While the chil­dren from Europe and USA used to play with Mickey Mouse and Don­ald Duck, their Soviet coun­ter­parts enjoyed the char­ac­ters of Souzmultfilm’s car­toons – the ana­logues of the Amer­i­can Tom and Jerry – the Hare and the Wolf. The Soviet slot machines were an inte­gral part of enter­tain­ment in the USSR. For an ordi­nary Soviet cit­i­zen these slot machines were insep­a­ra­bly linked to walks with par­ents and friends in the amuse­ment parks,  eat­ing ice-cream and candy floss, and feed­ing end­less coins to the slots to get some great enter­tain­ment value.

These slot machines were pro­duced at the for­mer mil­i­tary fac­to­ries par­tially con­verted into the civil­ian pro­duc­tion in 1970s.

High­way

As it was adver­tised, the slot machine “High­way” would sig­nif­i­cantly improve your atten­tion, speed of reac­tion and logic think­ing as well as improve your abil­ity to get your bear­ings in real-world sit­u­a­tion. To some extent this machine was posi­tioned as an iron source of health and pos­i­tive emotions.

Auto Rally

This slot-machine was a sim­u­la­tion of race dri­ving. Two steer­ing wheels and two accel­er­a­tors imply that this machine was designed to be oper­ated by two gamers. In 1981 this machine cost 3100 rubles that were com­pa­ra­ble to a price of the real car as the cheap­est ZAZ car cost 3500 rubles.

Sea Bat­tle

The sec­ond most pop­u­lar dream of all Soviet boys was the career of a sailor  — and the most pop­u­lar choice, for sure, was the career of the astro­naut. For those who have not for­got­ten their dreams, the Soviet engi­neers cre­ated this machine. The goal was easy – the gamer looked in the sub­ma­rine periscope where on the hori­zon line he could see the ships and sub­marines of the enemy loom­ing annoy­ingly hither and thither. By press­ing the “Launch” but­ton, the mis­sile tor­pedo was rapidly sent to the enemy’s fleet. In this game every­thing depended on the accu­racy of the player. The prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion was based on the mir­ror reflec­tions of objects.

Related posts:

1. The Beauty of a Soviet Body
2. Pic­tur­ing the Soviet Republics: Moldavia
3. A Glance at the Soviet Lifestyle, Cap­tured by Marc Riboud.
4. Pic­tur­ing the Soviet Republics: Ukraine
5. More pic­tures of Soviet Moscow 1960s by Mark Riboud