3 of My First Sex Toys (and Better Alternatives I Should Have Gotten Instead)

"Health care gad­gets," read the cus­toms label when I ordered my first dil­dos. $16 for two, shipped from China, paid with a Visa gift card I loaded up because I was too young to have a cred­it card.

3 of My First Sex Toys (and Better Alternatives I Should Have Gotten Instead) 1

Imagine the mini-​heart attack when my mom not only insist­ed on com­ing with me to pick up the par­cel but also asked the post office clerk what was in it.

Luckily, he mis­read the slop­py hand­writ­ing and read aloud, "health care goods." I told my mom it was fan­cy vit­a­mins and skin care because that would explain the con­tents' cylin­dri­cal shape.

It's been 8 years since I got my first two dil­dos. I was almost lucky enough to evade tox­ic jel­ly toys from the start, but I sure have come a long way since then! And I know to check for whether a shop ships sex toys dis­creet­ly.

These weren't all my first three sex toys ever, but they were piv­otal to my sexuality.

  1. Generic mushroom-​tipped glass dildo
  2. Blush Novelties Scarlet G
  3. Purple jel­ly dong

1. Generic mushroom-tipped glass dildo

how I discovered cervical orgasms
Icicles No. 53 glass dildo

This was the dil­do that start­ed it all. The "health care gad­get." You might be won­der­ing, "Why glass dil­dos for your first sex toy? Doesn't that hurt?"

For one, glass is a very afford­able, body-​safe mate­r­i­al— per­fect for health-​conscious teen's bud­get. It's pret­ty hard to fuck up the body-​safe qual­i­ty of glass, even if you buy it super, super cheap. In con­trast, shit­ty and porous prod­ucts are often mis­la­beled as sil­i­cone, so I found cheap "sil­i­cone" hard­er to trust.

And no, the glass didn't hurt. At 1.5" wide, it was big for a first-​timer, but the glass is slip­pery, and I found it more com­fort­able than the drag of silicone.

My favorite part was the mushroom-​shaped tip. While I didn't know much about my G‑spot back then, I fol­lowed what made me feel good: thrust­ing the dil­do all the way in, slid­ing behind my cervix.

I felt a com­bi­na­tion of plea­sur­able pul­sat­ing and almost like I had blacked out for a split sec­ond, and I knew with­out a ques­tion that it was my first cer­vi­cal orgasm.

Chrystalino Champ glass dildo

What I'd recommend now: Icicles No. 53 or Chrystalino Champ

The Icicles No. 53 glass dil­do is a good option. It's not exact­ly the same as the dil­do I had, but its length, width, and head shape are a close match. And the tex­ture is mild enough that I prob­a­bly could have used it as my first toy.

If you want some­thing smoother and flat­ter to more eas­i­ly slide behind the cervix, con­sid­er a Chrystalino Champ instead.

I don't advo­cate going all-​in with a dil­do before try­ing a cli­toral vibra­tor, but I was hap­py with using just fin­gers on my clit at the time, and that was the route I took.

2. Blush Novelties Scarlet G

how I started appreciating vibrators clitorally
510Jyoe01-L._SX679_

At age 19, I still had some weird AF hang-​ups about my sex­u­al response. Deep down, I believed that vibra­tors would desen­si­tize my cli­toris, and I avoid­ed them externally.

I was, how­ev­er, on a mis­sion to squirt and okay with using a vibra­tor against my G‑spot. It sounds so illog­i­cal when look­ing back, but it demon­strates how much I believed that orgasms via pen­e­tra­tion were superior.

Funny enough, nei­ther of the toys that end­ed up mak­ing me squirt are G‑spot toys.

Frankly, the Scarlet G's shape frus­trat­ed me when I first tried it. I didn't under­stand that G‑spot toys don't nec­es­sar­i­ly do all of the work for you. Even if you already know where your G‑spot is, there's still a learn­ing curve as you fig­ure out the best way to aim a toy.

And, frus­trat­ed, I went ahead and used the vibra­tor exter­nal­ly any­way. I'd feel weird about it after­wards and wor­ry about my sen­si­tiv­i­ty (which inevitably took my mind off of plea­sure). And then I'd still use it on my clit! It even­tu­al­ly got to the point where I was like, "You know what? This feels great. And if I even­tu­al­ly get to the point where I need a vibra­tor to orgasm, so be it. I can always buy anoth­er one."

If a dildo smells like a shower curtain, you know it's toxic

3. Fat purple jelly dong

how I discovered the sex bloggersphere

Luckily, I only used this tox­ic toy once before some­one found it and threw it away. Basically, I had built up a HUGE fol­low­ing on FetLife at the time and start­ed hav­ing sub­by inter­net guys buy me gifts. I felt weird ask­ing for expen­sive toys, so I put a bunch of jel­ly things on my wish list.

Once it arrived, I (right­ful­ly) didn't trust it. Well, it says "phthalate-​free" on the pack­age, so it should be fine, right? (Wrong. There's no label reg­u­la­tion.) Well, it doesn't make my tongue go numb or tin­gle when lick it, so it should be fine, right? Wrong.

I KNOW. That's advice that I've actu­al­ly seen on the inter­net, and I think "does not imme­di­ate­ly cause harm or con­cern" such a low stan­dard. I won­dered, "what the fuck even IS jel­ly?" and end­ed up find­ing 374598347594835 sex blog­gers telling me the truth about tox­ic toys.

The truth is that even if some­thing isn't imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent­ly wrong, porous toys har­bor bac­te­ria, yeast, and mildew over time. And if that wasn't gross enough, tox­ic toys leech oil and plas­tic soft­en­er. Yep.

3 of My First Sex Toys (and Better Alternatives I Should Have Gotten Instead) 2

What I'd recommend instead:

Ruse 18 Inch Double Dildo by Blush Novelties

The Blush Novelties Ruse 18 Inch Silicone Double Dildo is made of body-​safe sil­i­cone, mean­ing it will last a life­time with prop­er care. In con­trast, jel­ly dil­dos grow mildew, fall melt, and fall apart, need­ing to be replaced far more often.

Though the Ruse 18-​inch dou­ble dong costs more than a jel­ly toy, it ends up cost­ing less in the long run. Plus, the price is entire­ly fair for some­thing that won't give you chem­i­cal burns.


update

I've test­ed four dif­fer­ent sil­i­cone dou­ble dil­dos for vagi­nal DP and com­pared them!

Comparison: Blush Ruse 18" Double Dong, 18" Slim, NS Novelties Colours DP Pleasures, and California Exotics AC/DC double-ended dildo

Blush Silicone Willy's 8" Remote Control, or anything from the Silicone Willy's line

3 of My First Sex Toys (and Better Alternatives I Should Have Gotten Instead) 3

Blush Novelties has a whooole line of afford­able, body-​safe, rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al dil­dos, includ­ing non-​vibrating ones of dif­fer­ent sizes for super cheap.

The Silicone Willy's 8" Remote Control's cost is com­pa­ra­ble to big "real­is­tic" vibrat­ing dil­dos on the mar­ket. Heck, it costs less than some of the TPE, TPR, and "Cyberskin" vibra­tors I've seen. But it's total­ly body-​safe and will last way longer.

AND it's thick AF (1.75" diam­e­ter) to clench around intense­ly when I come, but with a for­giv­ing out­er lay­er. It's one of many afford­able options from Blush for some­one look­ing to lev­el up in size. I was already pret­ty com­fort­able with pen­e­tra­tion by the time I used sex toys, so this would have been fine for me.

The vibra­tions are pret­ty weak by my finicky stan­dards, but you know what? For a BIG, real­is­tic dil­do, I'm okay with that. It was fair­ly priced for a girthy sil­i­cone dildo.

There are plen­ty of more average-​sized, non-​vibrating options to choose from, for those who are rel­a­tive­ly new to penetration.

Shop real­is­tic vibra­tors and dil­dos from Blush Novelties.


Hey, heads up!

Some of these prod­ucts were sent to me in exchange for my hon­est and freely-​given opin­ion. As well, I use affil­i­ate links through­out this post. They bring me a com­mis­sion at no extra cost to you and help keep this web­site running!

You can find a huge selec­tion of oth­er body-​safe toys at SheVibe.

3 of My First Sex Toys (and Better Alternatives I Should Have Gotten Instead) 4

18 Responses

  1. G says:

    Really like this, thank you for an anoth­er inter­est­ing read!

  2. C says:

    I bought two non-​safe toys before I knew about mate­r­i­al safe­ty. One was a pur­ple TPR dual-​stim vibra­tor that came free with anoth­er pur­chase as an offer that Lovehoney was doing. I actu­al­ly loved it, I loved the feel of the mate­r­i­al and the shape and the vibra­tions. The oth­er was a super real­is­tic Doc J UR3 dil­do. I only used it once because it was pret­ty big and I want­ed to work up to it, but I even­tu­al­ly returned it because back then Lovehoney let you return stuff with­in a year of buy­ing. As a sub­sti­tute I bought the Truskyn Tru Ride which is the same mold and is dual-​density sil­i­cone. But I con­tin­ued to use the pur­ple one with con­doms, though there was a break­age inci­dent once, maybe due to oils leach­ing? By the time I found out that con­doms won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly pro­tect from it, and by the time I got around to try­ing to return it, LH had changed their pol­i­cy to only unused prod­ucts (prob­a­bly a good idea, but incon­ve­nient for me). So it’s lit­er­al­ly up in my clos­et (along with a sil­i­cone rab­bit that I did not get along with).

  3. Saffron Jones says:

    I sad­ly tried a lot of shit­ty toys before I learned bet­ter, but the one I did like, and keep, is the Orchid G (very sim­i­lar to the Scarlet G). Even though the vibra­tion quick­ly stopped work­ing, I liked the shape, espe­cial­ly for using in the show­er. I'm excit­ed to see that you're rec­om­mend­ing an afford­able recharge­able version.

  4. DizzyD says:

    My first toy was a vibrat­ing duck.…. I still have it some­where, but I don’t use it anymore!

  5. Sunset Hues says:

    My first toy as a teenage male was a cheap rub­bery vagi­na that I paid about $15 for in the back­room of a "flower shop". I don't nec­es­sar­i­ly regret it, but… I'm still hold­ing out for one of those steel Njoy toys!

  6. My first toy was a curved glass dil­do with a series of beads grad­u­al­ly decreas­ing in size from one end to the oth­er. It was a good first toy for exper­i­ment­ing with vagi­nal pen­e­tra­tion and the sen­sa­tion when rub­bing it against my clit was real­ly nice.

  7. Cynthia says:

    My first toy was a cheap plas­tic vibra­tor toy from Aliexpress. I didn't know if I would like sex­toys and that's why I bought the cheap­est I could find (which is bad, I know, by I didn't know a lot about sex toys back then). I didn't like it but after that I bought a stan­dard sil­i­cone vibra­tor from a good web­site. It made such a dif­fer­ence. I like using vibra­tors now.

  8. Clara says:

    My first toy was a sil­i­cone but­ter­fly vibra­tor and I hat­ed it soooo much. It was buzzy and I was not a fan

  9. Marie Gray says:

    I can't remem­ber which toy exact­ly was my first but I had quite a few tox­ic and unsafe sex toys. I real­ly would have appre­ci­at­ed the kind of info that is acces­si­ble today when I was first pick­ing out toys. Swapping out jel­ly for med­ical grade sil­i­cone is a huu­u­u­uge upgrade!

  10. Stephanie Tucker says:

    Aside from my chil­dren the great­est thing my ex hus­band ever did for me was buy me my vibra­tor. It was a rab­bit and it opened my eyes to a whole new world of pos­si­bil­i­ties and put me in charge of my own satisfaction.

  11. Gregory L Craven says:

    First to picked was a Body Wand to use with my gf. Also picked up a glass dil­do at the same time. Fantastic choic­es! Would do it over again

  12. dv8 says:

    My first toy was a pair of hand­cuffs. They worked fine although I've since upgrad­ed to a more durable pair.

  13. First toy was a sim­ple and inex­pen­sive rab­bit. It was trav­el size so that was a perk, but over­all, it was an ok, decent begin­ner toy.

  14. Keith says:

    My first sex toy was a small anal butt plug that my wife con­trolled. Followed by the small silk for my first peg­ging. Need big­ger for more intense feeling

  15. Jeff says:

    We bought our first sex toy from the Adam & Eve cat­a­log over 25 years ago. It was a pur­ple ABS plas­tic bat­tery oper­at­ed vibra­tor that broke in a few weeks. I'm not sure what the alter­na­tives were back in the ear­ly 90s, but some­thing like the We-​Vibe Tango would've been better.

  16. electric eel says:

    My first toy was the picobong kaya rab­bit vibe I got at a fem­i­nist sex shop (thank­ful­ly sell­ing all body safe because I was only mild­ly aware about that at the time). a decent rab­bit vibe but I didn't know about how many blog­gers are wary about rabbits.

  17. I had to do a lot of research on toys to make sure I wasn’t get­ting any­thing tox­ic and get­ting the best one for myself. I got my first toy last year for my birth­day; it was by California Exotic Novelties and called the Chic Wave. I loved it and rec­om­mend it to everyone!

  18. GoldenDove says:

    My first toy was a cheap plas­tic vibe from a shop in the mall. I'm glad I had picked that one because at the time I didn't know of tox­ic toys and came close to get­ting some. It has served me well over the past few years and it has more of a pin point tip for the exter­nal stim­u­la­tion. Kind of wish I had got­ten the galaxy print ver­sion of it but that one was quite too big for me at the time. Still use the lit­tle guy to this day. ^^

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