Nylabone / Central Garden & Pet

Nylabone has been selected as a 2026 Industry Icon in Consumer Products by The 2026 List, brought to you by Industry & Influence, recognizing the brand’s 70-year history, category leadership, product innovation, sustainability efforts, and continued work to make chewing safer and more useful for dogs and the people who care for them.

Dog chewing is easy to dismiss as a nuisance until it destroys a shoe, a couch, a baseboard, or something far more dangerous.

Nylabone built an entire business around understanding that behavior instead of trying to eliminate it.

The company’s core idea is simple: dogs are going to chew. The better question is how to give them an outlet designed around their size, age, chewing style, dental needs, and level of intensity.

Seventy Years of Understanding Why Dogs Chew

Nylabone introduced its first nylon chew toy in 1955.

Since then, the company has expanded into a broad portfolio of chew toys, edible treats, dental products, enrichment toys, and training-oriented solutions designed for teething puppies through adult power chewers.

That longevity matters because pet products operate in a category where trust is earned slowly.

Pet parents need to understand what a product is for, which dog it is appropriate for, how it should be used, and when it should be replaced.

Nylabone’s product system is built around those practical questions.

The company works with veterinarians, trainers, pet parents, and its own internal innovation teams to develop products around chewing behavior rather than treating every dog as the same customer.

Product Design With a Behavioral Purpose

Chewing can help dogs manage boredom, stress, teething discomfort, and excess energy.

That gives the category a behavioral role as well as a recreational one.

Nylabone’s design approach incorporates shape, texture, flavor, material, durability, and chewing intensity into individual products.

Ridges and textured surfaces also help support teeth-cleaning action while encouraging dogs to remain engaged.

The company’s product portfolio reflects how specialized the category has become.

A puppy experiencing teething discomfort needs something different from a large adult dog with an aggressive chewing style. A dog that needs enrichment may respond differently from one motivated primarily by flavor.

Nylabone has built its brand around those distinctions.

Innovation That Keeps a Mature Category Fresh

A company operating for seven decades has to continue giving consumers reasons to pay attention.

Nylabone’s current new-product lineup spans innovative chew toys made with real meats, interactive treat and enrichment toys, dental-focused textures, puppy-specific solutions, and indulgent chew-treat experiences.

The company’s 2026 featured products also include sustainability-focused chew toys and products tied to charitable initiatives.

That mix is important.

Nylabone is not trying to reinvent the reason dogs chew. It is finding new ways to meet dogs’ chewing needs through innovative materials, shapes, flavors, and product experiences—all built around a behavior that has always existed.

Sustainability Becomes Part of the Product Story

Pet products are increasingly being evaluated through an environmental lens.

Nylabone has responded through energy-efficient manufacturing initiatives, recyclable packaging efforts, material innovation, and its membership in the Pet Sustainability Coalition.

The company says it has replaced incandescent and fluorescent lighting with LED systems and motion sensors across its facilities and has moved portions of its packaging toward recyclable PET.

Those changes may happen far from the retail shelf, but they matter in a high-volume consumer category.

When a product is sold at scale, incremental improvements in packaging, manufacturing energy, and material choice can compound.

A Consumer Brand With a Shelter Mission

Nylabone also connects its core product category to animal welfare.

Through Nylabone Cares, the company says it donates more than $500,000 worth of durable chew toys to dog shelters each year.

The initiative is closely aligned with the brand’s central behavioral purpose.

Destructive chewing and unmanaged behavior can contribute to dogs being surrendered or returned to shelters. Providing appropriate enrichment can therefore support both quality of life and successful placement.

That makes the company’s charitable work more than a disconnected corporate-giving program.

It is directly related to what Nylabone knows how to do.