Product Reviews

The Often-Overlooked Wand

Back in the day, your option for a good vibrator was limited. To one side was a cheap, pointed plastic tube you’d pop a couple of D sized batteries into (which ALWAYS rattled loudly after a bit). It just screamed THIS IS A VIBRATOR Y’ALL. The plastic tube was the ultimate first vibrator for many of us. It went through batteries like I go through a bag of potato chips and was purely utilitarian. My fondest memories of my first vibrator mostly involved hiding it from parents and roommates.

Somewhere in the middle we had the “awkward animals” section of sex toys. They were soft, made of questionable material (jelly, anyone?), and inevitably were molded to look like something saccharinely cute. If you wanted a soft vibrator, this is what you got. These vibrators were noted for being oddly creepy and impossible to clean. If you were caught with one, you would inevitably have to first talk about how you weren’t sexually attracted to teddy bears in hats, but it was one step up from dolphin and cat, so you went with it.

In the corner was the wand. Huge, with a never-long-enough cord, and somewhat reminiscent of a large microphone they sat in their innocuous cardboard boxes in an unsexy display. If you fired one up, you found that it sounded like first gear of a Harley-Davidson. But it had something nothing else had. Those wands had the power. Some of us smiled as we felt the mind-numbing tingle at the tips of our fingers, knowing full well what this want could do. Too bad the wands had a maximum of two speeds (high, and higher), weird vinyl heads, could wake the dead, and a fit of passion could summarily unplug it.

We’ve come a long way, baby. If you wandered around the store today you’d find pulsators designed with NASA technology, a rechargeable battery the size of a thumb that will knock your socks off, and nary a teddy bear or suspicious jelly rubber device in sight. Smooth, sexy silicone and hand-held vibrators for whatever strikes your fancy. Yet, we still have a shelf devoted to the wand.

A new customer was browsing today, marveling at the new products. They got to the wand shelf and exclaimed, “Oh, old school!”. And suddenly I wanted to come to the defense of the wand, the true workhorse of vibrators. Here’s why the might wand is not only relevant, but essential to many people.

1) They have ‘oomph’: If you need strong sensation to have an orgasm, there’s nothing like a wand. Nothing. Most have a delightfully low rumble with no hints of obnoxious buzz. Pure delightful power.

2) The redesigns have fixed most of the worst issues: Come touch the fairly quiet, silky silicone, rechargeable wands we have in and tell me that’s what you were imagining. Then fire it up and remember the feeling…

3) Yeah, wands have something to grab onto that isn’t vibrating that much. If you’ve ever had “buzzy fingers” I don’t need to explain further.

4) It’s long: This is an upside. For solo use or with partners, for a variety of reasons sometimes it’s hard or impossible to keep a vibrator on that special place without a shoulder cramp or losing grip. For some people with mobility issues a wand is a great answer, especially now you can get some very light ones.

5) It doesn’t scream SEX TOY: Got snoops? Travelling? You can still make a case this is for your poor achy back muscles. After all, that’s still what the pictures on the box show. Or you could say “Yes, that is a sex toy. And you just touched it.”

6) And last but not least, are they still bulky?: Yep. Nature of the beast. Some are much slimmer but there you have it.

So, stop in, and remember the good things about the maligned wand-style vibrator and forget the bad.

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