Ooh by Je Joue Review

Lately I’ve been having a real thing for truly affordable, decent sex toys so I was perhaps a little too excited for the Ooh by Je Joue line to come out. As soon as I heard about it I ran right to Shevibe and asked them if they planned on carrying it, can I review it if they do, etc. I’ve loved every Je Joue vibrator I’ve had my hands on so I had really high hopes for this hot-swap-style sex toy geekery. It’s not quite the first time this concept has been done, but this is unique in that we know the line is going to expand greatly – I already know there will be a smaller motor, a smaller cock ring, a butt plug, a flexible dual-stim, a smaller Pebble, a Rabbit and a g-spotter. The “mix and match” or “modular” concept is great – spend a little now, and a little along the way, and soon you’ll have a small collection of items for less than you’d pay for them singularly.  The Large Motor I have is listed as compatible with pieces 1,2,3,4,5 and 9 – and we only have access to 1, 2, and 3 right now. More will be revealed in January 2016, with a few more coming in Spring 2016**  pictures of the full line viewable at the very end of this review.

I love the idea, as you can tell. Ooh by Je Joue be great if the execution didn’t fail. Trust, I’m super sad that I can’t recommend the entire line as it is right now. I wanted to love this. But I also kind of expected it to be even lower-priced than it is. I wanted the Large Motor to be closer to $30 than $50. I basically hoped for every component to go no higher than $40, with most at $30¹. Am I delusional? Apparently. But that’s a story for another day.

You can start off with just the Large Motor and the Pebble, or buy “kits” although these don’t save you a whole lot, just a few bucks. What Happens in Vegas is the cock ring and classic insertable; Her Name is Rio is the classic insertable plus Pebble; and London Love-in is the Pebble and cock ring. Happily they offer cool colors like mint green and bright yellow in addition to the standard pink and blue. The packaging is super cute, made to look like little coffee bags or chocolate bags. Which you would think makes the packaging easy to open, but it’s not – scissors are required and it makes me sad. I expected the bags to be as easy to open as a bag of Lindor Truffles. The shapes are pretty easy to put together and disassemble. It doesn’t require much strength to press on the necessary part of the shape to eject the motor. The silicone is satiny-smooth, much like that of the regular Je Joue items – it’s just barely noticeable that it’s a little less silky.

One point of quality that does concern me slightly is that the silicone skin seems haphazardly glued to the plastic base on the shapes. The glue is sometimes so sparsely placed and so wimpy that if you’re not super careful when washing a shape if it’s not clicked in to the motor you probably would get water trapped down in between the plastic housing and the shape. The silicone on my Cock Ring easily separated from the plastic housing, while the Pebble seemed to be glued very well and I couldn’t even separate them. The Classic had even less glue than the Cock Ring. I pulled the silicone skin down off the plastic housing on the Cock Ring so that I could show you the metal clips responsible for keeping the motor clicked in – but it also shows me that the plastic housing the motor slides snugly in to is also responsible for vibration dampening.

Ooh by Je Joue Large Motor

I can’t wait to see the small, because the Large Motor is pretty small overall. The vibrations of the motor alone, no attachment, are shockingly deep and powerful on high. There are two mediocre patterns. But the odd thing about these vibrations…they’re not smooth. The steady vibrations almost feel like a pattern. It sounds like a helicopter on the lower settings. You can feel a rapid pulsing; not enough to deter from orgasm, but it’s discernible and I’m undecided on love vs hate. This is actually the same experience as the other Je Joue motors in the Mimi and Uma but since I never use those on the two lowest settings, I never really noticed it. The Je Joue Mimi has 5 intensity settings while the Ooh Large Motor has 3. The Large Motor by itself on high is equal exactly to the Je Joue Mimi on level 4. But when paired with the Pebble or Cock Ring, high is a little less powerful now than the Mimi on level 3. I don’t actually know if you’re allowed to use the motor naked – by itself the motor is really intense. I don’t think they intended for it, but what’s the worst that could happen? The recharge port has a silicone flap over it and seems like it could be water-resistant at the least. I’m grasping at straws here, aren’t I…

Ooh Vibrating Pebble

This is the stand-out piece; take that as you will. It ends up being a similar shape to the Je Joue Mimi with less punch. The tip is rigid-flexible, meaning I can make it move with my fingers if I try but it won’t make a bit of difference to my vulva. This is the shape the motor was truly meant to work with best. However due to the overall cost being $75, and the more powerful Je Joue Mimi being $90, I feel that you must be absolutely certain you can put the Large Motor to good use for at least one other attachment. You’ll have to decide if the Cock Ring is right for you (and then purchase the London Love-in set to save a couple dollars) because if not, I don’t think you should purchase anything from the Ooh line yet. The Pebble shape is pretty versatile and can be great for all genitals for external play. Pebble comes in hot pink or sunny yellow.

Ooh Cock Ring

I handed the ring to my husband and he immediately proclaimed it would be too tight to comfortably be on his cock. He said he’d be able to get it on if he put it on while flaccid but then once he was fully hard he wouldn’t be able to get it off – not a good situation to be in.  I figured as much, so it didn’t even get tried out in the field. The silicone is stretchy-ish but not the most stretchy I’ve come across in silicone cock rings. It feels tighter on my fingers than even the original Lelo Tor. Also the shape ends up being comically large – probably a full inch longer than the Lelo Tor. It sticks out a little over 2 inches. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a large, protruding cock ring. The Ohh Je Joue Cock ring feels like the  Duplo of the rechargeable cock ring world. However for someone with minimal labia and an exposed clitoris I can imagine this shape would feel great for grinding against. I tried putting the ring around 3 of my fingers at the second knuckle and it cut off my circulation. There’s always the chance it might be awesome to attach to your smaller dildos for harness play. If the receiver is in to grinding on the dildo, they’ll appreciate the vibrations.  Similar to the Pebble in design, the vibrations transfer as well as they’re able to in this system. The cock ring is available in a dark cobalt blue (which they call “electric”) and a pale mint green.

Ooh Classic Vibrator

This one is such a let-down. The center is solid and the vibrations do not transmit well at all. There is barely a whisper of vibration past the handle/motor. In fact it’s so infuriatingly bad that I have to wonder “did they test this?”. There’s a review on Babeland already for the Classic Vibrator which talks about how powerful it is and I’m all “are we using the same vibrator?”. I cannot recommend this. The We-Vibe Glow does *such* a better job of transmitting the vibrations from the Tango down the shaft and into the tip. If the Ooh Classic Vibrator were a standalone product I would be ripping it to shreds for even daring to exist. It’s that bad.  The fact that the two components cost $90 is a major insult. It’s not even worth $30 for the whole thing. It’s all down to the design of the attachment and motor. Sadly, this tells me that the “coming soon” items like the g-spotter and dual-stim will also probably suck. 

Taking the Classic shape apart like I did the Cock Ring shows me exactly why it’s so terrible – the motor slides into the plastic housing and the other side of the plastic housing is glued to a hard plastic rod that goes down the center of the Classic. So only the vibrations that touch the spring and screw inside of the plastic housing could possibly be transmitted. It’s a shit design. Taking the rod out of the silicone shows that it barely is vibrating at all unencumbered that way, and then they go and encase that in a half-inch thick shell of silicone and expect vibrations to somehow make it out the other side? The people under the dome had a better chance of escaping than these poor, strangled vibrations². I’m not an engineer and even I uneducated lil old me can see that this won’t work. Yet they did it anyway and you’re going to waste your money and they’re okay with that. Honestly the more I think about the design of the insertable Classic, and the design that is clearly going to be the same in future shapes unless they do a total overhaul, the more pissed off I am.

One could say that I’m idealistic and what can one expect from something affordable but I don’t think that’s the problem. I think that, like many companies, they didn’t beta test these with knowledgeable users. Or at all. There is definitely a way, some how, to create this modular system in a way that takes better advantage of the lovely motor. I think the answer though is to shape the vibrating motor more like the Tango – the long and thin lends itself to transferring vibrations farther than a short and wide motor. But then you have a system that’s quite similar to what’s already on the market and there’s no point to that. But the way this system is built right now I can assure you that none of the insertable pieces will have very much vibration at all.

I wanted to love the Ooh by Je Joue line, I wanted to recommend this, but I’m only able to truly recommend the Ooh Pebble. I’m cautioning against getting too carried away with dreams of building a set until we see the rest of the collection. I think that the motor needs an overhaul, the silicone needs to be stretchier for the cock ring and the insertables need a total re-design to get vibrations to actually travel versus held up in the handle like a bad traffic jam.

Big thanks to Shevibe for getting this to me pronto and indulging my odd excitement. I was provided this set in exchange for my honest review.

** The insert in with the toys shows the shapes of the upcoming designs and I’m skeptical of everything else needing the Large Motor.