I know we all have bigger problems right now, but… have you noticed that the “premium” sex toy brand Le Wand has been blatantly stealing designs from other, more established companies in the industry?
I’ve been suspicious of Le Wand from the beginning. I reviewed their original wand and noted that it “borrowed” heavily from the design of my beloved Magic Wand Rechargeable, which industry titan Vibratex had launched a couple years earlier. Although Le Wand’s founder Alicia Sinclair boasted in interviews that her new wand was “a stylised, fresh, and sexy approach to an all-time best-selling sex toy,” it appeared (and still, to this day, appears) to be an outright copy of the MWR.
It’s the same shape and size, the buttons are placed in the exact same spot and laid out in the exact same way, and it even uses the same unusual two-pronged charger as the MWR. The only significant things Le Wand actually changed are the aesthetic (and honestly, despite Alicia’s insistence that the Le Wand’s “elegant design” is better, I prefer the look of the original), and the motor, which – compared to any Magic Wand product – is abysmally buzzy and just not up to par, last I checked.
Alicia Sinclair’s next foray into toy plagiarism was the Cowgirl, a rideable vibrator and obvious knockoff of the Sybian. I’ll give her a pass on this one because – as I noted in my review – I do think the Cowgirl actually innovates in some ways, namely: luxe leather casing, all-silicone attachments, and handles on the sides that make the toy easier to carry. Still, though, it’s clear that Alicia Sinclair, or at least the companies she founds, have a habit of claiming to “improve” classic sex toys while mostly just riding the coattails of those toys’ success.
Le Wand’s latest misstep is their new line of stainless steel dildos. Anyone who’s paid attention to the sex toy industry any time within the past ~15 years could tell at a glance that these toys are blatant rip-offs of those made by Njoy. Legendary dildo designs like those of the Pure Wand and Eleven have been shamelessly copied and renamed the Le Wand “Hoop” and “Contour,” while the other 3 toys in the steel line aren’t direct clones but are nonetheless still stylistically derivative of Njoy’s. I happen to know that Njoy toy designer Greg DeLong has a mechanical engineering degree and spent years prototyping and reworking his various designs – only to have other companies remorselessly steal them out from under him.
Yes, other companies besides Le Wand have ripped off Njoy designs before. Of course they have: these toys are hugely successful and famously effective; everyone wants a piece of that action. And notably, Njoy doesn’t seem to have a patent for their designs, so this is stealing in the ethical sense and not the legal sense. But Le Wand’s plagiarism hit me harder when I saw it, because this isn’t some cheap two-bit company appearing out of the woodwork; this is an established sex toy company that positions itself over and over again as both luxurious and innovative. How can you claim to be either of those things in good faith if you’re fully stealing designs from a company that is actually luxurious and innovative?
One of the troubling things about all this (there are many) is that Alicia Sinclair’s other company B-Vibe actually fucking rules. They make – among other things – butt plugs that use rotating beads to create a “rimming” sensation. While other toymakers have used rotating beads before, in rabbit vibes and – yes – butt plugs, the B-Vibe plugs’ sleek designs, excellent motors, and surprisingly good remote-control capabilities set them apart. Could B-Vibe be the one actually good and actually original idea this group of companies ever had? [Edited to add on 4/24/2020: Someone called LadyPseudonymia on the SexToys subreddit has since pointed out to me that B-Vibe’s line of “Snug Plug” weighted butt plugs appears to be lifted almost exactly from the Mr. S Leather “World’s Most Comfortable Butt Plug.” (That link is very NSFW, FYI.) Here’s a comparison image. So I guess I was wrong about the B-Vibe line being the most original of this group of companies’ products.]
Some would say I shouldn’t be so hard on Le Wand because lots of sex toy companies steal designs. (Have you seen Satisfyer’s flagrant copies of Fun Factory toys?) The type of person who makes this argument seems to see plagiarism as par for the course in any creative field. But it really isn’t, or at least, it doesn’t have to be. There are enough genuinely inventive sex toy designers out there making cool new stuff every year that I really don’t buy arguments about how “everything is derivative” and “we all steal from each other.” Sure, every creative person in every field is borrowing slightly from things they’ve seen before – that’s the nature of the human brain – but that doesn’t entail, or require, stealing full designs down to the tiniest details. There is no excuse for that level of dishonesty and exploitation. If you don’t have any new ideas for sex toys, you probably shouldn’t start a sex toy company!
Le Wand as a company doesn’t seem all bad – they’ve sponsored friends and colleagues of mine who do important work, and have hired my brilliant pal Eva as their resident sex researcher (yay!). But if they really want to be an ethically good company, they’ll apologize for stealing toy designs, stop selling those copied toys immediately, and produce only original designs from here on out. But they won’t do that, because their business model is predicated on “innovating upon” – by which I mean, poorly duplicating – successful toys that have come before.
Is there anything you can do about this? Absolutely. You can stop supporting companies that steal designs, and tell your friends and partners to follow suit (possibly by sharing this post to your networks!). You can notify these companies, via email and/or social media, that you’ll be boycotting them and telling others to boycott them until or unless they right their wrongs. You can ask your favorite sex toy retailers not to carry brands that steal designs (although, adult-industry retailers need to make money and the small/indie ones usually struggle to do so, so I wouldn’t necessarily push them too hard on this). You can buy toys directly from companies whose original designs have been stolen, like Njoy and Fun Factory. Voting with your dollar has actual, practical effects; we’ve seen sex toy companies slow the production of toxic toys due to consumer outcries, so maybe we can achieve similar ends with regards to design plagiarism.
As for me, I won’t be supporting Le Wand, personally or professionally, until they pull their copycat toys and apologize for their misdeeds. But I’m not exactly holding my breath.
[Edited to add on 4/29/2020: I don’t currently have any business affiliations with Le Wand or any of its sister companies, but I should disclose that their company Cowgirl gave me a free press tour of its Museum of Sex exhibit in 2018. All the toys I’ve reviewed from Le Wand/B-Vibe/Cowgirl were either supplied to me by a retailer for review or bought by me/my partner.]