If you’ve ever tried to inflate a modeling balloon by mouth you probably haven’t succeeded.
Such balloons are much harder to inflate than round ones, and you need to know a special technique to succeed. It is not recommended for several reasons: apart from hygiene, because you give children a balloon that has just been in your mouth, each latex balloon is filled with talcum powder that you can inhale, and latex, like any natural material, can cause an allergic reaction.
So, for inflating balloons, I recommend a balloon pump. Balloon pumps are divided into mechanical and electrical. Mechanical can be small manual or larger floors, which inflate the whole balloon in one move, and many love them. There are one-way and two-way, depending on whether they blow air into the balloon as we pump in one or both directions.
Pumps that are not specifically designed for balloons, such as bicycle pumps, mattresses, etc., will not be useful for modeling balloons. So don’t throw money at them. Latex is stretchable, but it needs a certain amount of strength to stretch, unlike a bicycle, ball or mattress tire, which does not stretch but only fills with air to keep its shape. Therefore, it is almost impossible to inflate latex modeling balloons with hand-held ball pumps, just like electric ones, because they are usually too weak.
There is another important catch: not every two-way hand pump is the same! Namely, there are various performances, which are not there for aesthetic reasons, but functional! Apart from the fact that some are adapted for easier installation of several types of balloons, and others are intended only for certain sizes of balloons, if you follow tutorials from the Internet in which someone says "three pumps", not every pump will inflate those "three pumps" equally! This is because cheap pumps have holes in the bottom through which air comes out, while with quality pumps this does not happen, and when you inflate "three pumps", the balloon will not deflate while attached to the pump, but always remains equally inflated!
Anyone who intends to take balloon modeling more seriously will understand that it is great decision to invest in a special electric compressor for inflating modelling balloons, because it is hard to pump small hand pumps for several hours. Pumps are only good for occasional home use.
