse.

The Pedal Horse

How­ever, it took some time for the chil­dren to get used to the idea of push­ing the stick­ing out ped­als instead of just push­ing off the ground, and it took a lot of strength as it was quite hard to turn ped­als that were stiff and clumsy. Rare mus­cu­lar kid could man­age the dis­tance of a few meters with­out get­ting exhausted or falling down as the whole struc­ture was also uneven. Still, it was so much fun!

The Pedal Car

But what could be even bet­ter than hav­ing your own horse? Of course, hav­ing your own car! The USSR was pro­duc­ing a large vari­ety of pedal cars for chil­dren, in each spe­cific time try­ing to repro­duce the actual model of a pop­u­lar car. Here are some of them.

Blue pedal car – Resem­bling ‘Zaporozhec’

Red pedal car – Resem­bling ‘Moskvitch’

Pop­u­lar­ity: 10%

Related posts:

1. AWOL Tig­ger, or a Soviet Take on the World-Famous Car­toon Characters
2. The Patri­otic Edu­ca­tion in the USSR. Part One: the Octo­ber Kids.
3. Fun­time with Soviet Playthings
4. Fash­ion in the USSR. DIY.
5. Ethu­si­as­tic Pho­tog­ra­phy from Soviet Rus­sia, 1950s  —  1960s.

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