Bringing Safety to the Forefront: Understanding U.S. Toy Standard ASTM F963

At every step of toy production, safety is the underlying concern for manufacturers and importers into the United States. Justifiably rigorous standards have been imposed on the U.S. toy industry and, as a result, toys are among the safest products in U.S. homes.

Naturally, like with any evolving standard, the current levels of consistent safety and quality didn’t happen overnight. ASTM F963: Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety, against which all children’s toys must be measured before they can be legally sold, has had over 30 years of revisions and fine-tuning to achieve testing validity in light of ongoing child development research, incident data, and innovations in product design, risk assessment, science and manufacturing techniques.

In order to put child safety first, ASTM F963 sets strict requirements for toys, including both chemical and mechanical requirements for toys that are among the most rigorous in the world. Ever since ASTM F963 was converted from a voluntary standard to a mandatory one in 2009, toy recalls have plummeted. There were 172 recalls in 2008; 50 in 2009; 25 in 2015, and less than 20 in each year since 2018.

Making sure your products are constructed so that they are safe when received and remain safe during normal use and potential misuse during play is an essential part of your contribution of exciting, adventure-level experiences to children’s play time. Here are some key steps you must follow to ensure compliance with ASTM F963 and safely deliver these promised experiences.

Understand the U.S. Certification Process

Before a toy designed for a child aged 12 or younger can be sold in the U.S., the company either producing the toy in America, or importing it into the country, must test their product against ASTM F963.

Once determined compliant by a CPSC-accepted laboratory, the responsible company must produce a Children’s Product Certificate (CPC) to be presented with each batch to the retailer and, when requested, to the CPSC.

Your CPC should include information such as:

• A detailed description of the product covered by your CPC

• Every CPSC product safety rule required for certification

• Manufacturer or importer information

• Contact information for the individual maintaining records of test results

• Product origin

• Any third-party, CPSC-accepted laboratory information used in the certification process

For more details and examples of CPC’s, take a look at CPSC’s website.

Stay On Top of All New Research

Researchers are frequently finding new information about child development; potentially hazardous links between human health and some chemicals, like phthalates; along with quantifiable toy-related injury and fatality statistics. Staying up to date with all relevant research will help inform your toy development and manufacturing decisions, from product design and through every production stage, and can even help pre-empt changes to ASTM standards.

For example, one of the most important regulations under ASTM F693, enforced by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), bans the use of all “small parts” in toys meant for children under three years of age, in order to prevent choking hazards. While this is one of the oldest A “small part”, as determined by the standard 16 CFR 1501, is defined as any toy part (either a component part or a piece broken off during durability testing) which fits completely in a cylinder with a slanted depth, from 1” to 2.25”, and a diameter of 1.25”. These dimensions are meant to approximate a fully extended throat of a child under three.

The Small Parts Test Fixture (SPTF), as the cylinder is known, was created and given its dimensions several decades ago. However, since those dimensions were determined, studies from organizations like The International Journal of Pediatrics have pointed out that significant increases in average infant size seen per decade could be enough reason to increase the dimensions of the SPTF to better reflect the average dimensions of an infant’s throat.

A truly innovative toy company, aware of such nuances, might decide to place their own, even stricter standards on their products as an added measure against unforeseen accidents and potential changes to the standard.

Find a Testing Service that Shares Your Commitment to Safety

Children’s toys on the U.S. market are expected to be safe for use, and parents place great importance on the toy industry’s commitment and ability to conduct their business practices primarily in the interest of child safety.  Parents also assume that the information accompanying children’s toys, such as age-appropriate labeling, has been determined by qualified toy-industry experts and is based on published Age Determination Guidelines.

Your toy company’s goal should be to meet every parent’s expectation of the safety of your product, using every available resource to ensure it will bring no harm to their child. QIMA offers those invaluable resources for every stage of your production, including:

• Updated information concerning all national and international regulations and testing standards, including the latest updates to ASTM F963.

• Quality assurance assistance including product design evaluations and risk assessments to help you develop your design and production processes in accordance with all applicable safety standards, expected use and foreseeable misuse of the toy.

• Critical lab testing measured against national and international standards, including small parts verification,  abuse testing and hazardous chemical levels.

• On-site product inspections to keep you on top of your factory’s daily performance level, with 80% of reports delivered the same day.

Safely produced children’s toys don’t happen by accident. Make sure your company’s commitment to toy safety is backed by a testing service with its own record of integrity.

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