Meet the Playland Arcade brothers behind 50 years of fun at Hampton Beach

HAMPTON — Jack Kennedy has been the man behind the fun at Playland Arcade for half a century. At 83, he still has no plans to leave.

Kennedy, who bought Playland Arcade with his brother Frank in 1972, celebrated half a century of ownership this fall and will open for their 50th season next summer. He called the milestone “a pretty good accomplishment” and said he will keep going as long as he enjoys the work, and the arcade remains successful.

“Things have gone extremely well for us,” Kennedy said. His brother Frank, 85, still co-owns the arcade, too, and the two trade shifts during the summer to run Playland.

Jacqui Kennedy, his wife of 10 years now, said equally important as the success is the people Playland has touched over the years. Generations of beachgoers have returned to win tickets at Skee-Ball and beat their high score on their favorite retro game machine. The arcade has also seen countless teenagers spend their summers working there and growing to become close as family.

“It’s not just the longevity,” Jacqui said. “It’s the connections.”

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Kennedy brothers get their start at Fun-A-Rama

Kennedy, who grew up in Lawrence, Massachusetts, got his start in arcades when he was a young boy working at Fun-A-Rama at Hampton Beach just a couple blocks away from Playland. His father and uncle went into business inside the Casino complex in 1952 to purchase and rename the arcade. The Kennedy brothers started working at a young age for their father.

Playland at the time was owned by the Jaffarian family from Massachusetts. Kennedy said the Jaffarians decided to sell the arcade in 1972 and asked his father and uncle if they were interested in buying it. They were not, but Kennedy and his brother decided they were and began talks about a purchase.

Kennedy said he only needed to speak to his father to make sure he was comfortable with his sons running their competition on the same beach. It turned out Kennedy’s dad was fine with the transaction given his boys would be competing with the same knowledge they acquired at Fun-A-Rama.

“My father was all in favor of it,” Kennedy said.

One final hurdle was ownership of the building. The Jaffarians would not include the building in the sale of the business, Kennedy said. The Kennedys wanted security as a tenant, so he and his brother negotiated they would be able to purchase the building seven years down the line. The Jaffarians agreed, Kennedy said, and by 1979 the Kennedy brothers owned the arcade and the building that housed it.

Meanwhile, Kennedy was working as a ninth-grade teacher in Andover, Massachusetts. There, he fielded a lot of good employees that came up to work for him in the summer at Hampton Beach. After just over a decade of doing both, though, Kennedy decided to retire as a teacher and focus on the arcade. Working seven days a week in the summer, only to go back to working full-time in the school year, was becoming too much.

“I went on a leave of absence, and then I said, ‘Forget it,’” Kennedy said of his teaching career. “I was doing both. It was difficult.”

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Playland a ‘throwback’ to a bygone era of Hampton Beach

Kennedy, who now lives at North Beach, said the arcade industry has changed over the years as machines become higher tech and automation makes labor easier. Tickets today are dispensed from the machines themselves. Fifty years ago, an employee was stationed by ticketed games to hand tickets to winners, then step on a button to reset the game.

“By the end of the summer they would have a hole in the bottom of their sneakers from hitting the button to reset it,” Jacqui Kennedy said.

Advancements in technology have brought challenges as well. Games were easier to fix in-house when they were less computerized. Now games come with a motherboard that needs to be shipped to the factory for repairs, which Kennedy said is more costly and time-consuming.

While arcades are past their golden age, Kennedy believes business has stayed consistent over the years because of its location across from the beach. Each summer day sees crowds bustling along Ocean Boulevard past Playland’s open garage doors, food stands nearby serving fried dough and pizza.

“I think it’s a unique situation here,” Kennedy said. “We’re fortunate to be along the coast in a very good location.”No matter how new the games are that come in, Kennedy said one game remains the favorite – Skee-Ball. He believes the simplicity of the game and its association with winning big prizes keeps it one of the most popular arcade games.

“People come in, they can be 5 years old, they can be 85 years old,” Kennedy said. “They just for some reason gravitate towards that particular game.”

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Kennedy is often asked by patrons to make sure he does not modernize the arcade too much, and he has tried to keep the aesthetics of the building much the same. Many of the game machines themselves have come and gone, as Skee-Ball machines have been upgraded and replaced frequently.

The Pokereno games, in which players roll balls into holes to form poker hands, are the oldest in the room and go back to when they first purchased the building. Video games like Frogger also date back many years, although Playland has since added a modern Frogger game as well.

“It’s a throwback. That’s exactly what it is,” Kennedy said. Jacqui said comedian Jimmy Dunn, who lives in Hampton, makes a point of reaching and beating his high scores each summer.

Playland owner wants to retire on top of his game

Kennedy almost considered retiring in 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic caused arcades across the country to close temporarily. He said he considered leaving the arcade behind given the hardship to come that year, but he decided to tackle the summer and stay in business.

“It was a challenge to succeed,” Kennedy said. “I didn’t want to leave on a low. I wanted to be at the top of my game.”

At first, Playland needed permission and guidance to reopen safely. Concern that year was the virus’s ability to spread by touching surfaces, as well as social distancing in an arcade that usually draws crowds of gamers. They got permission to open from the governor the week before the Fourth of July, though, with social distancing, masks on at all times and separate doors to enter and exit.

By the time the Kennedys found out they could open, their staff had already found other jobs, posing another problem. Jacqui recalls turning to one of their workers from Winnacunnet High School asking if they had any other recruits. She laughed recalling how the teenager said he did, but wanted to make sure it was OK that they were from Exeter High School, WHS’s school rival.

“I said we’ll take them!” she said. That summer the staff had a split of EHS and WHS students working together.

That summer’s crew resulted in another strong batch of workers that Kennedy said would now be difficult to walk away from despite his age. He said he looks forward to next summer and plans to keep going as long he has the help, the energy and the fun.

“I think I’ll go for as long as I enjoy it, as long as I’m able to be successful, as long as I’ll be able to maintain my health and sense of humor,” Kennedy said. “I’ll stick around for a few more years if I can do it.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Hampton Beach Playland Arcade: Brothers look back at 50 years of fun