Okay… OKAY. Toy Review.

I get a lot of mail from toy companies. Offers to send me some to review. Offers to pay me to put up a banner.  Finally, after I rebuffed one of them, the lady emailed me back and rudely accused me of being anti-toy. This could have been because of my post a while ago in which I discussed the possibility of desensitization.

First, let me make this perfectly clear. I AM NOT ANTI-TOY. I’m not anti vibe. I simply a) have concerns about desensitization and b) don’t want to turn my blog into a shopping mall.

So, here, for good and all is my one and only ever toy review. In fact, I’ll review two.

Firstly, I have to say I don’t use either of these toys on a daily basis. Perhaps once every week or two. Yes, I DO have concerns about developing a dependency on anything that buzzes and requires power. I live in a place with frequent power outages. So I mostly use fingers. No, I don’t own a dildo. Never felt the need.

In another side of my life, I’m a designer. I confess, I hate owning anything I find aesthetically ugly. I just think it is perfectly possible to design something that is not only functional but also beautiful. And I like to reward companies that do this by, if I require a product, buying  from the ones that bother to make lovely looking or cleverly designed things. I do not want to stick anything that looks remotely like a small furry mammal in my cunt. Period.

The Miuzu Buzzlet

Miuzu is not primarily a toy company. They’re a design company who set out to create a good and beautifully designed toy. The Buzzlet is a fairly small, cylindrical vibe.

Here’s why I love it:

The vibe is completely sealed. So it is absolutely waterproof. You can use it in the bath or the shower with impunity.

There is a single button below the skin of the vibe to activate it and it has all the settings  you normally get in a regular egg-style vibe. Three strengths and some different rhythmic patterns. But the buzz it gives is fundamentally different from any other vibe I’ve used. It’s more pulse than buzz in the angry bee sense. It gives a mid-level thrum. The lower frequency (for anyone who has done physics) means that the waves are larger. So on contact, the vibrations are more wide-reaching than a normal vibe.

It is elegantly simple in design. Mine’s white and black.  The shape is perfect in your hand. The little hollow is nice for controlling the thing once my fingers get sticky.

It is the quietest vibe I’ve ever used. On the low setting it’s pretty much inaudible.  Even the medium setting only sounds like a soft purr. Very, very discrete.

It doesn’t plug in. It charges by induction. You just sit it on its little cradle and wait until the light (also beneath the skin, above the button) stops blinking and glows full on. You can pretty much leave it charging anywhere and never worry about offending anyone. It’s not that they couldn’t guess that it’s a vibrator. It’s that you don’t care.

It’s got a warm suede-feel side and a hard, shiny plastic side. When I’m feeling really nasty, I go for the shiny plastic side. Don’t know why, but it makes me feel nastier.

It’s got a small, beautiful, robust box that travels very nicely. When they search your bags, you won’t blush.

Although I must admit to never having done this, I know some people like to bring their toys to bed with their lover. And it can sometimes be uncomfortable to confront a man with a toy twice his size and obviously more designed for specific stimulation. The shape and size of it is such that, were you to take this into bed with a man, it would be practically impossible for him to feel uncomfortable about it.

Conversely, if you are a man and want to buy something for your lover but are concerned that she’ll be uncomfortable with the gift, this is the funnest, most innocent and playful looking thing you could possibly buy her. She’s going to laugh and then she’s going to use it. And then she’s going to use it on you.

Why am I sounding heteronormative? Because I’ve never met a lesbian who wasn’t well passed the whole ‘ew, a toy’ stupidity. I’m assuming greater enlightenment from you girls. Am I wrong?

Some drawbacks:

I’ve read that for some women, it’s not strong enough. Now, I’m not a pussy (er… where is this going?). And I’ll admit that if I only used the low setting, it would take me a while to get off. But setting 2 is MORE than strong enough. I timed myself before writing this. It takes me 4.25 minutes flat from zero to orgasm. I think the issue for many women may not be its strength, but that for those used to egg vibes, the frequency is lower and the sensation unfamiliar.

The documentation is absolutely abysmal. Stylish but abysmal. If I was forced to figure out how to charge this thing from the manual (which is entirely pictographic) I wouldn’t have got it going.  I love great design, but if it fails to communicate salient information, it’s not great design. Miuzu, please improve your instruction manual.

It takes a good 8 hours to charge. Which can be a little annoying. However, once charged, it lasts a seriously long time.

I’m not going to provide links to any specific toy store for fear of being disemboweled via email. Here’s the company’s site. You know how to google.

The Lelo Elise

Lelo is a maker of, on the whole, very aesthetically pleasing toys. And they have a lovely site.

Here’s why I love it:

It’s just fucking beautiful to look at.

A lot of the phallic-style vibes are on the uncomfortable side of large for me. This one is really quite modest. But it’s nicely shaped to give you a filled sensation in all the right places and none of the wrong ones.

The curve on this is spectacularly right for hitting my g-spot. And because it’s not a bendy type vibe, it’s very easy to angle perfectly to induce something very much like tonic immobility.

It has two motors. One in the tip and one in the base, so you can use it as a clit vibe or inside. Lots of lovely settings of course, but there is one that activates both motors fractionally out of sync with each other, and the effect is mind-blowing. Truly and completely mind blowing. If I were male, this would give me a little twinge of inadequacy because for sheer ‘oh, my fucking god’ sensation, there is literally nothing that can compete. It moves from a localized sensation to a feeling that your whole pelvic region is rumbling. Yeah, it really is that good.

If you are fairly convinced that you are never going to have another human lover, you need this toy because it’s technically better than any cock you’ve had. And you’ll want to cuddle it and call it sweetheart afterwards.

It is surprisingly quiet for the punch it packs. Not anywhere near as discrete as the Buzzlet, but it doesn’t scream at you. A pillow will definitely block the buzz.

Lelo kindly packages it with every international plug variation you could need.  And a nice silk drawstring bag that just – just fits the charger too. It also holds its charge incredibly well.

Some drawbacks:

It’s definitely NOT waterproof although it says it’s water resistant. My gut says no to using this in the shower.

It does feel a bit rigid and unfriendly at first. If you’ve been used to soft-feel toys, this does feel harder.

The controls are not hugely intuitive, but it does come with an excellent manual.

It comes in a very plush presentation box – see the site. You open it and feel like you’ve been presented with some obscene award. This wouldn’t seem like a negative, but it’s too big to travel with and, Lelo, all that plastic is going to end up in the dump. It’s overpackaged. It could be easily packaged in a smaller, more usable and travel-ready box. Yes, they do have the drawstring bag, but had I had the choice, I would have preferred a slimmer, smaller box to keep it in.

The Lelo site is here. The Elise page is here.

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Conclusion:

Neither of these toys are cheap. But you do get what you pay for. Both arrive in boxes you’d let  your mother open, and they both have that solidity in the hand that lets you know they won’t break and they won’t fall apart.  Both do exactly what they promise to do and both are very aesthetically pleasing.

Now please stop sending me emails telling me I’m anti-toy.