I purposely tried to run these little guys through the ringer when testings. I hold true that if they can handle abuse that I'm bound to give in my pre-camping testing they should hold up pretty good for some time to come.I marked a couple of these and made sure that I abused the marked ones as much as possible over a couple days. Over tightening them, yanking on them, stepped on, used a sling shot to hurl them at a telephone pole, also clamped them onto a piece of canvas and then hung as many as 4 bricks from them for the day. You know the excessive abuse level, lol. Not only do they hold up a tarp or whatever you want to fit in their jaws well they also held up pretty well with all the abuse that I gave them. Before I go on camping trips I like to make sure that my gear isn't going to crumble just because it gets banged around or you fall off the side of a small cliff and still want to setup shelter. These are important periods in camping and it's nice to know you have something reliable to work with.So I like to punish test gear well before any trips.Granted I did have one of the test clips brake on me but that was after an excessive amount of abuse and well after I thought it should have broken. It happened when I  fired it out of the sling shot for the 5th time, with a pretty substantial pull back. I know my method of testing sounds odd or off to you but like I said, if it can handle extreme abuse it can handle simple applications. Also note that they will bend fairly easy and the "tail" is the weak point of the system. So be sure when storing them that nothing is putting pressure on them from the side or that nothing could.One thing I did notice is that over tightening them to the extreme will start to cause some damage to the tightening mechanism, if your's start to show a white line around the base of the screw inside the "jaw", then you can pretty much kiss that one goodbye. That's a weakening of the material and I experienced that with one of the text units but that was only after excessive tightening (used a pair of pliers to tighten them down).So far, these have passed my test and I would recommend them, they do have some flex to them but it seems to be just the right amount and the plastics used seem to be pretty sturdy. I gave the remaining shark clips to my father to use when he takes his RV out so he can easily extend his tarps over the side. He seems pleased and he enjoyed watching me test these out, he even contributed to some of these ideas.