The Oral Pleasure Gels are a new concept from Give Lube, designed to add a little extra flavour to oral sex, be it with a male or female partner. It’s the sort of thing you can use just for a bit of fun, or even to disguise your partner’s natural taste if you’re not so keen on it.
Tag: water-based
Ultimate Lube
Lovehoney Lubricants
The folks over at Lovehoney are awfully sweet, and this Christmas they sent me a lovely selection of samples of their new lubes and toy cleaner, bundled up with a couple of storage pouches, and all packed into one of their fancy new gift boxes. I felt the least I could do to say thanks would be to write a short review, so let’s take a quick look at the range after the jump!
Delight
The Delight is a silk lubricant which comes in a squeezable tube. It’s quite a thick water-based lube with a pearlescent-white appearance. When you start to play with it the texture reminds me a little of hair conditioner. It’s quite a slick lube to begin with, but the more you play with it the more it thickens up, so it doesn’t last as long as the other three. It gets borderline tacky towards the end, but once it’s dried it gets absorbed completely into the skin, so there’s no residue to worry about. It feels like quite a rich lube that will nourish the skin in the process. I’m not quite sure what the primary purpose of this lube is, but I rather enjoy it with insertable toys as it adheres to them well. I find it too thick as Fleshjack lube, and not long-lasting enough as a masturbation lube.
Enjoy
The Enjoy is a water-based lubricant enriched with aloe vera and extracts of ginseng. It comes in a nice easy-to-open bottle with a cap that pops down allowing you to pour the lube wherever you like through a small spout. It’s a pretty runny lube which makes it great for use with a Fleshjack, and this is my favourite application for it. It’s also good with smaller insertable toys, but it doesn’t adhere that well to the surface of most common sex toy materials, so it’s not ideal if you’re trying to get an even application over something with a large surface area. It’s a good lube for oral because it has little to no taste; I detected only a very very slight bitterness from the aloe, and then a subtle aftertaste which reminded me of licking the back of an envelope, so nothing that’s off-putting. It terms of duration I was pleased with how long it lasted, especially inside a closed environment like a Fleshjack.
Discover
The Discover is an anal-lubricant which I found to be almost identical to the Enjoy. It has a couple of different ingredients on the label, but in terms of how it behaves there’s no discernable difference. Unfortunately for an anal lube it is very runny, and the one thing you expect about anal lubes is that they’ll be thick. If you’re trying to use it with anal toys then it just doesn’t stay in place that well, but again like the Enjoy it’s great with a Fleshjack. The only two minor differences I could identify were that the taste was slightly stronger, and that it dried up a little faster. The Discover is a good lube on the whole – for general-purpose use – but it’s probably my least favourite of the bunch.
Release
The Release is a masturbation lubricant designed for men. It’s an oil-based lube which comes in a squeezable tube like the Delight. It comes out as quite a thick, creamy, white solid, which rather reminds me of E45 cream, or a similar moisturiser. Once you start to rub it into the skin it quickly melts with the body heat and becomes a really slippery fluid. Despite being oil based it doesn’t feel overly greasy, which is great, and just feels as though it’s moisturising the skin. It works really well for masturbation, allowing the foreskin to slide smoothly back and forth over the head of your penis, and the hand to glide up and down the shaft. If you’ve never tried lube for masturbation before then the Release is a great one to start with. The oil based formula helps it to last for a really long time without drying up, so reapplication isn’t necessary. The only thing you need to be careful with is that you keep it away from latex condoms, as the oil content will damage them. I’m actually tempted to use it with some of my anal toys because of how thick it is. Once you’re done with the lube you don’t even need to wash it off, because the almond oil, aloe vera extract, and vitamin E will all be absorbed by the skin of the penis and help to nourish it and keep it in tip-top condition.
Alongside the lubes Lovehoney were kind enough to send me a sample of “Fresh” their new toy cleaner. The cleaner comes in a handy spray bottle and is really simple to use. You just squirt a little all over the surface of your toys, leave it for a minute, then rinse it away and your toys will be left clean as a whistle. It’s a great product to have on hand to ensure that everything stays hygienic, and the formula is safe to use on the vast majority of toys, barring those which expressly warn against using anything other than water. Despite the name “Fresh” and the lime green bottle, the product is actually odourless, and doesn’t possess the zesty hints of citrus which you might expect, but this is great for anyone sensitive to perfumes.
It would be remiss of me not to briefly mention the other goodies I got. Lovehoney sell toy pouches in two sizes now, the large measures 33cm x 14cm and the small 20cm x 14cm. The small is great for butt plugs and other short toys, while the large will fit most dildos, except the truly long double-enders, and anything with really oversized balls. They’re really good quality satin bags, and they don’t leave lint on your toys. If you’re just buying one or two for your most prized pieces then the price of £3 doesn’t seem so bad, but if you have a collection like mine, exceeding 70 items, then that would soon add up. I’d love to see them stock them in bulk packs at a discount, as then I’d snap up a load instantly.
Lovehoney also do beautiful gift boxes now, with a selection of designs to choose from. They’re absolutely perfect if you want to surprise your lover with a new toy or some new lingerie from Lovehoney, as presentation plays a big part.
I have to say a big thanks to Lovehoney for sending me all this as it was greatly appreciated. Lovehoney has always been a store than I can recommend using without reservation, so go check them out and sample some of their new products for yourselves.
Spunk Lube
XLube
Give Lube Premium Aqua Gel
The very generous people at Give Lube kindly sent me a couple of bottles of their product to review, so many thanks to them, and without further ado…
Read the review after the jump!
I’m not one who typically uses lube for masturbation, but the Give Lube actually felt great when applied to the penis, and I found that I only needed a small amount to achieve that effect. There was something incredibly natural about it; there wasn’t an awareness of being covered in lube, everything just functioned how it should, but enhanced. In the past I’ve found that certain lubes can slightly decrease the sensation from masturbation, but that wasn’t the case here at all. It also seemed very gentle to the skin, and almost soothing, which must have something to do with the pH-optimised formula and added panthenol.
For the most part the Give Lube was not sticky or gummy at all; it was only for a couple of seconds before it dried completely that I noticed a slight tackiness to the touch, which is actually very impressive. Once it had dried it left behind no residue, but as soon as I went to wash my hands I felt it reactivating with the water, so I had to put this to the test. It pleased me to find that if you add a little water to the lube at any point during use, it will return to its original state, so you can extend your use of it without having to use more product. It’s also very easy to clean up, and rinses away with running water.
Without adding any additional water to reactivate it, I found that the duration time for the lube during masturbation was comparable with other high-quality brands. When used with a Fleshjack I was also impressed by the lube. It provided a comfortable gliding action between the Superskin™ sleeve and the penis, and again I didn’t need to use that much. Normally with a thicker generic lube I’d need to put a couple of pumps into the cavity, but I found just a small drizzling of the Give Lube through the orifice was sufficient. The lube lasted a long time within the central canal of toy, and I didn’t need to apply any more there during my time using the toy. I think this is down to the lube being relativity thin, which is something I like when using a Fleshjack. Personally, next time I might be tempted to add a couple of drops of water into the Fleshjack along with the lube, just to dilute it slightly and create more of that wet feeling that I enjoy. The only area where I found that the lube did start to dry, was along the lower third of the shaft of the penis, which spent more time outside of the toy and exposed to the air. The tight anal opening of the Fleshjack did start to tug here, and I had to add a dab more lube, but if I had thought to bring some water with me I could have just added a drop to the area to reactivate the lube there. I’m more than satisfied that Give Lube and a FleshJack are a good combination, and will be using them together again.
Testing the lube with insertable toys, I found I actually needed to use less lube than I expected. I experimented with my Tantus Tulip butt plug, and with a little squirt of lube spread across the toy, and some on the body, it slipped in like a charm. There was no friction or dragging as it was inserted, and once the lube was inside the body it felt completely fine – again its presence wasn’t really noticeable as being anything foreign. The lube didn’t adhere to the surface of the silicone toy as well as I might have hoped, and left a patchy application, like water on the bonnet of a freshly washed car, but it wasn’t really a problem for a toy of that size. I won’t criticise it for this, as whenever you’re intending to use anything larger than that, you’re always going to want a thicker specialist anal lube.
The only negative I can point to is that the lube does taste slightly bitter, due to the aloe vera, which is something to bear in mind if you’re going to be using it for oral sex. I stress the word “slightly” because it’s not that strong, and it’s only noticeable initially. Ultimately it will come down to a matter of taste; personally I enjoy Campari and take my Manhattans on the dry side, so the taste doesn’t bother me, others might not react to it at all, and for a few with a very sweet tooth it may be bothersome.
Overall I’m incredibly impressed with the Premium Aqua Gel, and I can fully recommend it as my new favourite lubricant.
It’s also available from SexShop365 in those same sizes, Maxi, Midi, and Mini.
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