Inspired by an interesting conversation elsewhere on the merits or otherwise of the A-10 Warthog.
I’ll throw my own choices out later but I’d be interested to see what other people think first. 
I’ll go with the F-16. They are pretty and BadAss.
McDonnell F-4 Phantom II.
Dad was Navy, and I spent a lot of time at NAS Miramar. I thought it was the coolest, meanest airplane in the world. I told my mom that I was going to fly one when I grew up. She patiently explained to me that they would be used by the time I grew up. I vehemently disagreed. I was right, she was wrong. But the skiing injury in high school and the car crash a year later nixed any possibility of my ever flying one.
Later, the F-14 Tomcat became my favourite cold-war airplane. The Douglas A-4 Skyhawk is up there too. I liked it better with the Blue Angels than I do the F/A-18s they use now. (And I liked the Thunderbirds’ T-38s better than the F-16s.)
Given the chance to own a Cold War-era airplane, hands-down it would be the Northrop T-38 Talon.
These were never my favourites, but they deserve mention: Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, Convair F-106 Delta Dart, Vought F-8 Crusader, and the North American Rockwell OV-10 Bronco.
I just read an article on the OV-10 Bronco. The article makes a good case for not retiring it. Too late now. I like the A-10, and feel it’s good to have in the inventory. I could be persuaded a newer design would be a good replacement, but I like that they’re still being used.
Lockheed SR-71 (Blackbird)
That was my dad’s fave.
They navigated with a sextant! What other plane let’s you see stars in the middle of the day? 
F-15E Strike Eagle, although that was rather late in the game.
Somebody has a Bronco down at the local airstrip and bores holes in the sky over my house all the time.
RA-5C Vigilante. It looks like every other badass fighter wants to look when it grows up.
Yep.
Followed by the F-86 Sabre and then the Century Series.
A-10. I was a tanker. I’d pick an A-10 sortie to provide CAS over everything else. The A-10 could bring a world of hurt. Even better it had a lower stall speed so the pilot had a better chance of making sure the world of hurt didn’t land on me.
The B-52.
What is was all about.
The incarnate symbol of the Cold War, by any standards.
Wow.
Just googled some images as I wasn’t familiar with it.
Nice!
Dang. I want one .
SR-71 captured my imagination as a child.
Caspian Sea Monster intrigued me as an adult.
That is my pick too. The B-52 is still very much in service and is going to outlast them all. It was designed before the Cold War even got well underway, first built during the early part of the Cold War in the 1950’s and is still the best long-range strategic bomber in the world. The current examples were built in the early 1960’s and are not scheduled to be retired until at least 2040 when the planes themselves will be about 80 years old. The Air Force has tried to come up with a better design several times and no one could do it. Planes don’t stay in service for that extraordinary amount of time unless they themselves are truly special.
I had a couple of models of the A-5 Vigilante (not the recon version) when I was a kid.
I’ve heard it said that the MiG-25 Foxbat’s design was influenced by the Vigilante.
Depending on when one thinks the Cold War started, some of the Navy planes from just after WWII are stunningly beautiful.
F8F Bearcat
A little early for true Cold War, but worth a mention in any aircraft admiration thread.
.
Same with me.
I’ll join the SR-71 chorus here. Captured my imagination as a kid, and still does. Just a sexy aircraft.