PREMIUM AQUA GEL

Oh man, I hate starting on a bad point but I am not a fan of the Aqua gel. It feels pleasantly slippery when applied, but dries tacky (nobody wants pubes that are all clumped together and CRUSTY after fucking - no, I am not removing my glorious nether garden for anything) and tastes like that one time I licked a battery. On the plus side, it lasts a reasonably long time for a water-based lube, it’s thick without being jelly-like, and thank GOD that the chemical taste isn’t mirrored in the smell. I just don’t know what to do with it. The texture’s pretty great but the stickiness renders it almost useless and the taste makes my tongue curl up in disgust. I really can’t say any more about it without being straight up unkind. I’m sad about it. Promising formula, abysmal finish. Moving on.

28/06 update – Recently I’ve been trying to give the premium aqua gel another chance but whenever I use it internally it feels like I’m burning in addition to a slight numbness. It’s painful and I’m not sure why this is happening – maybe it expired super quickly? Maybe I’ve developed a sensitivity? However, I’m still going to recommend their flavoured lubes and Silicone+ because those are genuinely good products and have never made my vagina feel like it’s sucking on a throat pastille. Just not the aqua gel. Really, really not good.

RASPBERRY KISS
Initially I was really, really wary of the ‘oral pleasure gel’. I’ve previously had bad reactions to lubricants that contain glycerin – although not all of them – and I’m just not into super-sweet shit; American style frosting makes me wanna vom and doughnuts give me headaches. You get the picture. Raspberry Kiss tastes exactly like the flavoured syrup you get on Mr Whippys, if slightly tangier, and while it might be veering on too sweet for me, I can respect them for managing to replicate that taste almost exactly. It’s uncanny!

I couldn’t use the Raspberry Kiss gel with dream babe (she’s a sensitive flower and can’t put anything that includes glycerin anywhere near her vag lest a ‘fruity cottage cheese’ evolve down there) but my dude-thing was up for it so I applied a palmful until his peen looked like a shiny pink tentacle and went to town. It’s much less ice cream syrup-y when it’s actually on someone’s genitals, if still a tad too saccharine for my liking, and has a gel-like, slippery texture. It does dry slightly tacky, but by some miracle not as badly as the Aqua gel does, and I haven’t had a bad reaction to it. I like it. It’ll take me a while to get through the bottle, but it’s a good lube, and I’d recommend it to anyone with a sweeter tooth than me.

SILICONE+
Silicone+ is definitely my favourite of the three. It’s light, slick, and extremely runny – actually reminding me of grapeseed oil but being (obviously) less oily, it has no taste or smell, and I have never needed to reapply. Literally never. The thing with Silicone+ is I’m a lot less concious of it being there than I am with water-based lubes; everything still feels good and slippy-slidey-fun-times, but it just feels less…noticeable, I guess, and it’s great. You can really feeeeeel everything! Like, sure, there are a few minor downsides – I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s extremely runny, and it left a small greasy patch on my duvet cover, but if you’re quick you can avoid getting it everywhere and the stain came off in the wash. A drop the size of a 20p piece is more than enough to cover one of my large metal plugs, and I can see it being ideal if you’re into bigger things in your butt - njoy Pure 2.0, anybody?

Overall? While being a bit hit and miss, I liked 2/3 of the lubes that Give Pleasure sent me, I’ll definitely be purchasing the Silicone+ in a larger size after I run out and while the oral gel wasn’t to my personal taste I doubt that’d be an issue for most people.

I was sent these lubes by Give Pleasure in exchange for an honest review! You can buy them in varying capacities (individual lubeshots, mini tubes, midi tubes, and maxi tubes) over at Simply Pleasure, and they also have a list of stockists on their website.

Yeah. No. Unfortunately this guided misadventure didn’t end as quickly as it should have, because the one time I did have lube generously applied to my vulva (a flavoured Durex variety) it gave me The Yeast Infection From Hell and I declared all lubricants unsafe for my body and studiously avoided the ‘essentials’ section of any sex toy website I visited. It could’ve been worse – I wasn’t into insertable toys for the longest time and was mainly using things for clit stim, where I actually prefer not to be dripping in lube. Still though. When I brought my Gigi out of her early retirement, she came with a bonus tube of Lelo lube and Lelo sachets – which I now have approx. 10 billion of knocking around – and hey, might as well try it. It was a revelation of biblical proportions, I’m talking like, tidal waves of realisation.

When I ran out of that I started using coconut oil. I know a lot of people are funny about this and there’s a bunch of conflicting information flying about varying from ‘it’ll definitely give you a yeast infection and fuck up your vag and/or butthole’ to ‘it cures EVERYTHING use it for EVERYTHING’, and I might eventually get around to writing a post on it and the kind of things I use it for just to add my tuppence to the mess of ‘Is coconut oil safe to use with ___?’ blogs, but not today. Today I’m going to squeal about Sliquid Organics Natural for a bit!

It comes in a sturdy, squat bottle with a flip cap with a beautifully designed label. I don’t really like writing about how ‘discreet’ something is because it ultimately seems a bit pointless and I mean, I’ve never personally bought a sex toy – that is what we’re talking about here, after all – based on how easily it disguises itself, but this lives with my fancy face and hair oils and it just blends right in. Congrats to the person who designed it, I want your job.

Sliquid Natural is a waterbased lube made with botanical plant extracts that ‘heal and support the body’, is free of glycerin and parabens and any other nasties, 100% vegan, condom-safe, and not tested on animals. Don’t try and use it in your bath or shower because it’s water soluble and it’ll go right down the drain, but apart from that, you’re good.

One of the reasons that I love this lube as much as I do is because it doesn’t smell or taste of anything. I mean it, it’s completely tasteless. It’s like the lube equivalent of filtered water. Even if I lick it straight off the back of my hand I can’t taste a damn thing – no vaguely fizzy aftertaste, no chemical tang, my tongue doesn’t want to crawl to the back of my mouth like it’s done with so many other lubes. The texture’s a little runny, similar to Lelo, much less sticky than Liquid Silk, but it rubs in nicely, doesn’t travel, and best of all – doesn’t stain your sheets.

One of the things that Natural seems to excel at is how well it works with textured toys, or toys that vibrate at an extremely high speed and seem to almost push the lube out from under them, like wands. My Tantus Splash is the most textured non-glass dildo I own and while I adore that beautiful slime-monster, it drinks up lube like nothing else – even more than my Mustang does, drunkards, the pair of ‘em – and with all that delicious texture and girth PLUS the drag, I have no chance of even getting it even half an inch inside of me without copious amounts of lube. Natural is perfect for this. I don’t know what makes it so good at working with all those drips but it’s magic – the only lube I’ve tried so far that I think could do a better or an equally good job is Sliquid Silk because of the added slip, and that’s a hybrid so I won’t be testing that one with silicone any time soon.

For a water-based lube, this one lasts a loooong time. I don’t have to reapply often unless it’s with a super draggy toy (Share, I’m looking at you) and it works well for light butt stuff, or having a plug in for a short time. I wouldn’t use it for putting bigger things in my butt or in someone else’s butt as I’m uncomfortable using something that’s so easily absorbed by the body for that kind of thing, where it’s important to be extra-super-careful, but a finger? A thumb? A little tiny plug? No problem.

I love this lube. I think everyone should have a bottle of this lube! It’s safe for use with all toys, it’s versatile, doesn’t taste or smell of anything, it comes in a cute-ass bottle and it’s long lasting. It’s a great all-rounder, and I would highly, highly recommend it.

I bought mine over at Lovehoney, where it’s rather confusingly called ‘Sliquid Naturals H2O’ instead of just Natural, and available in 125ml or 255ml capacities.