If I had to pick the best booster seat ever based on name alone, these travel booster seats would definitely win. Every time we pulled our Bubble Bum inflatable boosters out of our suitcase, all I could hear in my head was “Bubble Bubble Bubble Bum” to the tune of a song played at my cousin’s wedding a few years ago.
I’ve been curious about Bubble Bum inflatable booster seats for travel for a little while now and I’m glad I finally had a chance to try them out. We were sent two seats to take along with us on our recent travels and I really liked how portable they were and how easy they were to take out of our rental car, deflate and pack into our suitcases-they took up a lot less room than boosters we’ve brought on previous travels and I wish we had these when my kids were younger. At home I drive a Mazda CX-5 with a smaller backseat so these seats are great because they don’t take up a whole lot of room.
My kids are nearly 9 and aren’t required to use a car seat anymore, but I’ve read a lot of recommendations for children using boosters until age 11 and so we are determined to use boosters for safety as long as possible, and especially when we travel, carpool or go on road-trips. The most important reason is because I’m worried that in the case of an accident if they don’t have a booster, the seatbelt might not be positioned properly and I want to prevent any injury that I can.
The only problem we had with these travel booster seats was after we packed and unpacked one of our BubbleBums after using it for two weeks we found that it probably developed a hole and it kept deflating. This could be because we did not put it back in its bag when we packed it into our suitcase. It could also have been because we overinflated it in a cool garage before we went out into heat. Or it could have just been a defect. It was still usable for my taller son because it kept the seatbelt positioned better than if he didn’t have anything. And we were sent another to replace it so I’m looking forward to seeing how it works on our next road trip at home. As with any new product, I probably should have tried these out at home before we left on our journey, but again, we don’t totally need car seats so it was easier just to pack and try them out as we traveled.
Based on the other working Bubble Bum that we inflated and deflated 5 times during a 6-week trip and put in airplanes and various cars through a bunch of different climate zones, we were really impressed with this travel booster. It packed well, it was light and it was perfectly portable. Most of all, it made us feel more safe as we drove with our boys.
(PS. As stated above, we received two booster seats to try out for the purpose of the review and the opinions above are my own.)
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
Thanks for the review of these, Terumi! Going to try these out for my daughter, too, as it’s a pain to always carry the booster on flights. So hoping for an easier option like this!
We have these for our older kids and really like them. I’ve never heard of one getting a hole so that makes me nervous, but we’ve used ours for travel for two years now and they are still going strong.
I need to get my hands on one of these for our next plane trip. My son’s not quite ready for a booster seat, but my daughter uses one now. I think they would be so much easier to carry around than the car seat!