Backyard Bounce Houses Seem Like Cheesy Monstrosities. But They’re Actually Great.

Somehow, some way, I became the owner of not one but two backyard bounce houses.

And it is with a strange mixture of consternation and disbelief that I must admit: They are fantastic.

What’s so great about a backyard bounce house? Well, anytime we have a backyard BBQ or playdate, we have a safe-ish space for the kids to soar and stomp and spring with an exhilaration both joyful and mildly violent.

The kids love it. The grown-ups love that the kids love it. Everyone wins.

Little Tikes Jump ’n Slide Bouncer

Staff-favorite bouncy castle

This bounce house for ages 3 and up inflates in just a couple of minutes.

Buying Options

$250 from Amazon

$299 from Walmart

$283 from Wayfair

My sister-in-law bought my kids our first bounce house—the Little Tikes Jump ’n Slide Bouncer—for Christmas in 2019. My wife and I reacted with a mix of incredulity and mild annoyance. “This looks like a gigantic pain,” I thought. I was wrong. The bounce house has proven to be a godsend.

In the early days of the pandemic, my kids, then 4 and 2, were cooped up at home with no school, playgrounds, or friends for nearly three months. They were crawling out of their skin. The Little Tikes inflatable house let them gigglingly bounce themselves to the brink of exhaustion.

Not to be outdone, my brother (who seems to believe that love is best measured based on the physical size and outrageousness of gifts given) bought my kids this Bountech inflatable climbing wall and waterslide contraption. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said to my wife when we received the gift of a second giant inflatable. Once again, I was wrong. This inflatable, too, has been a godsend.

The Bountech inflatable—which appears under a few different brand names on Amazon—looks like a cheesy monstrosity. There’s a climbing wall that leads to a slide that leads to a shallow pool of water festooned with inflated water guns and a basketball hoop. The whole thing screams excess. So of course, my kids love it.

Like the Little Tikes bounce house, the Bountech structure takes just a couple of minutes to inflate. Then I fill the shallow pool with a few inches of water using my (Wirecutter pick) Dramm hose. It typically takes me about 10 minutes to fill ’er up.

The Bountech structure comes with tubing that you can attach to the inflatable water guns on the side, but I’ve used that only once or twice. The tubing is kind of a pain to set up well, and my soaking-wet kids don’t seem to care. They’re delighted to spend the afternoon scrambling up the climbing wall, skidding and jumping down the slide, and splashing around in the pool.

Bountech Inflatable Water Slide

Staff-favorite inflatable backyard water park

It has a climbing wall! A kiddie pool! A slide! Water cannons! It’s a lot, but kids love it.

Buying Options

Buy from Amazon

My kids, now 7 and 5, have used both of these inflatables scores of times. We use them on random spring Tuesdays when the two of them just want to bounce for a few minutes. We use them during summer Sunday backyard BBQs to occupy a pack of kids while the grown-ups drink beer and chat with minimal interruption. We even used the water slide inflatable at a backyard party attended by 10-plus preschoolers and avoided any serious injuries. (The manufacturer recommends that only three kids use the Bountech structure at a time. I’m afraid that I have not abided by this guideline.)

These two are the only inflatables I’ve owned. I can’t say they’re the best ones out there. I know only that they’re the ones I have, and they are very good.

They’re surprisingly easy to set up

My two biggest reservations about these giant inflatables were bulk (“Look at how big this monstrosity is!”) and labor (“Inflating, deflating, and storing this thing will be a total drag.”). I was wrong on both counts.

Setup of both inflatables is a breeze. You lay the deflated bounce house flat (we do this on the grass in our backyard, but we’ve also done it in my in-laws’ spacious basement in Toledo, Ohio), plug in the included blower (the built-in extension cord easily reaches our garage some 15 feet away), connect it to the bounce house via a fabric tube, and let ’er rip. The whole setup takes maybe two minutes.

And while both of our bounce houses are indeed big when inflated—the Little Tikes structure has a footprint of roughly 12 by 9 feet on the grass, with a height of 6 feet—it’s pretty extraordinary how small and light they are when broken down.

When the fun’s over, you simply turn off the blower. The bounce house deflates and collapses in just a minute or two, and from there it’s very easy to pack up. I am a lazy and sloppy bounce-house folder, and even I can get it to a size that is barely bigger than a carry-on suitcase and probably weighs less than 10 pounds or so (without the blower).

The Bountech inflatable takes a bit longer to break down, mostly because it’s filled with water. But simply stepping on one of the pool’s inflatable walls for a few minutes—and letting the water rush through the breach caused by this depression—empties it well. Then I’ll leave the inflatable to dry in the sun for a bit before I deflate it and store it.

But there are drawbacks

Of course, bounce houses have their downsides. I have gasped in alarm more times than I can count when my daughter has ruthlessly clotheslined her little brother, or when I see their craniums flying toward each other at full speed, a double concussion surely just a second away, before they whiz past each other harmlessly.

So far, we’ve been lucky enough to avoid major injuries. But it’s not hard to imagine how multiple kids vigorously jouncing around could smash into each other, cracking teeth, breaking bones, or piercing skin.

So please, if you buy a bounce house, set some ground rules. Our kids know that all hard and sharp toys are banned from the bounce house. We also made a rule that if someone starts crying, everyone has to get out of the bounce house, at least for a minute. (This way, everyone is incentivized to stay safe for fear that playtime could be cut short.)

A bounce house is not a forever toy. But we’ve used each of our inflatables dozens upon dozens of times over a few years, and while they’re dirtier and more sun-faded than they were out of the box, they’re still in solid shape.

These days, I can already hear the whispering wheeze of a tiny leak in a handful of spots. But for now, these minuscule apertures are no match for the powerful blower that runs for the entire time the bounce house is in use.

I imagine that one day, hopefully still years away, one of my kids will carom off a wall with such joyful intensity as to puncture or tear the bounce house beyond repair.

I’m okay with that. The fun of a bounce house is its invitation to gambol and twirl and flip and romp with the pure zeal for fun that only children can truly muster. A bounce house won’t last forever. But neither does childhood. Let’s just enjoy it while we have it.

This article was edited by Catherine Kast.