Dog Toy Testing Process | Ballistic Fun
Hi there,
We are often asked if our toys can withstand the insanely destructive forces of Staffies, Vizslas, Bullies, Dobermans, Cane Corse... but also of keen sausage dogs, Jack Russels and other miniature forces of nature.
To answer your question, irrespective of what breed or cross breed you may have as a companies, we've decided to fully disclose our testing procedure.
It's a very structured process into which we've heavily invested in terms of time, research, prototyping, development etc., so this page should answer pretty much all your questions. For anything else, feel free to reach out via email at staff@ballisticfun.com or directly on the online chat. We normally reply within the minute.
To start with, we'd like to make clear that the testing procedure changes based on the type of toy we're working on.
For example, soft toys will undergo different tests compared to chew toys.
WHO TESTS THE TOYS
We have a long list of volunteers who have registered to test our prototypes with their dogs, and they have all agreed to supervise their dogs during any play time, to make sure that if the toy fails, the toy can be immediately retrieved and removed from the play sessions.
If the prototype fails, it comes back to base for deep inspection and where relevant for repair, before it's sent for another testing round.
This is just to make clear that the safeguard of our fluffy friends' health and wellbeing is THE priority.
TESTING LOCATIONS
We normally test the toys with our local community of dog owners in South-East London, however, the bigger and stronger the dogs need to be, the harder it gets to find dogs locally, so we end un scheduling play day all around the UK, and we leave some of our toys with specific dogs for longer periods too.
BEHAVIOURAL TESTING
The first round of testing happens in house with our own dogs. We look at how they interact with the toys we design and whether or not they frequently interact in the way we would expect. Once we reach a point where the interaction is mostly correct, we ask a few volunteers to try the same. Once the behaviour is consistent, we move on to durability testing.
INCREMENTAL DURABILITY TESTING
We start with the three-day toy destruction challenge. In short, we give a prototype to dogs known to be toy destroyers, and we ask them to break the toy in three days, if they can. If they fail, we pass on the toy to another dog roughly 5Kg heavier, until we find a dog who can break it in under three days. That's when we start inspecting the toys, and every time they break, we improve the prototypes until it can no longer be broken in under three days, by that dog. We then pass it on to a larger/stronger dog, and repeat the process until we reach the target size + 10Kg at least. This means that if we design a tug-of-war toy for a 50Kg dog, we'll test it until it can't be broken within three days by a 60Kg dog.
EXTENDED DURABILITY TESTING
Once we've reached target weight +10Kg, we then review the prototype and make final amendments before producing a limited number of pre-production units (normally about 20 units). These toys are then sent to the toughest dogs we know within the target weight. For example, if a toy is build for dogs from 20 to 50Kg, we'll send them to dogs around the 50Kg mark, for them to test for a month. If a toy breaks it is retired and an in-depth inspection is carried out to understand how it failed. At the end of the month, all toys are retired and final amendments are made prior to sending the toys into mass production.
Below you can see our entire process divided in phases and steps. We do things in a very methodical manner, to make sure our toys are good from the start, and to ensure that we improve them at every manufacturing round.
