Babygear Testing & Safety
It all starts with safety
Squeals of delight, sighs of contentment, giggles of joy … those are some of the reactions our designers hope to hear from people using our babygear products. Add peace of mind and you might get a smile from the Fisher-Price Safety Committee and Product Integrity Engineers.
“From the very start of a design concept, we work to make sure our products are as safe as they can be,” says Kitty Pilarz, Director of Worldwide Safety for both Mattel and Fisher-Price. “Parents have trusted us for more than 75 years to provide safe products for their children, but we know we must earn their trust every day.”
Kitty and her staff work closely with the company’s design groups to make sure each and every babygear product not only meets U.S. safety regulations and international standards, but lives up to the traditionally high Fisher-Price standards of quality, as well as consumer expectations. A significant amount of babygear safety testing is done along the way.
“We evaluate products right here in our test labs for safety and reliability, going well beyond what’s required,” notes Kitty. “We know that babies drop things, throw toys, mouth them, and more. Our products are going to be pulled, twisted, jostled, washed, dried, sometimes even stood on. We know that toys and babygear get handed down in families or shared with friends, so they’ll be used by more than one child. That’s why we do such rigorous testing.” The engineers rely on training, experience, research and scientific data to anticipate situations of potential use or misuse. To ensure babygear safety, technicians test very specific product functions, often inventing mechanical equipment that will activate switches, levers, and buttons thousands of times. Additional quality assurance tests are performed during production to make sure babygear manufacturing is consistent with the high standards established during the design and development phase. And it doesn’t stop there—babygear safety testing and other performance evaluations are even done after products are made to make sure they meet all standards, and that they arrive safe and sound in your home.
So when your baby squeals with delight even after hundreds of bounces in a Jumperoo, or enjoys
the soothing comfort of a bouncer or swing, you can be happy too. Because those Fisher-Price
babygear products have been put through the wringer long before landing in your living room.
