Backyard Discovery Playsets

This is a tricky one… the entire swing set industry has been turned upside down with COVID-19. Most parents suddenly found themselves with a need for more outdoor play equipment and toys when kids were sent home from schools in spring of 2020. Since then, manufacturers have struggled to keep up with demand. Wooden playsets are a pretty seasonal product, with most sets selling in the spring, followed by a smaller wave over the holiday season. In fall of 2020, manufacturers had to plan for the 2021 spring season, and it seems as though most companies thought conservatively that the demand would not remain as high as it did in 2020. It now looks like they were wrong, so almost everyone is still sold out. There will be a natural slow down for the fall as kids go back to school, but we don’t know if that’ll provide enough time for manufacturers to catch up or meet demand over the holidays.

You know, I really think so. They have engineered this product down to the dollar. You get what you pay for, and you are not paying for a heavy duty swing set -- the price shows that. Backyard Discovery, now merged with Step2, is a big toy company. Do I love the idea that some companies are viewing playsets as a product of a toy company? Not really. It tends to put a toy lens on the product, which plays to the marketing and unboxing at the expense of the product quality and longevity.

On the whole, Backyard Discovery will have the minimum amount of boxes needed for their playsets. They have spent a lot of time thinking through packaging and delivery like most other toy companies serving this industry. By doing so, Backyard Discovery is able to price shipping across the lower 48 states at a flat rate and bake that cost into their product cost (otherwise known as “free” shipping). With that being said, wooden swing sets on the hall are a difficult product to ship and receive.

When it comes to the overall user experience of Backyard Discovery wooden swing sets, you are going to really like the end result after assembly. You’ll like that for two, maybe three seasons. At that point, you may start to get a little bit frustrated with how long the product lasted. The main pro of the Backyard Discovery playsets is that they have reliable models that don’t go out of fashion or become obsolete with any new season. The main con is that they don’t really last many new seasons anyway. You get this for the right price, though.

The models and naming protocols of Backyard Discovery are like most others. Since they don’t have many modular sets (models with interchangeable components), you won’t be confused by suffixes or numbers across models - just a few here and there, like the Skyfort and Skyfort II. Backyard Discovery seems to pick names that are unique and related to towns or landscapes, which is pretty typical in the industry. They don’t seem to rotate names much either, so you’ll be able to recognize one at a friend’s house that is a few years old and easily find the same one under the same name.