I feel passionately that plagiarism is indefensible, in the sex toy industry and outside of it. It’s one thing to garner inspiration from someone else’s work, and even to “try on” their style while figuring out what your own style is – heaven knows I’ve done that – but to steal someone’s entire idea, and (even worse) pass it off as your own? Not cool.
I suppose this staunch belief of mine stems in large part from being a creator myself. It sucks to work on something for a long time, fine-tuning the concept and its execution, making sure it’s as good as it can be – and then see that someone else has totally ripped it off. This is especially egregious in cases where the imitator ends up making a ton more money than the originator, as with big companies like Shein stealing from small, indie designers. Too often, this process ends up concentrating cash into the hands of already-wealthy, privileged people, while financially devastating the oppressed and overlooked creators who made the thing in the first place. (Many of the designers Shein has plagiarized are Black women.) I get fucking incensed thinking about it, to be honest.
The latest instance of this that I’ve heard about is a kerfuffle between sex toy companies Osuga and Biird. When the former reached out recently to offer me their flagship toy, the Osuga Cuddly Bird, to review, I got major déjà vu. “Haven’t I already reviewed this?” I wondered, and then realized the toy looked exactly like the Biird Obii, which indeed I had previously reviewed.
I asked the folks at Osuga if the two toys were one and the same, and they replied to tell me this wild story: Biird had offered their services as an overseas distributor for the Cuddly Bird, since Osuga had not gone international yet, and despite Osuga’s explicit instructions that Biird was not to misrepresent themselves as having actually created the toy, they went ahead and did exactly that.
Evidently, Osuga had worked hard on this design. It’s an elegant and simple sex toy with a millennial, Instagram-friendly sensibility. It doesn’t “look like a sex toy,” per se, which I know is an important factor for people who value discretion or aesthetics. It’s such a great design, in fact, that it won a Red Dot Design Award in 2019. The chief designer on the project was Siting Lin, an industrial designer from Shenzhen with an impressive portfolio; it appears that some (or possibly all) of the other designers are Asian women as well (yay, underrepresented groups in tech!). But sometime after Netherlands-based company Biird took over some of the Cuddly Bird’s distribution, they renamed the product the Biird Obii, and began publicly taking credit for the design.
My contact at Osuga told me that when reviews of “Biird toys” started popping up on the internet (including here on my blog, for which I’m genuinely sorry – I should’ve done more research beforehand), they reached out to Biird to ask that they change the product name back to the Cuddly Bird and stop promoting it as if it were their own creation. Biird only half-complied with this request, changing the name back but continuing to claim on their website to this day that they created the toy “after years of research and tinkering.” Enraging!!
I’ve been informed that Osuga recently notified Biird that they are terminating the working relationship between the two companies, understandably. I have to wonder what Biird will do, now that they’re no longer able to take credit for other people’s hard work. Will they launch some new sex toys of their own? Doubtful. In my experience in this industry, “once a plagiarizer, always a plagiarizer.”
If you’re wondering what you can do about this injustice, I would suggest buying an Osuga vibrator directly from them if you’re in the market for one. The toy in question, the Osuga Cuddly Bird, is a great little pressure-wave clitoral stimulator that doubles as a bedside lamp (?!). They also make a toy called the Osuga G-Spa, which pairs clit stimulation with G-spot vibration. If you use the code “girlyjuice,” you can get $40 off your order, which is a great discount on toys that are already reasonably priced for how high-quality and well-designed they are.
Another thing you can do is something I neglected to do before reviewing the toy Biird claimed was theirs: do your research on sex toy companies. Some are ethical, and many are less so – and if that’s a factor that matters to you when shopping for sex toys, it’s best to be informed so you can support the folks doing good work. When painstaking labor and cutting-edge creativity go into the making of a product, I think it’s best to support the people who actually did that work – not the people who thought it was acceptable to coast on others’ success.
This post was sponsored by Osuga, but to be perfectly clear: as always, I really do believe everything I wrote in this post. It really does piss me off that someone ripped off their design, and I really do think it’s a fantastic design.