I am not the biggest fan of my vag.

I like other people’s. I like most vaginas – I think they’re great! They’re magical! They’re like flowers, or oysters! There’s a Georgia O’Keeffe print in the bathroom! But I have gender feelings about mine, big bad weird ugly gender feelings, and there’s no amount of ‘but look how pretty’ (validation via only ‘prettiness’ is not the way I want to go about anything in my life, but thanks) and ‘the human body is incredible’ (blech) that can make those go away.

But if anything’s going to make me happy that I have one, it’s the Pure Wand.

The njoy Pure Wand is a sleek curve of stainless steel that’s a pain in the butt to photograph and weighs in at a hefty 1.5lbs, or 680g – think a jar of golden syrup. It’s been carefully weighted and each end has a different circumference, the bigger bulb being 4.5 inches around and the smaller measuring 3.25 around. Completely smooth with a mirror shine – except for the njoy logo, which I think is in a brushed steel finish? – it’s a beautiful piece of work, and could probably do some serious damage if you were to drop it on your foot. Don’t do that.

STORYTIME – before I really begin, I feel like I kind of to have to mention squirting in some capacity* here as this has been touted time and time again as some kind of divining rod for prostates and g-spots alike. I don’t squirt. I’ve done it twice, hated it, and I have no interest in doing it again. This is a non-negotiable thing. I’m sure the Pure Wand is more than capable of making me squirt again, it definitely feels like it could – but I can’t help anyone with that. Sorry fronds.

The day my Pure Wand arrived (I was very emotional) I wasn’t as productive with it as I’d like to have been – usually I like to use things the second I get them, but it was cold outside. And the steel was freezing. And there was no hot water. Rainy days in England have this incredible effect on the body where you feel instantly miserable as soon as you’re under that grey sky, and the furthest thing on my mind was wanking. But eventually the weather got warmer – unbearably warm – and as it turns out, a sunny day with a clear blue sky and a sharp chill is the best kind of weather for stuffing yourself full of steel.

The bigger bulb seems to be what most people use but I’ve not really been able to get along with it; it feels too big, unwieldy, too heavy, uncomfortable, bulky. It’s the same feeling I get when I haven’t warmed up properly and I’m trying to use something internally – except it feels like that aaaaaaaall the time. It’s very possible that this is just a learning curve I have yet to master, but for now the big end is relegated to other people’s vaginas and for the odd shoulder/leg massage.

The little end though, oh god, I don’t know how it does it but it does it so well. It’s like a heat-seeking missile for g-spot stimulation; all I have to do is apply a little bit of lube, nudge it upwards and rock it back and forth. My g-spot’s shallow but placed higher up, and the Pure Wand finds it and basically hammers it into submission in the best kind of way – like, I paired it with the We-Vibe Touch and was completely unable to walk afterwards. It’s that good. The only downside is that after relentlessly banging away at my vagina with a pound and a half of steel my arm starts to hurt and I sometimes have to admit defeat; but luckily for me I have a girlfriend whose arms are considerably stronger than mine and who really likes watching me bite the pillow.

Getting a Pure Wand has also managed to increase my all-consuming lust for a Pure plug tenfold; if this feels good in my butt, then what’s a Pure plug going to feel like? How well crafted is that going to be? It’s so smooth that I don’t need that much warmup, and it does something that only my large Rosebud plug has done before (and that’s only if I lie on my back & pull my knees up) – it stimulates my g-spot. It feels even more intense, if that’s possible, although I still prefer it in my vag.

I love the Pure Wand. I am a convert. There isn’t a position it doesn’t feel good in, although I think it feels the best on my hands and knees, or on my back with my legs pulled up. It can be used with any lubricant, it’s easy to clean, it comes with a storage box, it’s gonna last me forever and it can be brought to my favourite temperature by soaking it in a sink of warm water. I’m a bit scared it’s going to replace all my other insertable toys, if I’m honest, but I love it so much I almost don’t care. Engrave ‘apricot 4 njoy’ in a heart on a tree, because I am in looooooooove.

I bought my Pure Wand from Lovehoney, but you can also buy it at Shevibe and Sh!

* hahahahahhahaah capacity

The Pearly (doesn’t it sound like a missing Pink Lady?) is part of Fun Factory’s line of mini vibes – fairly self explanatory, they’re a range of nine vibrators of diminutive shape and stature that happen to be ‘perfect for your handbag’. Y’know. Just in case you need a wank on your lunch break. This one happens to be a rabbit style, comes in two delicious colours: candy green* and grape, is rechargeable via a USB click-n-charge system, fully submersible and has a TRAVEL LOCK. Great, right?

Fun Factory’s controls are definitely my preferred kind – clacky buttons! A dedicated on/off button! Tons of functions! TRAVEL LOCK! Like, I’m not even a pattern person, I usually skip right through, but these are a little bit more imaginative than your average pulse-pulse-pulse, even featuring something called a ‘razzle dazzle’ sequence that feels exactly like it sounds – like a team of tiny jazz dancers tip-tapping their way around my vag in the best way possible. Never change, Fun Factory.

In case you hadn’t grasped it from the title and how lonely it looks on my not especially wide windowsill, the Pearly is truly a mini vibe - the internal shaft measures 3 inches of insertable length and it has just shy of four inches in girth. I honestly don’t remember the last time I held an insertable toy this small. It’s positively adorable, a pint sized pocket rocket with vibrations that are…nothing to turn your nose up at, actually, they’re definitely not as powerful as the deep purr that emanates from my girlfriend’s Big Boss but they are STRONG. High frequency? Yes. Shallow and prone to disappearing when you apply the slightest hint of pressure? No.

Does it hit my g-spot? Nope. There is absolutely no hope of sweet, darling Pearly contributing to a g-spot orgasm unless I repeatedly shove it violently upwards, like my vagina has two floors and the person on the top floor is playing ‘best ukelele covers summer 2k13′ at an earthshattering volume**. Having said that, I’m not sure if it’s really designed for g-spot stimulation – a slight upward curve does not a g-spot toy make – and it does what an internal vibrator is meant to do; it feels good. I like having something to clench around, and the subtle texture paired with Fun Factory’s notoriously draggy silicone pulls in the best kind of way.

So. The Pearly comes thiiiiiis close to fitting my anatomy perfectly, but the ‘pearl’ for clit stimulation is just a few mm short of where I’d like it to be; it’s not that it’s not placed far enough up the shaft as the internal portion is short enough for me to insert comfortably (do you hear that holy, twinkly sound in the distance? it’s the short vag gods beaming their blessing down upon me), but it needs to be a little bigger, a little more oval maybe. Perhaps the longer external portions of the Dolly or Tango would’ve been better.

I can’t say I didn’t anticipate the all-too-common fitting problem though, being skeptical of rabbit vibrators in the first place, and it’s no big deal at this point; I keep my favourite clit vibes next to my bed for a reason, you know? There’s enough room down there that I can push whatever I grab first against the bits the external piece fails to hit, which leads to this weird, achingly pinpoint but at the same time not at all sensation. It makes me squirm like a snake that forgot to file its income tax. It’s, uh, pretty great – but shouldn’t it be doing that all by itself?

For me, the Pearly was not a dual-stimulation wonder. It hasn’t changed my mind on rabbit vibrators (I think the concept of them is inherently flawed and it’s unrealistic and kind of dreadful to tout them as a beginners, one-size-fits-all dream vibe). But it has managed to grow on me like a friendly little fungus; I’ve found myself using it often and it lives next to my bed for easy access. I like how small it is, and how I don’t need to warm up to use it,  the vibrations are a nice mid range buzz, and I don’t have to fiddle around for ages trying to get it to do that one thing I really like. You can stay, Pearly.

The Pearly was kindly provided to me by the nice people over at Fun Factory. Thanks guys! You can buy the Pearly direct from their website (click here if you’re a customer from the US/Canada/Mexico) for €64.

*The pastel hue reminds me of these little apple sweeties.
**The Pearly is a broom in this analogy – waving your vibrator at the ceiling whenever a housemate decides to play ukelele covers is completely ineffective, if a nice arm workout.

It’s cute! It’s tiny! Even the packaging’s well-designed! It’s body-safe, discreet, and easy to travel with because it looks absolutely nothing like a sex toy and the battery’s easy to remove. It’s relatively quiet, ridiculously cheap and waterproof. It comes in colours other than pink and purple. So far, so good, right?

I received the sora-mikan colour scheme, which is the one I was hoping for as it combines two of my favourite colours – a chalky sky blue on the bottom, and a juicy tangerine upper half. The bottom half’s made from ABS plastic and the top half from elastomer, which I don’t really get the point of – both surfaces feel pretty much exactly the same and the elastomer doesn’t make a huge difference concerning softness, plus this means I can’t use oil or silicone based lubricants with it. Boo.

The mini’s easy to use; powered by one triple-a battery in the base, you twist the top half and it pops off to reveal the guts. There’s a nifty hidden button to turn it on and off with located on the side of the mini – as it’s concealed under the orange elastomer you can’t see it all, which is a feature I really like because I’m shallow, I guess. Another thing that’s important for me is that I can travel easily with it; because the mini’s battery powered I can just remove the battery and tuck it into my makeup bag, where it fits right in. It kind of looks like a cutesy perfume atomiser, actually.

Unfortunately, the mini doesn’t work for its intended purpose. Like, at all. The vibrations feel unusually strong in my hand; when I switched it on for the first time I actually jumped because they surprised me so much. All that power from a triple a battery? GOD HAS ANSWERED MY PRAYERS. Except…er, not so much, because the vibrations are so surface level that they just fizzle away to nothing as soon as I apply a hint of pressure. The mini buzzes away happily to itself but I can’t feel a thing. I was so confused by this that I thought I’d received a faulty one - surely the whole ‘deadened vibrations’ thing only happens to toys with an inch and a half of solid silicone between me and the motor? Apparently not.

I changed the battery twice, I used it underwater, hoping this would somehow give the vibrations a kick up the proverbial and force them to go deeper or diffuse or do literally anything but disappear into the ether as soon as I applied even the tiniest hint of pressure, but nothing changed. I’m fairly sure the tiny watch battery orbs that came with Tenga’s earlier Vi-Bo range were more powerful than this. At least they didn’t just dissolve. I don’t know what to do with the mini – it works okay if I use light, circular motions or gentle brushing strokes or traced over my underwear, but that is not how I get off. It’s a tool for teasing and not much else.

I’m disappointed. The mini had so much going for it! So much potential! I’m still not sure if I really believe in the concept of ‘beginners toys’, but obviously there are a lot of people out there who don’t want to or are unable to shell out upwards of £40 on a first vibrator, no matter how good the reviews are, and the mini could’ve been another, better option in a sea of mediocre bullets and flimsy pocket rockets. I was rooting for you, mini, and you let me down. At least you’re cute.

I was sent the iroha mini by the lovely people at Simply Pleasure in exchange for a review. Thanks guys! You can buy the iroha mini in all three colourways at Simply Pleasure for £16.95, and they also stock the original Iroha line, which I previously reviewed here.

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.

The Irohas are obnoxiously adorable. Plush and palm-sized, they look like minimalist animations come to life and come in three different varieties – sakura (cherry blossom), midori (a little green thing. a leaf? a pear?), and yuki (snowman), each intended for a different purpose.

Getting the kind of stimulation I prefer out of vibrators is difficult for me; the one external vibe I’ve found so far that rivals my fingers is the We-Vibe Touch, thanks to that scoop shape it’s got going on. It’s like surround sound for my clit! I just wish it was softer because I like a shitton of pressure and pushing that scoop against my clit for twenty minutes feels great at the time, but then I wind up with bruised inner labia and that’s not fun. The Irohas, I think, seem to be aimed more at pinpoint stimulation using their respective tips, using a light touch to take full advantage of the silky soft ‘skin’.

That magical, dust repellent (it really is dust repellent – I have no idea how they did it but nothing sticks to these, Tenga delivered on that) skin is a little bit of a letdown for me and yet another reason why you should probably go to a sex toy shop to feel up the items you’re interested in before you drop cash on them.* The issue I have is that in pictures, the Irohas look like puffy marzipan sweeties and you assume – I did, anyway – that the squishiness goes far deeper than it actually does. The reality is that you can push your fingernail onto the Irohas and touch the firm plastic that lurks a few millimetres beneath. This very quickly dashed all my daydreams of literally hugging a fluffy cloud to my genitals and brought me back down to earth with a thud. Oops. They’re not as quiet as they look, either – I imagined they’d emit a soft purr at most but I have to smuggle them under the duvet to use them if anyone else is around.

With three speeds and a single (!) vibration pattern that I literally never use, the Irohas aren’t overly complex – until you get to the elaborate charging setup. Each Iroha comes in what looks like a pretty display case, which is actually the charging port. You plug this into the mains using the plug provided and wait 2 hours for it to charge, because a magnetic click-n-charge cable would just be too easy and of course everyone has the privacy required to be able to do this. The controls are located on the flat underbelly of each Iroha, and thankfully the buttons are the clicky raised kind – if they were the flat Lelo kind I don’t know if I’d ever be able to change the speed in use. It’s not waterproof, either, which…really? Really?

The vibrations the Irohas give off are nothing to turn up your nose at. Rumblier than your average clit vibe and more powerful for sure than the Lelo Mia 2, they’re more than enough for me and I use them both frequently. They’re a nice middle ground for people who don’t really know what they like, I think, and they give me warm, fuzzy orgasms. I want to roll over and take a lil nap afterwards. I prefer the shape of the Sakura over the Yuki; I can smush the squishy pincers of the Sakura around for a kind of clit-cuddle, and I use the Yuki by pressing and rolling the little head (I guess you’d call it a ‘head’ – it is a snowman) around, like a massage on a very small scale. I don’t use it internally as suggested; yes, the first three inches of the vagina might hold the most nerve endings, but inserting that small satiny sphere does absolutely fuck all for me.

I generally don’t talk much about price in my reviews, but I think that unless you’re looking for a very particular kind of stimulation (more of a brushing motion than intense pressure, maybe, preferring pinpoint to diffuse) the price is almost prohibitively high. I do admire Tenga, they rank up there with Fun Factory on my list of companies whose toys I want to collect and leave out on display like sculptures in their own right, and I understand that these are ~luxury products~, and yes, they’re body-safe and yes, they’re rechargeable, but £64.99 for an external use only vibrator that produces ever-so-slightly rumblier than average vibrations and isn’t even waterproof just doesn’t seem fair. I didn’t pay full price for either of mine; I was bought the Yuki by dream babe, who got it on Lovehoney’s deal of the day, and purchased the Sakura myself when it went on sale over christmas. If they died and they weren’t under warranty, would I buy them again? Sure! If they were on sale.

Coincidentially, the Yuki and the Midori (an adorable pastel green pear that I feel like I need – Gritty Woman has an extremely in-depth review of it here) are both on sale at Lovehoney right now, so you CAN get yourself a snowman and a pear for a fair price. I like the Irohas. They’re soft, small, easy to use and travel well – not counting the ridiculous charging/display box – and the vibrations are a comfortable middle ground rumble. I just think they might be a tiny bit overpriced, that’s all.

*if you live near one – I don’t anymore. Sad trombone.