10 Surefire Ways to Ruin Your Socks

Darn Tough socks are meant to last, hold up to extreme use, and stay comfortable along the way. This is all backed up with a lifetime guarantee, too.

Being as well-made as they are, the socks themselves are hard to destroy. But here are 10 ways, if you really wanted to, you could do your best to ruin them and really test the limits of the sock’s durability. (Wouldn’t recommend it though.)

Use them as gardening gloves (or mittens)

This isn’t the time or place to explain that socks go on your feet. But let’s say you had to prune a gnarly rose bush and couldn’t find your leather gloves.

Theoretically, you could slide your paws in some socks and use them as mittens. It’d be terrible—your dexterity would decrease, and the thorns would poke right through the Merino Wool. Super ineffective. Plus, you’d get so many holes they’d look like wool Crocs.

Cultivate a moth colony

While it’s a known fact that moths would do anything to get their lamp fix, clothes moths would risk it all to chew a hole in your wool sweater, wool socks, or wool pants.

Most people try to keep these flying a-holes out of their closets, but if you’re trying to raise a colony, housing them in your Darn Tough socks is… a choice. A choice that would leave your precious socks in tatters and all your friends asking why you’d want so many moths.

Run over with the lawn mower

Parents, why are we always picking up the most random things in the most random places? The other day I found our hair dryer on the back deck. Why? Who knows.

So it’s not out of the question that one of your beloved socks could find their way into the long grass of the backyard and get mowed over while you have your headphones blasting Jimmy Buffet. Darn it. Sad situation with a great soundtrack.

Emergency zipline hanger

After watching Bear Grylls, I’m always waiting for a situation to arise where I need to fashion an emergency zipline to scale down some cliff or something. I already have it planned out: I’d take climbing the rope out of my pack (because, duh, I’d be packin’), tie one end to a large rock and throw it as far as possible, then take off both socks, toss them over the rope and slide my way to safety.

As I near the finish line, the friction begins cutting through the socks, and just as they are ripping in half, I land solidly on my feet. The socks would be toast, but I think that would work.

Walk across hot coals

Whether as a test of courage, rite of passage, or corporate team building event, firewalking is a tradition that’s lasted thousands of years across many different cultures. Now scientists say that it’s possible because our feet do not touch the hot surface long enough to burn, and that embers don’t conduct heat very well. That said, it still sounds pretty hot.

If you kept your Darn Tough socks on, it’d probably make the ordeal a bit easier, but I imagine you’d burn some serious holes in the bottoms. This should go without saying, but don’t go trying this in your backyard after a long day BBQing.

Sock tug of war with dog from The Sandlot

Dogs love playing tug of war, and usually, as their master, we can win no problem. But for as nice as the dog on the other side of the fence in the 90s classic The Sandlot ended up being, there’s NO WAY you’d be able to get your sock back once he’s latched on.

The drool alone is enough to cause you to lose your grip and his sheer strength-to-weight ratio would pull you right through the fence into James Earl Jones’ junkyard. Just forget the socks, Smalls, even if they are Darn Toughs!

Make a Merino Wool-banana smoothie

Remember when viral videos started going viral? Like 2006? There was one popular series about all the different things you could blend in a Vitamix. Avocado pits, cell phones, foam footballs—they all got tossed in and blended up. Turned into salsa. Pulverized. The internet is a weird place.

If you made a Merino Wool-banana-strawberry…it would totally destroy the sock and likely your blender, too. But if you’re doing it for the views, does it matter?

Drop it in a hamster cage

When I was a kid, my parents finally bought me a hamster and a cage with some of those tubes they can run through. Its name was Oreo, and wow, he sucked. He would run on his wheel and scratch at the bottom of his cage all night. He loved chewing up toilet paper tubes and would spend hours gnawing on stuff.

If your sock fell in there, just consider it gone, because Oreo would chew that thing up in a minute. I recently learned that hamsters sometimes eat their babies, and even each other. Monsters.

Surf with a sock on, and a shark bites your sock

Granted, this idea came from my 4-year-old daughter, but she’s not wrong. Before wetsuit booties were invented, surfers used to throw on wool socks and running shoes to help shield themselves from the frigid waters.

But if you are out there floating on your board and a shark pops up and bites your sock, well, it’d probably be destroyed. Hopefully he’d just get your sock and not your foot, or worse. Thanks, Esmé.

Blow your socks up with fireworks

To be honest, I can’t remember if this idea came from me or my daughter. Not sure what that says about my own ideas, but regardless, this still holds up. For as weird as it is that people will spend thousands of dollars on fireworks then turn around and literally light them on fire, people do it.

I don't like buying, but I do like watching, especially when people start doing some of the more irresponsible stuff—like blowing stuff up. An M-80 would do irreparable damage to a sock, no matter how well it was constructed.

These ideas are terrible, wildly improbable, and outright dangerous...but other than that, you’re good.

Get a hole from hiking super far? Covered. Find the fit doesn’t do it for you? Covered. Forget your socks atop a scenic mountain firetower? Sorry, you’re out of luck on that one. But weird things happen, and all claims made in good faith will be considered.

About the Author

Chris Zimmerman is a copywriter, content creator, and wordplay enthusiast who enjoys spending his time exploring the nooks and crannies of the Pacific Northwest with his wife and daughter. When he’s not chasing around a 3-year-old, he likes to spend his time snowboarding and attempting to surf.