If you’ve ever been a caregiver to someone under the age of 10, you know Soft Play; you just might not know the name. For more than four decades, the company has been designing and crafting play equipment for malls (a two-story replica of the Paw Patrol Lookout Tower in Minnesota’s Mall of America), museums (an 18-foot-diameter model of the sun in the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida), and private clients (a giant, climbable hot dog at Coors Field). And no matter where you encounter Soft Play’s brightly painted, slightly squishy-to-the-touch sculptures, they likely hail from the same place: an industrial facility in southeast Englewood.

Pieces start as 16-by-four-by-three-foot blocks of Styrofoam, which are roughly shaped by computer-controlled cutting machines. From there, Soft Play’s seven sculptors use a hodgepodge of tools—fillet knives, jigsaws, horse brushes, sandpaper—to chisel in everything from log bark and tire tread to eyeballs and dragon wings.

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Following the sculpting and chiseling, the works are covered with fiberglass, molded with Soft Play’s signature soft foam, coated with rubber for durability, and hand-painted by a team of six artists.

Today, Soft Play has more than 40,000 installations in 200-plus countries. But you don’t have to travel abroad to enjoy them. These three indoor playscapes with Soft Play elements in the Denver metro area are perfect for letting kids burn off excess energy on cold winter days.

3 Soft Play Playscapes in the Denver Metro Area

A kid going down an orange slide thing from Soft Play at the Paul Derda Recreation Center
Paul Derda Recreation Center. Photo courtesy of Soft Play
A kid on a sculpture of luggage by Soft Play at Denver International Airport
Photo courtesy of Denver International Airport

Colorado Mills Mall

Soft Play designed this space-themed shopping center play area in collaboration with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (which also consulted on the Cherry Creek Mall’s Dinosaur Gulch play space, making sure the Ankylosaurus and T. rex were paleontologist-approved). Made to evoke the surface of the red planet, Colorado Mills’ Mars Outpost includes a land rover, tunnels through dunes, and a solar panel slide.

Paul Derda Recreation Center

In addition to the free indoor playground—which has Colorado touches like bear and mountain lion heads overlooking two slides, a snowcapped mountain, and a rock-climbing Jeep—Soft Play was responsible for many elements of this Broomfield recreation center’s indoor aquatic pool, including an octopus slide.

Denver International Airport

The next time you’re delayed with kids who won’t stop running laps on the moving walkways, take them to Concourse A, which has a new-in-November Soft Play aviation-travel-themed play area, or Concourse C, where an alien spacescape opened in December 2024. Littles get out their wiggles on the flying saucer slide, while adults will appreciate the aesthetic nod to DIA conspiracy theories.

Read More: 10 of the Best Indoor Playgrounds In and Around Denver