Pool floats are all over the social media world. Instagram is full of them. We are in love with them. We’ve owned a ton of pool floats since putting in our pool almost 10 years ago. Now that our kids are teenagers, the pool floats are the highlight of our summer. The fact that pool floats are a huge trend right now really helps us out! They just keep getting more fun, more durable and definitely more trendy.

Having one pool float is a lot of fun. A donut floating around in the pool is definitely cool, taking pics in it or with it, more cool. Rock star even. But having a whole pile of fun pool floats feels like a rock star. Living the rich life. It's an easy way to create a trendy space for our teens to hang out with their squad. Honestly, squad goals.

I think the food floats are the most fun for kids. Laying on a giant ice cream is fun for some reason. Sitting in a doughnut, that is usually considered naughty and off limits is kind of fun and badass.

The Unicorn and flamingos (and swans, pegasus and other animals) are more cultural references and trendy I think. There isn’t anything rebellious about them, no one said its not okay to sit on a unicorn like people tell you all the time that it’s gross to eat too many doughnuts. You just probably would never get the chance to sit on a real life flamingo and certainly not a Unicorn. These are more like Make Believe or Pretend Play for bigger people. :)

Having floats of different sizes and types are the best way to rock the pool float trend. Mixing it up with the size, type and definitely the topic -- food, animal, other novelty item-- is for sure the way to really rock it. If you are throwing a theme party, then yes, having 10 donuts of various colors would be super fun. We have no floats the same. Because we’ve discovered ring style floats are kind of boring. One or two is great. Having a pool full of them is boring.

Our Top 10 list:

Our review of those listed above:

the Giant Unicorn. (we call him Stanley) This is by far the best pool float we’ve ever had and at the very top of our list. a 10 out of 10. If you are even thinking about buying a float, we think this one is the best. (And it’s on sale!)
The Unicorn is a must have. This one is a expensive. It was even more expensive at the beginning of the summer. But it is a super float.
Even if you don't have a pool, we would recommend this float for just having as an inflatable toy for your yard.
It has a heavy duty valve on it, you can use a hairdryer to blow it up and its super tough, so it is harder to pop that any other float we've ever had. It is more like a speed boat pulling inner tube type quality than a regular old pool float quality.
It is the perfect size for laying down on--- your head fits so perfectly on the tail. It is a perfect lounging raft.
you can sit on it and never get wet. There is no hole in it, the style is a like a raft. and you can fit more than one person on it. Which the teenagers in my life think is super fun for photo taking.
The only drawback on this one is the colors fading. I am certain that the pink has faded some from it’s tail and mane. I had concerns about this and wondered if we shouldn’t store him out of the sun, but just really liked watching him live in the pool all summer. (I could seriously write a dialogue of his daily adventures of living in our pool).
The Pineapple from Sunnylife Australia is the other float that we all agree is a 10 out of 10. I had no idea when I ordered this one how perfect it was going to be. But it is the best lay down float ever. It is the perfect length for all of our bodies--- from the shortie 5 footer, to the tallest 6 footer. The greens on top makes it the perfect length, and your feet or toes can just skim or dip in the water, which is so perfect when you're floating on a hotter day. So far this has been fade resistant, has held it’s original color and holds air really well. We are super impressed with the quality of this float.
There are other pineapple styles out there. We picked this one because of it’s color and the transparency of the top. I liked the print, it looked different. It wasn’t the kind with a hole in it, which we seemed to have a lot of with the other floats. I like diversity in design.
The Doughnut is a great float. We’ve had this one many times. Each year the pink fades if we leave it in the sun or in the pool (salt water). We have learned that you have to take this one out of the pool and store it in the shade or it will literally be a pale yellow ring by the end of the summer. This ring is a great size, easy to sit in and the diameter makes it a great float for most body types. It’s a great price and easy to justify. And it’s a doughnut. A. Dough.nut. I think this is the most trendy and the one you see people of all ages gravitate towards.
The Giant Flamingo is one that we purchased with the Unicorn. It is a little smaller than the unicorn, but like the unicorn it doesn’t have a hole in it and is more like a raft. It is fun and exciting like the unicorn. You could sit on this one and never get wet if you wanted. It’s tail is smaller, and therefore not as comfortable to lay on it as the unicorn, but it is a great runner up. We’d recommend this one any day. If you had to chose, I’d pick the unicorn, but we love this one too. This one’s name is Henry. Henry and Stanley are the Bouncers of the pool. They knock all the other floats around and keep them all in line.
The pretzel. We’ve had this one twice. and this particular one is a year old. Our first one popped. We love the way this one looks. It’s fun to have floating in the pool. It is not as practical for actual floating, or laying on it. If you have a group and you want to just hang on to things with your legs dangling in the water, this is a great one. More than one person can hang on to this one and it makes it kind of like a party float.
The Ice Cream sandwich is thicker than the pineapple, but kind of along the same line as the pineapple. It’s perfect for laying out and floating, but not very fun honestly. The dark brown gets hot. This float is also thicker. Your feet don’t dangle as much and you have a harder time getting water to you as you float on it.
The Big Mouth Giant Flamingo. This one has a hole in the center, so it’s more like a ring. We’ve had this one 2 years in a row. Our one from last year faded and had a hole that slowly leaked air. This one was is a favorite of Jack’s. He likes to lay in this one. It’s fun. It’s a bright pink. His eyes are wild and crazy. We think of him as flamboyant. His name is Francisco.
The Ice Pop. This one is new to us in July. This one is good, we like it. It’s about the same as the pineapple, the same thickness, maybe a little shorter. Your feet can dangle off the end on either side of the stick. We like it and recommend it. It’s a good price.
The watermelon ring from Big Mouth is new this year. It is classified as a Giant ring style float. and honestly, it IS giant. it’s too big to sit in comfortably. It’s fun. but not nearly as fun as the others. And it has also faded already. The red is not bright and cheerful as it was when we purchased it. It is more like a dull shade of red. This one definitely needs to be stored in the shade or even indoors. We have stored it in the shade and usually the red side down, and it has still faded. It’s a good price. But as far as style goes, it’s kind of boring. It’s basically just a ring that is designed to look like a watermelon. Meh.
Donut Drink Floats I talk more about these in a paragraph below....

Overall the Big Mouth floats are great, fun and they fit right into a nice price point. They are affordable. and that is awesome. If you want them for a summer or maybe 2, the Big Mouth brand floats are perfect for that. the others are more expensive, but perhaps will last a big longer.

Our wish list for adding to our collection:
The watermelon from sunny life australia.
The ice cream cone from sunny life australia.

We would love to try these. especially since we love the pineapple so much. The quality of the pineapple is so great, we’d love to have the others.

The heart shapes from Ban.do
The Cherry Float
The pizza. They’ve begged me for the pizza. They want to lay on the pizza slice for some reason. Again maybe because it's naughty like the donut.

Pool floats we used to have and would recommend for younger kids but don’t really do much for our kids anymore:

the Ice Cube
The Ice Cube is FUN. Climbing into the Cube and rolling around, having your friends roll you around, climbing on it, in it and all around it is pure joy. It’s not so fun for being alone or not fun for just floating around. This is more like a toy and to be used as such. We have popped this and so I guess I caution to have fun, but also to be somewhat careful. It’s not made of the same durable quality as the Unicorn. It’s not meant to last forever.

Things we don’t recommend are the drink floats. The bird floats are useless. We got these just for fun. Honestly, we didn’t try to put plastic party cups in them, but our usual jar glasses. This was a mistake, as they simply tip over. They just floated around or sat randomly around the pool deck and collected dust and dried leaves. Dumb. ugh.

We also got the donut drink floats. These however I purchased for the kids and gave them to the kids on the flight to Hawaii. They have never taken them into the pool but more use these around the house after we returned from Hawaii. It was a fun gift surprise thing and they treat them as that.

You might be wondering why on earth I would readily agree to spend money on all of these floats. Several thoughts on this and why I think you should try to rock the pool float trend:

I know where my teens are. Knowing where they are and what they are doing is a calming thing for any parent. I think if you are a parent and you are reading this, I don’t really need to go into any further explanation. You get me.

Having these floats attracts the other kids. They want to be in our pool as opposed to other pools. For kids who are usually home bodies this gets them to actually interact with other kids.

The pool and floats are instafamous among the crowd. they take a ton of selfies and pics with the floats. It’s fun and it was easy for me to please and entertain them. Even if it is fleeting and lasts for just this summer. We will never forget that one summer when we had Stanley living in our pool.

Honestly, it’s probably cheaper for me to buy a stack of pool floats than to pay for all of the other activities they might want to do instead.