Your First Sex Toys – What Do Wish You’d Known?
As I begin to prepare for the strong possibility of doing a Sex Toy Education Workshop, hosted by a friend, I’m finding that there’s so much information I want to share and I don’t know if I can get it all in.
The first half of the Workshop will be spent talking about the various sex toy materials; their safety rating, their mating habits, their lube preference. The second half will be spent teaching them how to shop for sex toys online – which will include teaching them about reviews.
When I first started buying sex toys it was from places like Adam & Eve and MyPleasure. My husband actually found MP because I’d not been impressed with A&E’s stuff. But the problem with buying sex toys online 6 years ago was that the reviews existed solely on the sex toy retailer’s site. You didn’t know who was writing it, what they had to compare it to, what type of toys they liked or even if it was a real person. Even to this day there are a few sites that have onsite paragraph reviews that just seem iffy – too much praise for a toy that I and others found lacking. I’d say that the first $200 worth of sex toys ended up being disappointments. Sure, the expensive Rabbit was amazing until it died after not too many uses. The only toy that’s survived from my first year of sex toy buying (or rather said, pre-reviewing) was a powerful yet cheap ass “pocket rocket” vibe that had the right type of vibrations for me.
I wish I’d known not to buy jelly toys, that’s a no-brainer. I wish I’d known then about the vibe-in-disguise that is the massager types – Hitachi, Wahl, Acuvibe, etc.
So my question to all my readers, and even the seasoned reviewers, is what mistakes did you make when you bought your first toys? What do you know now that you wish you’d known then? What information could someone have given you that might have resulted in purchases that were not a colossal waste of money? Or, what types of toys/materials had you seen but been too wary to purchase and what information about them changed your mind for the better?
I wish I had know that internal vibrations are virtually useless.
~ Yeah, agreed. I’ve only come across one vibe that had strong enough and rumbly enough vibrations that it actually was awesome and not useless. Sadly, it had a useless clit portion attached. *sigh* can’t have everything….
1) Jelly sucks
2) Silicone is worth paying for
3) You tend to get what you pay for
4) Sometimes even little vibes CAN be good
Penetration isn’t everything – while it can be awesome, often clitoral and vulval stimulation is much much better.
Jelly really does suck – paying for quality is definitely worth it.
Check for waterproofness if you tend to self-lubricate a lot and/or orgasm with much fluid!
I wish someone had told me that while the Rabbit vibe is cute to shop around and research before making that choice.
Do not go cheap with something you are putting inside or near your body. It doesn’t have to be the most expensive toy but if it’s $9.99 there’s a reason.
Glass – I was afraid of it at first. Now I’ve grown to love it. Knowing that it’s made of out Pyrex grade stuff certainly opened me up to trying it.
Everyone has said it, but it seems you have to learn that jelly sucks on your own. The vendors don’t admit it, and I guess it sells well enough that it demands shelf space. If people understood the cheap quality and safety issues with the material before their first purchase, I wonder how many would dole out the money for silicone on something they aren’t sure is going to work for them?
I’ve grown to loathe vibes that take awkward or hard to find batteries. I’m also a materials snob and prefer silicone to TPR.
If it smells, you probably don’t want it near your genitals.
If you shell out more cash, you can get something that will last forever.
~ Ugh yes, the smelly ones. But I’ve found that the over $100 toys are a let-down 75% of the time. Perhaps because I expect so much more of them? Hard to say.
I was lucky with my very first purchase as a teen. I got myself an extremely basic vibrator simply because it was available in the store at a low cost and I didn’t know what I wanted.
Later on my purchases didn’t go so well. A rabbit that lasted three uses, a jelly dong that turned sticky, and a egg with a string that leaked a rust in the cracks. I gave up and didn’t buy toys for years.
I have hundreds now.
Read reviews, read labels, don’t trust the fancy sales talk on the package, look for body safe materials and products that seem easy to clean, and if it looks chincy it probably is.