Believe it or not, there is some thought process behind the toys I review. I don’t just run around willy-nilly screaming “GIVE ME ALL YOUR DILDOS” (okay… there is a small amount of that), 95% of the time I am offered a toy to review via email. I receive an email saying “hey, you totally awesome blogger! Would you like to review product XYZ?!” Not one to turn down a good toy offer, I then google product XYZ and see what other people are saying about it. I see what the casual consumer is saying about it on merchant websites, I see what bloggers are saying about it. I also read the product description from the company making the toy. I then decide if the toy sounds like something I want to use my valuable vagina time on and if it is I respond to the email with a “hellz yeah, send it my way!” or a “Thanks, but no thanks.”
So when Peepshow Toys asked if I would be interested in reviewing the Adrien Lastic Caress, I did my research and I became super interested in this toy. The premise of the toy sounded neat… it rotates AND vibrates? A small handful of bloggers who I follow had already reviewed the Caress and they were all raving about it… so with all this hype, I was super excited to give it a try. I was ready and willing to add my voice to the choir of angels singing the Caress’ praises. Now… imagine how awkward I feel when it finally showed up and… I’m just left pondering the very existence of this toy. Instead of having heavenly orgasms, I’m just left having an existential crisis. I am having serious mixed feelings about the Caress and I don’t even know where to start.
First of all, after opening up the box (which is actually a really nice and well constructed box, I’ll give it that) my first thought was that someone sent me some kind of strange deep sea jelly fish specimen. Sure, the lightbulb looking shape of the Caress was pretty ideally suited for the palm of my hand, it nestled in there perfectly… so I guess I do appreciate the ergonomic comfort when holding it. But when my partner is holding it… I kind of felt like he was coming at me with an alien creature… and my only thought was “well, this can’t end well.” It’s an odd looking toy made even odder with it’s selection of detachable heads. IS THIS A TORTURE DEVICE!? IS IT A ONE SIZE FITS ALL MEDICAL DEVICE FROM THE FUTURE!? IS IT A FANCY NEW PORE CLEANSER?! DID IT CRASH LAND HERE FROM OUTER-SPACE?! I JUST DON’T KNOW!
Yeah, that selection of five different detachable heads do nothing to put me at ease. I don’t trust a sex toy that can’t make up it’s mind on what it wants to be. A sex toy with an identity crisis can not be good for orgasms. And the heads the Caress provides aren’t even anything all that special or awe inspiring. It includes some pretty run of the mill designs, including your basic bunny ears (yawn) and tiny tentacles (seen it before). If you are going to give me a toy with detachable heads… at least make them look like tiny severed heads! Tiny severed heads with like… snakes coming out of their eyes for texture (this might be why I don’t design sex toys, I have terrible ideas.).
Believe me, I really wanted to like the Adrien Lastic Caress, the premise really did seem promising. The Caress offers the afore mentioned five heads for you to pick and choose from, two motors (one that rotates and one that vibrations), plus one vibration mode with ten modes of rotation. On paper, this all really does sound pretty damn awesome. But when placed against my clit and vulva, I was just confused by the whole thing. The vibration was not strong enough for me, it is pretty mild and it’s just coming from too broad a surface for me to direct where I want. And the rotation… well… it did absolutely nothing for me and my shy little clit. It just felt like I had silicone flaps slapping me around in the most bizarre way. The propellor shaped head was the most promising of the attachments, at times that one reminded me strongly of oral sex (which I have a hard time orgasming with on it’s own), so that was kind of neat… but it wasn’t enough to save my feelings on this toy. When I’m masturbating, I tend to apply a lot of pressure down around my clit, I like to really direct those vibrations down deep… unfortunately, I was unable to do that with the Caress, as adding too much pressure causes the motor to stop spinning and the toy just kind of goes dead in the water. Ugh. I don’t know why this toy and I couldn’t find a way to get along, I tried, I really did! I pulled this toy out at least a half dozen times or more, each time thinking “Today is the day! Today I will finally understand the Adrian Lastic Caress and all will be right with the world!” Yeah… that never happened. Each time I used this toy I was even more confused than the last. There has got to be something about this toy that I am just not understanding. Am I supposed to like the feeling of having my vulva caught up in a slow churning egg beater? Is twisting pubic hair around a rotating silicone tentacle a thing everyone else gets a kick out of? WHAT AM I MISSING?! My rotating jelly fish and I are at serious odds…
Okay, now that I have got my complaints out of the way. It’s not all bad news for the Adrien Lastic Caress. I think this makes an excellent foreplay toy. Grab a partner, add a blindfold, and do a little sensation play. Use the various heads and modes to create a tickling, interesting, exploration of your partners body, rub the soft silicone over your partners nipples, neck, thighs… for this type of play, I think the Caress can actually excel. Also, as a warm-up toy… the sensations the Caress provides aren’t at all bad… they are just far to subtle for me to achieve orgasm. But if I were preparing for a longer masturbation or partner session, where I didn’t mind a long warm-up session before really getting down to business, the Caress could provide a fun little tease. For me, the Caress is more of a side kick and not at all the super hero (It’s can be the Robin to my Hitachi’s Batman).
There is a tiny little trick to operating the Caress. When it first arrived I tried to turn it on and nothing happened so I thought it arrived with a dead battery. So I popped it on the magnetic USB charging cable it came with and let it sit for an hour (it will light up green when it is fully charged). I then tried pressing and holding the button again… and it still sat there silent. I was starting to think I just got a defective toy, so I just started mashing the button… and it sprang to life! In an effort to figure out what the heck I just did to turn it on, I turned it back off and tried to recreate what I just did. And that is when I discovered the little trick to operating the Caress. So… to turn it on you have to first push and hold the button for two seconds, this will cause a little light to switch on, from there you will give the button another quick press and the toy will activate. This is pretty different from most sex toys, but makes this toy an ideal traveling companion because the odds of it being randomly turned on seem pretty slim. To turn the toy off again just press and hold that same button until the light turns off and the toy quiets the fuck down. That same button is also use to scroll through the toys ten various rotation modes. The modes are kind of neat, I really appreciate that it manages to change things up… it doesn’t just rotate in a single direction… it can do back and forth patterns at different speeds, which can create an interesting sensation experience against the skin.
Cleaning the Adrien Lastic Caress is a bit of a pain in the butt. There are some serious crevices among those little silicone arms which are hard to clean. Thankfully, since they are removable you have the option of just tossing them into the dishwasher (be sure to contain them in something or they will end up at the bottom of your machine) or throwing them into some boiling water. The main body of the toy waterproof so it is safe to take it into the bath or shower with you but I would go ahead and wash it by hand and keep it out of the dishwasher or the pot of boiling water.
I’m not really able to give an enthusiastic recommendation for the Adrien Lastic Caress… because it just didn’t work out all that well for me. But, there is nothing wrong with the functionality of the toy or the quality of it (hey, it comes with a two year warranty!). I think it does have potential for someone who enjoys a much subtler toy (which is not me, I need a beast of a toy with a jet engine between my legs) or someone who is looking for a toy that is good for tickling (which is a fetish I learned of recently), sensation play, or a gentle foreplay toy. I also think it has the potential to mimic the feeling of oral sex… especially with the propeller looking attachment, I could lay back, close my eyes and almost believe the fantasy of someone down there going to town with their tongue. There are definitely reviewers out there who are going absolutely ga-ga for the way this rotating toy feels, so it can’t be all bad, it’s just not my personal thing… and that’s cool… we are all allowed to be different.
If you think I am just being totally cray-cray and that this toy looks awesome, head on over to Peepshow Toys, they can hook you up with an Adrien Lastic Caress of your very own! Bonus: Use the code KITTEN for an extra 10% off your order!
The Adrien Lastic Caress was provided to me free of charge by Peepshow Toys in exchange for my honest review.