The statistics are in: sex toys have gotten many of us through the pandemic. Sex toy sales are up as much as 600% (depending on whose stats you trust), and anecdotally, it seems that those of us whose toy collections were already large have not only spent time revisiting and enjoying what we already owned, but have, in many cases, expanded our collections even further. (Guilty as charged!) Whether you prefer wholesale sex toys mega-sites like SexToyUnion or just window-shopping at your favorite local erotic boutique, there’s something deliciously uplifting about buying a new sex toy, if it’s your first-ever or even your 1,000th.
I always tell people who are curious about a toy to read the reviews of it. Not just the toy company’s on-site reviews, which are sometimes fabricated and/or very selectively curated – I’m talking about sex toy bloggers’ reviews. I swear I’m not just saying that because I am one of those bloggers – I, too, read multiple reviews (if available) before buying any new toy. While not all bloggers are scrupulous or ethics-focused (and they don’t necessarily have to be – it’s their blog and their life!), many are, and you can oftentimes find more truthful details in a single sex toy review blog post than in a whole slew of bland, insincere 5-star on-site reviews.
Here are 7 reasons you might want to read sex toy reviews more often…
1. To help you make a purchasing decision for yourself. There are just too many sex toys out there for you to automatically know what’s good and what isn’t. Trust me – I’ve been in this biz nearly a decade, and while I have a pretty good radar for when a toy will satisfy me or disappoint me, there’s just no way to know for sure, but reading reviews often leads me in the right direction.
Pro tip: look for bloggers whose tastes mirror your own. Many disclose this on their About page or in their reviews. If you know you like intensely pinpointed clitoral stimulation and very slim penetration, for example, you’re probably not gonna get much value from the reviews of a person whose pleasure comes primarily from huge dildos and broad massage wands – although you may still find them plenty entertaining!
2. To help you make a purchasing decision for a partner or friend. I have done this many times, in part for the reason discussed above: my tastes are different from other people’s, so if I have a loved one who wants a new sex toy but has vastly different preferences (or anatomy) than my own, reading reviews is the best way for me to figure out if it’ll work for them.
When a close pal asks me for a toy recommendation, generally I’ll do a diagnostic process of sorts, asking them about toys they’ve tried in the past (if any), why they liked or disliked those, and what they’re hoping to get out of a new toy. That gives me a useful filter through which to devour sex toy reviews searching for something that’ll make them happy.
3. As foreplay for using the toy. Anyone else do this?! Sometimes when I’m gearing up for a masturbation session with a toy I love, I’ll read other people’s reviews of it, to remind me of what’s so great about it. It’s sort of like reading movie reviews as “foreplay” for seeing the movie – which is to say, some people will hate it because it’ll spoil their experience or influence their perceptions, but some people will love it because it’ll increase their enjoyment of what follows.
4. To learn about new features or uses of a toy you already own. Sex toys have gotten so high-tech that many have functions you may not know about, even if you’ve used yours several times. Do you know how to turn off the Smart Silence mode on your We-Vibe Wand? Enable the travel lock on your Fun Factory Big Boss? Loop vibration patterns on your Lovense Lush? Sex toy reviews can often help you learn stuff like this. (Not mine, though, tbh – I have long been burned out on writing up technical details of a toy, and am much more focused on language and narrative since I’m a pretentious artsy fucker – but there are lots of reviewers who write about toys with fantastic amounts of detail, like Felicity from Phallophile Reviews and Cy from Super Smash Cache.)
5. To learn about your body. Especially if you have little experience with sex toys and/or masturbating, you may not have a 100% clear sense of why you like or dislike particular toys. I know that it took me years of exploration and research to learn, for instance, that overly aggressive G-spot stimulation without proper warmup feels awful to me, or that buzzy vibrations make my clit want to die.
Like movie critics and music critics, seasoned sex toy critics are armed with contextual knowledge that enables them to describe why a particular toy is good or bad, or at least why some people might love or hate it. Comparing their observations to your own firsthand experiences can teach you a lot of useful lessons about your wants and needs when it comes to sex toys.
6. To keep up with trends in the industry. If the sex toy world interests you, but you’re not on the inside of it (i.e. receiving press releases from random vibrator companies on the regular and avidly reading the trades with your friends), it can be hard to keep up with what’s going on in that sphere. It’s like how music critics always seem to know what album is gonna change the world when it drops in a few months, while the rest of us are still listening to our favorite playlists from high school. (No? Just me?)
Learning about the latest and greatest in the sex toy industry is not only interesting – it also helps you make wiser purchasing decisions. For example, you’d be forgiven for thinking high-quality body-safe toys are automatically expensive, because for many years, they were – but reading sex toy reviews regularly can show you that the industry has shifted and now you can get safe toys at a reasonable price.
7. For entertainment value. Many sex toy reviewers, like my friend Epiphora or the wonderful Girl on the Net, are very funny! Many are also able to tell compelling stories in the form of a sex toy review (I’m thinking especially of Girl on the Net’s review of the We-Vibe Nova 2, written immediately after her long-term relationship ended, which was far more about the breakup than the toy). I actually think a lot about how to make my reviews interesting not only as reviews but as pieces of writing unto themselves. It’s tricky, but it can be done, and a lot of my favorite pieces of sex writing exist in this space between criticism and entertainment.
Why do you like to read sex toy reviews?
This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.