Guys, we have a couple of toys we bought from LH, both made from silcone rubber type material. We got them out a couple of days ago, after they had sat there for a few weeks, and they look like something has melted them in some places. It looks as if they were touching something that was either hot, or reacted with it. The funny thing is there was nothing that we could see in the drawer that could have done it, and the 'melted' areas are not sticky or discoloured.
Any ideas? we are baffled
As far as I'm aware silicone reacts with silicone so if they were touching that's why it looks like they've melted. All toys should be kept in seperate boxes/bags to avoid the materials reacting with each other
Silicone does indeed react with silicone. If two silicone toys are kept together, or if a silicone toy is used with silicone lube, then there's a chance your product will degrade or 'melt'.
The trick is to always use water-based lube with silicone toys and to keep your silicone toys separate by getting some drawstring bags or keeping them in separate boxes. Often they are provided with silicone toys and are worth investing in!
Lovehoney - Lucy wrote:
Silicone does indeed react with silicone. If two silicone toys are kept together, or if a silicone toy is used with silicone lube, then there's a chance your product will degrade or 'melt'.
The trick is to always use water-based lube with silicone toys and to keep your silicone toys separate by getting some drawstring bags or keeping them in separate boxes. Often they are provided with silicone toys and are worth investing in!
Silicone melts when in contact with latex. platinum grade silicone won't react / shouldn't. If it does, it means it's not pure silicone. The UK has very little regulations on silicone, ytou only need 10% silicone in a product for it to be classed as silicone. Silicone comes in different shores too, soft, medium, and firm.
The problem is, because where silicone toys are made aren't regulated, even a 100% silicone toy can pick-up other chemicals. They do have pours, although tiny, mostly able to trap smells and gas. But if prodused in a mould that used non-silicone toys, the chemicals can sometimes be present within the surface pours after production. Or even a factory, say a factory produces latex toys as well as silicone. Latex toys tend to be coated with powder, this powder can become airborn and transfer to other pours (human skin, lungs, and artifical materials).
Also, if silicone isn't given enough conditioning time, it is more prone to imperfections. Conditioning often lasts 24-48hours, but many companies don't allow this to happen.
But even with all that info, it's still better safe than sorry.
Some companies perform tests on what lubes and products can interact safely. Tantus is one - check there website out.
It really winds me up that silicone comes in for all this flack. We only buy good quality platinum grade silicone toys - Tantus or Fun Factory and you can leave them lying in contact for months without any issues and use good quality silicone lubes (Pjur Original or Pjur Woman) with them with no problems at all.
Yes, there are toys out there that claim to be silicone that clearly aren't and perhaps the issues these suffer cause the reputation and I'm sure that plasticisers leaching out of jelly toys can 'go' for silicone so its not a good idea to leave silicone toys in contact with non-silicone toys but it's high time the truth about proper silicone toys was more widely known.Ok, so that's what it is.
It's a little disappointing that there is no comment about it on the particular page - someone might point to a disclaimer page somewhere, but it seems obvious that people will keep their toys together in a box somewhere, if only to spot kids from finding them. We also have no way of knowing what grade of material is used before purchase, so some kind of help there would be useful.
We don't often buy on price alone, we are happy to spend a bit extra to get decent quality stuff, so that makes the fact that these toys are ruined all the more galling. We would have expected them to be of better quality material.
The worst bit? Where we currently live (middle east) there are no outlets for replacements as sex toys are not permitted to be sold, so until our next visit to a sex toy friendly country we are stuffed.
Belle_djour wrote:
Ok, so that's what it is.
It's a little disappointing that there is no comment about it on the particular page - someone might point to a disclaimer page somewhere, but it seems obvious that people will keep their toys together in a box somewhere, if only to spot kids from finding them. We also have no way of knowing what grade of material is used before purchase, so some kind of help there would be useful.
We don't often buy on price alone, we are happy to spend a bit extra to get decent quality stuff, so that makes the fact that these toys are ruined all the more galling. We would have expected them to be of better quality material.
The worst bit? Where we currently live (middle east) there are no outlets for replacements as sex toys are not permitted to be sold, so until our next visit to a sex toy friendly country we are stuffed.
I'm so sorry your toys are ruined and replacing them is going to be difficult. I'm also really sorry that we weren't able to get the information about storing sex toys to you effectively.
I'm in charge of the buyer's guides and I regularly meet with customer care about how to improve them and how to ensure customers get all the information they need when making a purchase. About a year ago, I added this guide on How to Clean and Store Sex Toys to every single sex toy page on Lovehoney (if there is a page without it - please shout so I can add it!). Unfortunately, even though it's on every relevant product page there's a lot on each product page fighting for your attention so I expect many people don't see it.
We tried adding this useful information to order confirmation emails, but unfortunately this went down very badly with customers who thought they had been subscribed to a newsletter (when they hadn't). We had complaints and had to go back to the plain order confirmation. We're still working on trying to find the right balance because we would love to draw people's attention to useful guides after their purchase but we have to do it in a way that makes customers reassured we aren't spamming them.
We've done all we thought we could on the guide itself - including bolding the important bits - to try and help customers avoid the horrible situation you've discovered. What I am going to look into is filming a video on how to store sex toys, as it's really important to us that customers get this information.
Edited to add: I'm also working with the tech team to get lube compatability into the specifics, so we can always mark that silicone lube is not compatible with silicone toys as this can degrade them too.
A similar thing happened to us Belle, we just chucked the toys in the same bag one night when we were exhausted and forgot about them!
It was annoying but a VERY good excuse to buy new toys ;) xxx
Lovehoney - Alice wrote:
I'm so sorry your toys are ruined and replacing them is going to be difficult. I'm also really sorry that we weren't able to get the information about storing sex toys to you effectively.
I'm in charge of the buyer's guides and I regularly meet with customer care about how to improve them and how to ensure customers get all the information they need when making a purchase. About a year ago, I added this guide on http://www.lovehoney.co.uk/sex-toys/buyers-guide/sex-toy-storage/ to every single sex toy page on Lovehoney (if there is a page without it - please shout so I can add it!). Unfortunately, even though it's on every relevant product page there's a lot on each product page fighting for your attention so I expect many people don't see it.
We tried adding this useful information to order confirmation emails, but unfortunately this went down very badly with customers who thought they had been subscribed to a newsletter (when they hadn't). We had complaints and had to go back to the plain order confirmation. We're still working on trying to find the right balance because we would love to draw people's attention to useful guides after their purchase but we have to do it in a way that makes customers reassured we aren't spamming them.
We've done all we thought we could on the guide itself - including bolding the important bits - to try and help customers avoid the horrible situation you've discovered. What I am going to look into is filming a video on how to store sex toys, as it's really important to us that customers get this information.
Edited to add: I'm also working with the tech team to get lube compatability into the specifics, so we can always mark that silicone lube is not compatible with silicone toys as this can degrade them too.
Surely a simple line of text near the top of the product page or at the bottom near the reviews (maybe both) is all that is needed "caution- due to the materials this toy contains it may react with other materials, please check this link for more details......."
To be perfectly honest when I bought my first few toys it never even occured to me that the materials may react, I did see the guide but assumed it was more of a hygeine thing than anything else which to me is common sense so I never bothered to read the article.
That said its never common sense to assume but unless your going to look at absolutely everything you do in minute detail (which would take forever), just in case theres something you don't know, then stuff like that will get missed by people sadly :(
Luckily for me I saw posts on here about toys melting before anything bad happened to my toys.
Update: I've got a script for a video sorted, and returns found a vibe that had melted so we can demonstrate.
Honestly, no amount of text helps - hopefully the video will!
morefun wrote:
Surely a simple line of text near the top of the product page or at the bottom near the reviews (maybe both) is all that is needed "caution- due to the materials this toy contains it may react with other materials, please check this link for more details......."
That would be sensible, would certainly give a bit more of a chance
Lovehoney - Alice wrote:
Update: I've got a script for a video sorted, and returns found a vibe that had melted so we can demonstrate.
Honestly, no amount of text helps - hopefully the video will!
cant you ask your suppliers to make a clear warning in big letters.
im not sure about products by other brands, but on LH's own brand toys you could add a safe storge leaflet inside the box
I don't know about other people but I always watch the videos before buying a toy - Annabelle or Hella ALWAYS say not to use silicone lube with silicone toys. But I think a sentence about storage should be posted in the descriptions of all toys in bold letters so people don't miss it.
How about in the Buyers Guide section, rather than a link to how to clean, perhaps a visual aid with the different lube materials and a simple tick or cross next to each to show compatibility. At the moment I expect the majority of people skip straight past the buyers guide bits because they are links somewhere else to generic info rather than information specific to the product.