‘Tis the season for gift giving and the time of year when many are in panic for last-minute ideas for stocking stuffers. Unconventional Love has you covered, with suggestions for good girls and boys.
We’ve made a list of five inexpensive toys for the man in your life.
Tenga Egg, Keith Haring Dance
Tenga, $6.00
Tenga eggs are marketed as inexpensive, single-use toys. The company offers a few dozen individual egg options. Additionally, they sell half-dozen multipacks, which have fantastic visual appeal and fun packaging. This year they also sold an advent calendar of eggs for the more frequent egg beaters out there.
Despite their small size, the eggs are shockingly stretchy and pack a big punch. They’re made of body safe elastomer, and each one comes with a serving-sized packet of lube. I must confess: I forced this particular model of egg on our test panel purely because I love Keith Haring art and wanted an excuse to buy it. They’re so cute that they almost qualify as home décor. I suppose I could toss a few in the guest bathroom along with the travel toiletries and hope people take the hint. They’d match my Keith Haring area rugs too.
As eggs go, sadly Keith Haring is better for home décor than sex toys. While it didn’t get any overwhelmingly negative feedback, this egg offered less sensation than the other egg we tested. Because it’s a thinner material than the other style of egg, it produces a transparent effect as it stretches during use. There were some mixed feelings about the see-through visual appeal.
Tenga Hard Boiled Egg, Combo
Tenga, $6.00
Tenga introduced the Hard Boiled series years after their original egg products. Thicker and less fragile than the original eggs, there was less transparency during use and a greater feeling of confidence about the material’s sturdiness. The Hard Boiled egg we tried was the combo model, which appeared to offer the most sensation for the user.
The feedback was mixed on whether the short egg toys or longer strokers were better. On the plus side, the eggs offered less resistance and required less force to use than the longer, more tubular toys. On the other hand, the shorter egg toys were harder to keep a grip on once they were lubricated. No eggs were cracked during our testing, but a few did go flying.
As an added bonus, the eggs transmit enough sensation to be potentially usable as a barrier for oral safer sex, and since they move more than a condom, the recipient would benefit from feeling more sensation.
Spinner #1 Tetra
Tenga, $23
Consistently reviewed as a top toy online, Spinners look like what would happen if Tenga eggs and Fleshlights had a love child. They are reusable toys that resemble overgrown gelatinous capsules, offering different patterns and textures inside, along with an internal coil that rotates as the toy is used. Spinners have won awards for design and still come in at a relatively modest price.
We tried the Tetra model. It looks interesting and comes with a holder for washing up and drying. That said, the internal spiral made cleaning difficult. And while all the toys we reviewed are stretchy enough to accommodate most penis sizes, the coils on the spiral could be uncomfortable for wider anatomy, particularly with deeper use.
Hello Cake Stroker
Target, $32
Although this toy is more of a hybrid stroker and vibrator, I wanted to include it because it’s easily found at local, big box stores. But in this case, the toy was mediocre enough to warrant taking the risk of shopping elsewhere.
The Hello Cake Stroker has some convenient features: it’s cordless and rechargeable via a cute matchy charger, offers 10 different vibration settings, only takes 120 minutes to fully charge, and is latex-free for people with allergies. It’s a bright fun yellow color that’s easy to spot in a dark bedroom, and fully waterproof for play in the shower. It can also be used without vibration, since many men aren’t used to that sensation.
Despite all these advantages, our test results were utterly underwhelming. It’s made out of molded plastic that’s too hard for sensitive skin, as our reviewer described, it felt “like getting a hand job from a taco.”
3D Zen Sleeve
Tenga, $35
Aesthetically, the 3D series from Tenga is beautiful to look at. The entire series of toys is bright white, presented tastefully on black stands like museum pieces. Each toy is a cylindrical stroker with different textured patterns. For our purposes, we tried the Zen model, which does indeed look like a kinky sort of Zen garden.
A reusable toy, like the Spinner, it comes with a black stand that doubles as a drying rack after washing. Made of an upgraded antibacterial elastomer, these toys are stretchy to accommodate all sorts of bodies. The 3D toy series was also a design award winner, the first time a male masturbation toy won such an award.
The priciest product we tested, the 3D Zen sleeve still fits easily into the budget and was the standout among the toys in this review. The gentle grooved texture provided a milder sensation than the other toys, pleasurable without being overwhelming, with no complaints about pain, egg launching, or poor grip. An unintended perk is the toy can be turned inside-out for an even gentler surface, putting the grippy grooves on the outside for users who may struggle with dexterity.
Additionally, the Zen could be trimmed down to fit different lengths, or the top cut off entirely for someone who craves a better visual of their anatomy. I’d add an additional use: any of the 3D sleeves could be trimmed down into short sections, usable as an adaptive tool for people who need less penetration or suffer from certain types of painful intercourse. Think of them as half price, customizable alternatives to the OhNut Buffer Rings.
All five of the toys we tested were relatively inexpensive, easily portable, non-allergenic, and fun to try. All are suitable for solo or partner play in a variety of ways. These toys qualify as sensation play rather than simulation play. The two longer toys (Spinner and 3D Zen sleeve) were much easier for the wielder to handle. While the 3D sleeves were our top pick for sexy stocking stuffers, at these prices, you don’t mind shelling out a few bucks or cracking a few eggs as you experiment.