Softness
The Basics
Extra-soft
Our softest and favourite silicone to recommend. Extra-soft toys make us WANT to toy; they’re comfortable, deliciously squishy, but still hold up. You may wish to avoid this one for thinner toys, owing to the extra flop it gives them.
Soft
Our ‘middle’ softness. Has more give than medium, and a pinch more rigidity than extra-soft. Great for giving long, slim toys a little less flop than ES, but more comfort than medium.
Medium
The firmest silicone we make. Focusses on stability, gives the user more of a stretch. Good if you want very big toys to stand up better, or like a little more challenge.
Ultimately, don’t worry! Here’s a really easy way to understand it:
Want to know more?
Softness is important when you’re buying a toy! It will define how flexible and pliable it is. Because the apparent softness of your silicone can change depending on a toy’s specific features (for example, thicker toys have more bulk, and so naturally have less flex overall), it’s good to have an idea of how your choice will affect the toy.
It used to be that ‘medium’ softness was the standard, default material for silicone toys. The Shore scale is used to measure softness of a material, and medium softness generally refers to a Shore rating of 0050. This material does have a fairly rigid feel to it, helping it to hold upright. It was accepted as the standard for a few reasons, one of the largest of which was the perception that toys should be able to stand up on their own, unassisted. Many folks will find this an unnecessary feature, though, because once a dildo slips into you, it’s your body that holds it upright. Ultimately, we found that because of the reduced ‘give’, toys made in medium softness silicone can generally be less comfortable.
To this end, we’ve adjusted the skewing of our softness ratings! We got rid of firm – that really wasn’t something we felt we could recommend. Medium is still 0050, and now sits at the hardest softness we sell. Below that is soft, sitting at approximately Shore 0030. And on the softer end, at ~0020, we introduced extra-soft, which for many of us here is the most comfortable material you can buy a dildo in.
Extra-soft is fabulously pliable. Still able to hold a good structural shape, it conforms to your insides like real skin, letting you feel all the subtle detailing in our toys glide through you easily. At the same time, any features which might have felt harsh in firmer silicones subtly deform within you, meaning you can focus on the best parts of the experience. One caveat – thin, long toys made from extra-soft like to bend a little more, so may need more coaxing into you. Juniper is a good example of this!
Soft is the material you should choose if you’re worried about the aforementioned flop. Most of our toys work great in extra-soft, but soft offers a pinch more ergonomics, giving you a slightly firmer shaft to press and prod with as you’re starting your session. It’s still very comfy, and in fact we recommend it for our more depth-play oriented, longer dildos. (Gideon, Juniper, Hydra, we’re looking at you!)
Used to the old classic feel? We got you! Medium softness is a perfectly serviceable material with a surface that still yields to your body and offers nice flexibility, but generally makes your dildo more rigid and ‘push’ focussed. If you want every millimetre of a larger model’s advertised size to stretch you out, this is the one for you, as clenching/bodily motions will cause it to deform less.
