Why does my dinosaur toy have indented sides?

Our natural rubber dinosaur toys are great as teethers, bath toys and toys and are handmade from environmentally friendly natural rubber but why do some have indented sides? Natural rubber is a great alternative to plastic toys, it is entirely natural and also recyclable. 

All our natural rubber dinosaur toys are hand made in Sri Lanka by small toy producers. How the dinosaur toys are made is that moulds are hand made in the shape of our dinosaur toys and then natural rubber is hand poured in to the moulds and left to dry.

Once the rubber is dry the mould is opened, the toy taken out  We add the main colour to the natural rubber so our dinosaur toys are instantly recognisable in the moulds and it is only the details which then need to be hand painted on.

Once the dinosaur toys have been taken out of the mould they are left to dry out completely

Then the excess rubber is trimmed off before the details are hand painted on

For most toys the process after trimming is that they are then stuffed with acrylic to keep the shape of the toys standard.

The difference between our natural rubber dinosaur toys and the normal ones are that ours are air filled. This means exactly what it says, unlike other toys they are not stuffed with acrylic to keep their sides rigid, but filled only with air. This means that in some toys they have more acrylic than natural rubber in them! To show that visually this is the amount of acrylic our tiny toy producer had stored for use when we visited in March 2022.

Natural rubber can constrict in colder temperatures and when this happens to our air filled dinosaur toys it means that the sides can look concave. We take various steps to avoid this but without something substantial to push the sides out inevitably there will be instances of concave sides.

Our dinosaur toys still have all the play value, they are still completely safe but sometimes the sides can be indented.

When you see the piles of acrylic that we would otherwise use we think this is an ok swop.
What do you think? Should we have some filled with acrylic? We'd love to hear your thoughts on our Instagram or Facebook pages.