KONG Scuttle Pod Dog Treat Dispensers Toy, Blue, Large

So initially this seemed like a solid food puzzle. I don’t love the hard, more brittle plastic on a toy they know is getting thrown around, but sadly that just seems to be what Kong uses now. The thick red rings were nearly impossible to get off of the end caps, but we could work around that. However, those same thick red rings now detach almost immediately from the center portion when the dogs start trying to get the food out. I mean with zero effort. It just pops off, and now there’s the exposed hard plastic for the dogs to chew on, which they inevitably do with food puzzles as they’re trying to get at the food. It sounds like others have had similar issues. I wonder how many of the food reviews have as well, but the reviews were left before the issues started (we’ve only had this about a month). For over $20 this should be a food puzzle that lasts over a year. Depending on same frail super thin plastic rings to work as “washers” and keep the pieces screwed together AND not even selling replacement rings seems just poor design & business. The same company makes the Kong Wobbler, which is your basic, bash-it-around food puzzle, & we’ve had that for years without the pieces loosening up and coming unscrewed while in use, so it’s not an impossible ask. The IQ ball is made of similar hard plastic & also doesn’t loosen and come apart in use like this. This is just a straight up design failure that they know about & didn’t care enough to fix before selling it to customers.

Each day I tried this, my dog successfully disabled/broke the same replaceable, but critical part of the assembly. On day 1, I started on moderate difficulty as she's had similar roll/flip for treats slow feeders. I was surprised when she was quickly able to stretch and then break one of the red plastic washers/spacers that go between the connector pieces and the body of the toy. "No problem," I thought, "that's why there are extras in the box." I reduced the number of parts to make it very easy for food to fall straight out and then picked everything up for the day. Day 2: I started at an easier setting. Within 2 minutes the whole assembly popped apart and my dog inhaled her food. After the dust settled, I looked at everything more closely. Nothing was broken--except another red plastic ring separator. It turns out that the plastic washer ring that goes between each component is wavy and does not sit flush against or between the more sturdy components. My dog is annoyingly smart and persistent (i.e. hard-headed), so she had picked up on it being the weakest part of the toy and successfully targeted it for nibbling to destruction. Without the plastic washer, you cannot securely connect multiple body pieces together--they just pop apart with little pressure. Day 3: I used only one body piece and smeared some wet food on the end piece to reduce the temptation to take the whole assembly apart. The wet food worked to distract her for a good 5 minutes. But afterward, when my dog realized that pulling/stretching the washer didn't cause all the kibble to fall out she started chewing and, well... It turns out that the other connector components don't hold up well to chewing either. I took everything away before she broke something I didn't have a replacement for. So that's 3 washers made unusable in 3 days and I only had 1 "extra" washer left. I'm not even going to bother. We'll be sticking with the tried and true Kong slow feeders from now on.

Finally a toy that challenged him!