As a new parent, I always wondered if I’d need to amass a collection of baby travel products that seemed ridiculous, but maybe were necessary.

One of those is the Munchkin White Hot Inflatable Duck Tub, a product from popular baby gear brand Munchkin. It’s an inflatable baby bath that you can bring to a hotel, Airbnb, Grandma’s house or even just outside to play with.

In this review, we want to honestly tell you everything we experienced in blowing up this travel baby bath and how it works out. We read other online reviews before buying it, but we were genuinely surprised with things like setup and blow-up.

This review is in no way sponsored or affiliated with/by Munchkin; we bought the duck baby bath on Amazon for a trip after seeing that it was a good price.

What is the Munchkin travel baby duck tub?

Plainly put and in my own words, it’s a blow-up inflatable baby bath that can be used for travel. It comes compacted down to the size of a box that’s smaller than a shoe box, and that’s essentially how small it can get when it goes into your luggage or tote bag.

It’s made of strong vinyl, much like an inflatable pool tub or floatie. Just like in the pictures, it’s in the shape of a yellow rubber ducky, with a giant duck head and beak, and a spot for the baby to sit.

Read on to see how it really went with blowing it up, as we had read on various reviews that it was “easy” and “simple.”

Why we got it

We were going on vacation to Mexico when I started looking into “how to bathe your toddler while traveling,” and “travel-sized baby tubs for vacations.” The Munchkin duck tub came up first in a lot of my searches and was well-reviewed on Amazon. It’s also cheap. And it weighs about 7 ounces in total weight.

I figured it would be good to have until our toddler outgrew it, and we could use it for more kids in the future. The designated age is 6-24 months, which seems accurate. We also considered that our toddler is on the small side for her age at 20 months. We figured she’d fit right in (she did).

Whereas our last big trip abroad had baby baths at every place we stayed (this was lucky), our Airbnb in Mexico told us they couldn’t get a baby bath and we’d have to figure it out. This is why we got the Munchkin inflatable duck bathtub.

First impressions

Like I said above, I was impressed that it came in such a small box. You can see how the original box looks on the floor of my living room next to the blow-up tub. I assumed it would fit right into our carry-on luggage. This was the goal, after all.

Then there came the blowing-up experience. The duck tub has a few spots for blowing air into. Dan and I both assumed it would be just as easy as blowing up a tube floatie, especially because of all the good reviews online.

Inflating and blowing-up experience

Dan started blowing up the Munchkin travel tub just by blowing into it, like the instructions, and like every parent online had said they “easily” did. He was soon very winded and out of breath. Given that he is way more in shape than I am, I figured there was no way I could even help out.

To put this in perspective, we were going to Mexico City, where the elevation is above 7,000 feet, and that means we’d feel even MORE winded by doing LESS.

You’d expect this would be easy to inflate, like a beach ball or balloon. Once Dan started inflating, he realized he probably couldn’t do it without assistance. When I first took the tub out of the box, it was super flat and compressed, so Dan’s first instinct was to separate the layers to try and make inflating easier.

For 10 minutes, he tried to blow into the tub and it basically didn’t get anywhere. He had to give up!

How to solve the inflating difficulty

I said there’s no way we can bring this duck tub, inflate it, and not faint. What should we do?

Dan immediately got on Amazon and figured out that we should get a product to assist us with the inflating of this Munchkin duck tub.

He found this small air pump and it’s amazing. It has an attachment specifically for inflatables, so you jam it in there, turn it on and let it rip.

There are two ends, so you can use it to inflate and deflate, which works out well if you want to break it down and pack it without too much trouble.

One thing to note about this air pump is that it’s loud, so if you or your baby/toddler are sensitive to loud noises, be careful.

This was one of those times when I was considering if babies cost a lot of money, and then as we needed another “thing” to solve the first “thing,” I was like, yes.

How it worked out for a bath

Our toddler fit snugly in the tub. She is 20 pounds and 32 inches. As in the product description from Munchkin, a child can go in this tub up to two years. I’d put an asterisk after this assertion, though, as we know a lot of very big 24-month olds and we don’t think they would fit in this tub.

Our toddler fit in the tub and it was snugger than her bath basin at home, with a little room for her to play with the Munchkin stacking boat bath toys. I just don’t think a taller, heavier and bigger child would fit in there and not feel squeezed.

“White hot” feature

We did not use this. Munchkin says the White Hot feature is to help avoid guessing if the water in the tub is too hot. What happens is the “white hot safety disc” turns white if the water is too hot for a baby. We rarely make piping hot baths, so we didn’t look for this, nor use it.

Suction cup for air-drying

On the backside of the duck tub is a suction cup that can be used to help the tub dry out before you deflate it and pack it up.

We didn’t see that feature after our first use of the tub, and instead we just flipped the duck bathtub over for the night, and it was dry by the next morning. You bet I don’t want to pack up a wet baby bathtub!

If you need to hang up the tub (like in a stall shower, or other tight space), try out the suction cup for storage or drying.

Should you get it?

We brought the Munchkin travel duck bathtub on vacation because we needed a lightweight travel bathtub that folded down small.

I would say yes, you should get this travel-sized baby bathtub, if you shop with the knowledge that you may find blow-up VERY difficult and that the best thing to buy at the same time is this travel-sized air pump that makes inflating it a breeze.

I’ve had more straightforward (and totally positive) experiences with other Munchkin products for the bath, like the ones you see here:

If you want to see if anyone in your community is giving something like this away because their child outgrew it, try asking on Buy Nothing or using these tips to score baby products for free.

A final note

I had originally asked my “mom friends” what they thought we should do with our Airbnb not having a baby bath for us to use, and a bunch of them said, “Use the shower.” That’s basically the alternative, if you don’t want to first buy the tub, and then the air pump.

And for anyone who has had a better experience blowing up Munchkin’s White Hot duck tub, please let us know!