Swimming Pool Toys

Pool toys are simply a great way to encourage your kids (or yourself) to get active and involved during the hot summer months. I don’t need to tell you what a “ball” of fun they can be.

We all have terrific memories of growing up and playing on floats with our sisters and brothers, or our friends. Now, I know kids certainly don’t need toys in order to have fun and make up games, but they certainly help add to their already active imaginations.

My personal favorites are the inflatable pool toys, which present a unique type of experience. Have you ever tried to stand up on one of those? Oh my Lord, it can have you rolling in balls of laughter forever! How many times do you have to splash down unsuccessfully before you give up? It’s hilarious to watch people try to get up on one of those old maroon-red floats and attempt to balance themselves.

Anyway, let’s take a run through memory lane and look at the different “classic” types of swimming pool toys that are still as popular as ever, despite all these high-tech little ones moving indoors at an alarming place.

In this list, I’d include things like rubber balls, water pails, and just normal land toys that kids have for some reason drug into the pool. This is where you can really see those little rascals’ imagination go “off the deep end”. Whatever you throw at them, they will play with it.

I remember growing up and going to the pool and we’d throw a Frisbee and a football around in the pool. On rare occasions we wound up at a place where they had a basketball net hovering over the thing. This was great. It looked like it would be so easy to dunk on it, hanging barely a few feet over the water’s surface, but in reality you could never get high enough up to do anything but grab at the hoop’s net in vain. (There is nothing to catapult yourself off of!)

Into this category falls all the floats, the inner tubes, and every swimming toy of that sort. This is obviously a superb way to relax, as is evidenced by the countless commercials showing some beautiful and inevitably tan woman lounging lazily on her inflatable (possibly while sipping a martini).

But for the kids this is often a wholly different pool toy. They will play King of the Mountain on it, or concoct some other game. They push and shove to claim ownership of the “ship”. These are really some great memories.

Then of course there’s motorized pool toys. Before you get all scared, don’t worry they are not prone to electrocuting everyone in the swimming pool! This includes everything like toys that swim around on their own, little fire engines, and anything else with a motor in it.

Where do they get their power from? Well, I don’t really know. Maybe batteries? I suspect some of them are wind-up type shindigs which when released take on animated features. This is really a crack-up trick to pull on the littlest jokesters. They won’t even be able to understand that the thing is not really powering itself!

Take them into the pool with you and then have a motorized pool toy come swimming full speed ahead at the both of you. It’s sure to either make the little tot either laugh or cry.

Even babies can get in on the act. Yes they have baby pool toys. They have everything nowadays! It’s amazing. All you have to do is set these things to float and send them the way of your baby and she’ll get the biggest kick out of it. Of course, you should probably be in the baby pool before attempting this, but I shouldn’t have to tell you this.

Seriously folks, don’t leave your little toddlers out of the swimming toy fun. They know if you’re ignoring them and the results won’t be good. You have to keep them smiling, too, and luckily there’re toys that will enable this magic to happen. These are also very cheap so don’t worry. You only need to make sure that there is nothing that can be swallowed on whatever you buy. The same rules apply from outside of the pool.

The bottom line is that pool toys are simply a load of fun. They are one of those eternal things, like the gift that just keeps giving. There is something so great about a little toy that can float or swim. Water is really the perfect playground. Don’t you think so? Sometimes I wish I could be young again just to go back to those great days. Alas, there is no time machine invented to do so yet.