Sex Toy Reviews

Review: Sistalk Doctor Whale

Kate Sloan

Friends keep asking me what the deal is with the little stuffed cyclops-whale displayed in my room. “It came with a Kegel toy I’m reviewing soon,” I always say, which is a strange sentence. #SexToyReviewerLyfe, amirite?

Sistalk recently sent me their Doctor Whale vibrating Kegel exerciser – and that accompanying Doctor Whale stuffed animal. (I don’t know what he’s a doctor of, nor where he got his medical degree.) It’s a cool idea: an insertable vibrator equipped with pressure sensors, so it can vibrate your G-spot pleasurably while also guiding you through a Kegel exercise regimen and sensing how well you’re doing on your workout. The toy is controllable via an app called Monster Pub, which is also where you can set up and track your Kegel exercises. You can use Sistalk toys as regular wearable vibrators as well, controlling their vibrations via the app.

Sistalk designed this product well in some ways: its silicone is smooth and soft, it’s easy to insert, and it’s comfortable to use. The whale’s tail sits against my clit but doesn’t really vibrate it, so I’ll never have an orgasm from this toy alone, but that isn’t really its aim. The whale’s body is big enough that I can feel it when I squeeze around it, but not so big that it’s uncomfortable. To my surprise, the motor is quite good: rumbly and strong enough to please my fickle G-spot. Physically, the toy is well-thought-out.

But problems arise once you get into the Bluetooth connectivity and app-controllability. The connection between the toy and my phone is always tenuous at best, usually disconnecting after a couple minutes if not sooner. Other reviewers have experienced this issue too so I know it’s not a fluke with my particular toy. Needless to say, it’s hard to focus on a Kegel exercise routine when you’re concerned the vibe will disconnect at any moment, which it inevitably does.

The app itself is too busy, bursting with options. I’ve dated enough app developers to be able to hear their tut-tutting in my head as I flip through this app’s overburdened menus and screens. There’s also a language barrier which makes many of its instructions confusing or downright hilarious (I’m still gigglin’ about the Kegel exercise narrator telling me to squeeze my “vageena” tighter).

I think this line of toys has a lot of potential; the designers just need to fix the connectivity issues, tighten up the app, and maybe construct a more stimulating tail for this li’l whale. Until then, I recommend the We-Vibe Sync if you’re looking for an app-controllable vibrator, and a good old-fashioned pair of Kegel balls if you want to work on your pelvic musculature. Hopefully Sistalk works out the kinks with their products so lots of folks can enjoy these adorable, health-promoting monsters!

 

This review was sponsored, and as always, all writing and opinions are my own.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2017: 1 Fantastic Toy Company

Kate Sloan

“Wow, you really like We-Vibe, huh?” my boss asked me shortly after I started a stint working sex toy retail earlier this year.

I looked at her blankly. Of course I like We-Vibe. We-Vibe makes high-quality, body-safe vibrators with strong, rumbly motors and some of the best-honed technology on the market. What’s not to like?

Choosing a company to profile in this year-end feature has sometimes been tricky for me (previously: Fucking Sculptures, Aslan Leather), but this year it was so, so easy, because I use We-Vibe’s products more than those by almost any other company. They fit into my sex life seamlessly, whether I’m alone or with a partner. They just… do what they’re supposed to do.

The We-Vibe Tango remains the real MVP of my toybag. I own two of them now, and frequently exhaust their batteries from jerking off with them several times a week. In fact, the Tango was far-and-away my most-used vibrator of the year, facilitating a whopping 93 of the 333 orgasms I had this year (that’s 27.9% – more than any partner I had this year, certainly!). It just works well. The vibrations are rumbly and powerful, the shape jives with my clitoral preferences, and I know I’ll reliably have an orgasm with this toy. It’s also magnificent for sliding between bodies during partnered sex, whether a partner is fucking me, fingerbanging me, or using other toys on me.

I also keep a We-Vibe Touch at my parents’ house for my use when I sleep over there, and it serves me well. The shape isn’t my favorite but with dat motor, it doesn’t really matter.

Speaking of motors, We-Vibe’s made one of the only existing couples’ vibes with an actually good one: the We-Vibe Sync. This is my #1 recommendation for people looking for a couples’ vibe or a toy that can be controlled long-distance. With their We-Connect app and Bluetooth connectivity, We-Vibe has perfected this functionality in a way other companies have failed to. The toy stays connected, does what it’s supposed to do, and is controlled via an intuitive and exciting mobile interface. As someone who’s had multiple long-distance beaux this year, this toy has been an important one for me!

Some other favorites of mine from the We-Vibe catalogue: the rumbly and usefully-shaped Gala, the G-spot-targeting Rave, and the dually-stimulating Nova. To be fair, they also released a few toys this year I’m not as fond of – like the Wish, with its finicky motors, and the uncomfortably-shaped Ditto – but, for the most part, they are always pushing themselves to make better products, and seem to take customer feedback into account. When a new We-Vibe product comes out, even if I’m skeptical, I’m always at least curious.

I knew my We-Vibe love had become part of my brand when, the other night, after some thoroughly unraveling phone sex, a long-distance beau asked me, “What vibe were you using? The Tango?”

“Yep. I love it,” I said. “I have two.”

“Alright,” he countered. “No need to brag.”

12 Days of Girly Juice 2017: 9 Best New Sex Toys

Kate Sloan

It was a good year for sex toys! I acquired over 65 new toys this year. (Yeesh. Being a sex toy reviewer is weird and great.)

You would think it might be hard to pick my top 9 favorites from that massive number, but actually, I’m a total snob. It’s rare that I acquire a new toy and love it enough to keep using it after I’ve reviewed it. Here, then, are the 9 best new treats I got this year, and where you can get ’em if you think you’d also like ’em…

9. Kronic Sensations wooden bat. I picked this up impulsively one day at local Toronto sex shop Kink T.O., and it was such a good purchase. These bats are incredibly thuddy, like getting hit with an actual mini baseball bat – so if you like your impact sensations deep and penetrating, rather than surfacey and stingy, you’d be into these. (Available at Kink.)

8. Sportsheets under-the-bed restraints. These are so basic, so useful, so necessary that it’s odd to think they haven’t been attached to my bed for my entire adult life. But no: I only acquired them earlier this year. They’re the easiest way to seamlessly incorporate bondage into your sex life. When I’m having a lot of kinky sex (i.e. not lately), I use these all the damn time. A++, 10/10, would recommend. (Available at SheVibe, Ignite, Peepshow, the Smitten Kitten, and Early to Bed.)

7. Zumio. I’m rarely in the mood for this thing, but when I am, woof, I need it. It’s one of the best tools available for intense, pinpointed clitoral stimulation. Its mega-intensity also makes it useful for kinky forced-orgasm scenes: if you’re holding a Zumio to my clit, you’ve got my goddamn attention, I’ll tell ya that much. (Available at SheVibe, Ignite, Peepshow, the Smitten Kitten, and Early to Bed.)

6. We-Vibe Gala. I just got this recently and am already loving it. (Full review to come in 2018!) Its two-eared shape makes it ideal for people like me who abhor direct clitoral stimulation and prefer having their clit touched through the clitoral hood or inner labia. The motor is also excellent, as is standard for We-Vibe toys. (Available at Come As You Are, SheVibe, Ignite, Peepshow, and the Smitten Kitten.)

5. ScreamingO Charged Vooom. I reviewed this along with a cadre of other cheap vibes and the Vooom was the only one I loved and continued to love. This zippy little raspberry-pink bullet vibe performs remarkably well for its price point, and makes a capable understudy for my beloved Tango when needed. (Available at Come As You Are, SheVibe, and Peepshow)

4. Weal & Breech purpleheart paddle. This beaut unseated my previous favorite impact toy from its throne this year. Fancy, handmade, and one-of-a-kind, it makes me feel like a kinky queen. The perfectly balanced weight and ergonomic handle make it clear this paddle was created by kinksters. I’ll never forget when, midway through our first spanking session with this toy, my then-boyfriend moaned low in his throat, “I reeeally like this paddle,” to which I moaned back, “SO DO I.” (Similar product available at Come As You Are.)

3. We-Vibe Nova. I technically got this last year, when Bex gifted me one, but didn’t give it a proper shot until early 2017. The Nova is, hands-down, my favorite dual-stimulation vibe I’ve ever tried. As is par for the course with We-Vibe, it’s thoughtfully designed, high-quality, and pleasantly rumbly. When I’m craving deep vibration on my G-spot and clit simultaneously, I know the Nova is the best tool for the job. (Available at SheVibe, Peepshow, Ignite, and Early to Bed.)

2. Doxy Die Cast. Definitely the prettiest wand vibe in my collection! I still reach for my Magic Wand more often, because it’s lighter and the lower speeds are rumblier, but the Die Cast has definitely snuck into my starting lineup this year. It’s wonderfully luxurious and always powerful enough to get me off. And that glitter finish! Swoon! (Available at Come As You Are, SheVibe, and Peepshow.)

1. Standard Glass S-Curve. A gift from Bex, this is indubitably the best toy I received all year. Quite possibly my favorite dildo ever, now that I think about it. Yes, the S-Curve has usurped my beloved Double Trouble as my vagina’s favorite thing, simply because it’s slimmer and more targeted and doesn’t require warm-up like the DT does for me. The S-Curve finds my A-spot with such ease and speed that it’s pretty much the closest thing I have to a “press here for orgasm” device. I’ve also heard reports from partners that it’s a simple and intuitive toy to fuck someone with. Win-win! (Available at the Smitten Kitten.)

What were your favorite toys of the year?

Review: Hot Octopuss Queen Bee

Kate Sloan

Imagine you met a guy at a party and, after a few minutes of cordial conversation, he kept loudly insisting on his brilliance as a cunnilinguist. “I have a supremely talented mouth. I can get anyone off,” he would sneer, with just enough enthusiasm that maybe you’d believe him a little bit, especially if it was late and you were a bit intoxicated and perhaps it had been a good while since anyone had even attempted to get you off.

Imagine, then, that you took him back to your place, removed your clothes, and set him loose on your junk so he could prove his claim. And he then proceeded to blow raspberries all over your vulva – making a loud and ridiculous noise, barely even grazing your clit, and certainly not getting you off. Imagine how you would laugh, as he continued to smile up at you in that unwarranted cocky manner.

This is more-or-less how I feel about the Hot Octopuss Queen Bee. It makes a whole lot of claims it cannot support. And, to add insult to injury, it makes a noise the likes of which cannot be ignored.

The Queen Bee is a new clitoral stimulator roughly the shape and size of a hairbrush. It uses “PulsePlate technology,” whereby the one of the flat sides of the “hairbrush” pounds in and out quickly, creating oscillation rather than vibration. “Although oscillators are commonplace in the medical world, Hot Octopuss is the first to bring this technology to the sex toy market,” the company’s website brags, though this flat-out isn’t true; the Eroscillator has been doing the oscillation thing, and much more effectively, for many years.

Oscillation’s claim to fame is that it supposedly produces deeper, stronger orgasms than vibration, and doesn’t tend to cause desensitization the way vibrations sometimes can. These claims, in my experience, are true of the Eroscillator – the orgasms I have with it are legitimately like nothing else I’ve felt – but with the Queen Bee, not so much. Its PulsePlate is too broad for me, kissing my entire vulva rather than zeroing in on my clit – and while I sometimes enjoy this broadness with, say, a wand vibrator, it doesn’t work so well on an oscillating toy. I have to focus hard to even detect that my clit is being stimulated. I would imagine this would be doubly true for folks with smaller clits and/or fleshier labia than mine.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the Queen Bee’s oscillation significantly slows and weakens as soon as any pressure is applied to the toy. I’m used to this with my Eroscillator: I tend to press it against my body early in a session and then ease up as I continue, allowing it to oscillate more intensely when I’m ready for that. But the oscillations in the Queen Bee are dampened to an almost laughable degree when the toy encounters any pressure. Unless you like holding your sex toys so they only graze your junk with the most feather-light touch, you probably won’t get much out of the Queen Bee.

On top of all that, this toy makes an egregious, unforgivable amount of noise. It’s so loud, I hesitate to use it past 9PM lest I wake my neighbors. It’s so loud, I can’t bring myself to use it when my roommate is home, even if she’s across the apartment listening to Beyoncé at full blast. It’s so loud, I have to turn the volume on my porn way up while I’m masturbating with it, or else wear noise-canceling headphones. It’s so loud, I can’t imagine using it with a partner without both of us dissolving into intractable giggles. It’s so loud, turning it on for even a few seconds makes me feel embarrassed to exist.

Are you getting the picture yet? The Queen Bee is very fucking loud. And it’s not an inoffensive, vague whirring either. It’s a rhythmic, mechanical pounding that seems to scream, “I am using a VIBRATOR!!!” I am reminded of a prank my dad once pulled at his office where he emailed a surreptitiously-named MP3 to some colleagues which, when they opened it, shouted through their speakers, “Hey, everybody; I’m watching PORNO in here!!” The Queen Bee rivals that for its embarrassment-to-amusement ratio.

I have more complaints about the Queen Bee. The buttons that are difficult to locate and press in a hurry. The unnecessarily gendered name and marketing. The claim that the non-pulsating side of the toy is in fact a feature, ideal for “gentle warm-up massage,” rather than the equivalent of holding the handle of a wand vibe against your clit for shits and giggles. But really, my main sources of beef with this toy are its false claims of originality, its tendency to give up the ghost under pressure, and that godawful, inexcusable noise.

If I wanted to eke an orgasm out of something that neither lived up to its ostentatious claims nor complied with noise bylaws, I’d just fuck that guy from the party whose loud and ineffectual cunnilingus was his proudest achievement.

 

Thanks to Hot Octopuss for sending me the Queen Bee to try! Should you want to buy a Queen Bee, you can find it at Peepshow and SheVibe.

An Ode to Fucking Sculptures (and What to Buy Instead)

Kate Sloan

Beloved artisanal glass dildo company Fucking Sculptures has opted to shut down, after years of cranking out unspeakable beauty. This announcement makes me even more proud and protective of the Fucking Sculptures I own, which I already consider so precious I won’t even fly with them lest they get lost in transit.

For those who still dream of fucking a Fucking Sculpture, I’ve compiled some suggestions for other dildos that might live up to their hype, at least sensation-wise. Read on for dildo dupes…

The G-Spoon was my first Fucking Sculpture, and is still, to this day, one of the best A-spotters I’ve ever owned. Mine is on the cusp between medium and large, so it’s big enough to feel impactful but small enough that its weight doesn’t bother me; long enough to reach my A-spot but not so wide as to bump my cervix; curved enough for G-spot stimulation but not so much it can’t get all up into deeper spots. Really, the only thing I don’t like about it is, I wish there was more extra length I could use as a handle. I could thrust a lot faster and harder if more than an inch of the toy stuck out of me when fully inserted.

What to try instead:
• The stainless steel Njoy Fun Wand is about the same length as my G-Spoon, but slimmer. It can hit my G-spot and A-spot with equal aplomb, but in a slightly more pinpointed way than the G-Spoon. The steel feels just as heavy and firm as Fucking Sculptures’ glass does. Like the G-Spoon, the Fun Wand leaves me with almost no handle if I insert it all the way, but it does indeed hit the spots I want it to. Plus that bloopy end feels great in a butt.
• I haven’t tried the Fifty Shades Darker Deliciously Deep steel dildo or the Crowned Jewels Shaftsbury, but they’re both of comparable dimensions to my G-Spoon and have the gentle curve I’ve come to associate with good A-spot toys.
• This Spartacus glass G-spot dildo, is, again, of similar dimensions to my G-Spoon and has the straight shaft + curved tip I’ve often found effective for A-spot stimulation. The looped handle would make it easy to thrust with, too.
• I’ve found the Icicles #53 effective for deep stimulation, though it’s a bit girthier than the G-Spoon at 1.5″, so if you have a cervix that’s particularly low and/or sensitive to pain, I wouldn’t recommend it for that purpose.
• A vibrating option, incase you’re into that: the Jopen Vanity VR9 is long, gently curved, and offers two differently-sized ends for exploring your various internal spots.

I consider the Pussywillow relatively unremarkable compared to my other two Fucking Sculptures, sensation-wise, though it’s still beautiful. Mine is a medium-sized, triple-blooped, softly curved dildo that stimulates my G-spot gently with one end and can nudge my A-spot with the other.

What to try instead:
• The Fifty Shades of Grey Drive Me Crazy glass dildo has gentle bloops of about the same diameter as my Pussywillow. It’ll rub your G-spot, but not nearly as intensely as something like, say, the Pure Wand.
• The Icicles #18 has one straight, mildly textured end, and one end that’s much more curved and textured. Like the Pussywillow, it’ll allow you to explore a few different internal spots and sensations.
• The Icicles #8 is straight (though still bloopy), so if you know you like your G-spot stimulation gentle as fuck, you’ll dig this one more than a curved toy.
• For more intense G-spot sensation but with similar texture, try the Sinclair Institute Crystal G. That long handle should make it easier to thrust with.

The Double Trouble is my priciest and most prized Fucking Sculpture, by far. I use it solo and with partners, and it always satisfies. Its deal is that it somehow manages to be alarmingly girthy (6″ around the smaller end, 6.5″ around the larger) while also hitting my A-spot amazingly. (I wish I had an X-ray machine so I could see exactly how it accomplishes this, because it’s a mystery to me.) I don’t use it much these days because my vag isn’t as enthused about girth as it used to be, but when I really want to feel filled up and deeply fucked, I can’t imagine a toy I’d prefer over the Dub Trubz.

What to try instead:
• The other major contender in the “big, heavy, firm, double-ended, gently S-shaped dildo” category is the Njoy Eleven, another favorite of mine. I find it much more G-spot-centric than my Double Trouble, since I can’t get the Eleven’s big end deep enough inside me to rub my A-spot firmly, though it does graze it a little if I push it as deep as it’ll comfortably go. If you crave Fucking Sculptures for their beauty, durability, and “wow” factor, the Eleven will tick all those boxes for you too.
• If you want something shaped like the Eleven but less expensive, less heavy, and less huge, try the Dorcel So: it’s essentially a smaller, silicone Eleven clone. Its more minuscule girth makes it likelier to be able to hit your A-spot, if that’s what you’re after.
• The Dorr Silker vibrator isn’t as thick as the Double Trouble, but its insertable end is shaped very similarly to my favorite end of the DT, so I think it might feel comparable. Plus it vibrates, if you want it to!
• The Lumberjill Knob is a girthy-as-fuck double-ended dildo like the Dub Trubz, so it’ll fill you up real good, though I can’t personally attest to its A-spotting abilities.
• I’m intrigued by two silicone potential contenders, the Maia Riley and Doc Johnson Beauty. Both are long enough to hit your A-spot (probably), girthy enough to feel filling through the shaft (1.6″ and 1.9″, respectively), and have the tapered and slightly curved tip that tends to work well for A-spots. And they’re both under $35, so if you’re not up for a big investment, these are relatively safe bets.
• There’s sadly not a lot of girthy glass out there, but try the relatively inexpensive Spartacus Blown Medium (1.5″ diameter) or Blown Large (1.75″) if that’s what you’re cravin’. The Medium has a slight curve, while the Large is totally straight, so if width isn’t a dealbreaker, I’d lean toward the Medium for spot-targeting purposes.

This post was sponsored by the good folks at SheVibe. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.