You’ve opened up your sex toy drawer in search of your favourite dildo… only to find that it has apparently liquefied in your absence. It’s now deformed, slimy, sticky, or welded irreversibly to your other toys.
This has happened even though you stored your toys in a place that was:
- Away from sunlight ✔
- Nice and dry ✔
- Free from dirt or grease ✔
- Nowhere near a heat source ✔
Why has this happened to you?
Having a sex toy “melt” like this is actually a fairly common experience. Here’s why it happens, what you should do if it does happen, and how you can prevent it.
Contents
What to do with melted sex toys
How to stop this from happening
Why some sex toys “melt”
Sex toys are made from a range of different materials, including silicone, rubber, PVC, plastic, metal, and “jelly”. Some of these materials are, alas, more reactive than others.
If you leave reactive toys in contact with one another (or even close to one another) they may do what they do best and react. They usually do this by melting, exuding grease or oil, or becoming discoloured.
Materials that often react when stored together include:
- “Jelly” ❌
- Flesh-like materials ❌
- Some rubbers ❌
Silicone, on the other hand, is wonderfully non-reactive, meaning that silicone toys (so long as they are pure silicone with nothing else mixed in) will never melt or deform. Hurrah!
Other good (but less common) non-reactive toy materials include:
- Glass ✔
- Stainless steel ✔
- Treated wood ✔
- TPR/TPE ✔
- ABS Plastic ✔
If you’ve got a toy that you think is made from one of the materials listed above… but it has still melted, this is most likely because it’s actually not made from the material you think it is. It may have had softeners, colours, texturisers or other additives snuck in during the manufacturing process, turning that lovely non-reactive toy into something much more melty.
Some people report that using a silicone lube with a silicone toy can also cause melting or deformation. If this happens, it again usually means that the toy was not pure silicone in the first place, or that the lube has some funky ingredients.
Oil-based lubes are known to cause damage to sex toys made from a few different materials.
Because of these issues, people are often advised to:
- Avoid oil-based lubes altogether ❌
- Avoid using silicone-based lubes with silicone toys ❌
This basically means sticking to a decent water-based lube (like this one) all the time. And why wouldn’t you? Water-based lube is excellent, and comes in every formulation imaginable – for oral, for anal, for everyday use.
What to do with melted sex toys
The short answer to this is: throw them out. And, while you’re at it, throw out any toys that they melted onto as well.
In many cases, materials that melt are toxic, and may contain substances that are harmful or cancer-causing. Once they’ve melted the risk that you’ll have an unpleasant reaction to them is significantly higher.
And, to compound that, they’ll also be kinda sticky – and thus not much fun to play with even if you did want to.
You might be able to return a melty toy to the retailer, but this is usually more effort than it’s worth. Yes, it’s unfair that they told you the product was silicone when it obviously isn’t… but getting them to admit fault and accept a return will require some effort.
How to stop this from happening
There are three things you can do to avoid having to deal with a melted toy. I present them here in order of preference.
Best: buy only toys made from safe materials
If you buy toys that are made from pure silicone, stainless steel, glass, or any other non-reactive material the problem of melting toys goes away. You can throw all your toys into a big box under the bed and never worry about it again. Hurrah.
To make shopping simple, everything sold by SheVibe is made from materials that are safe and non-reactive. Other retailers are a bit more patchwork, but you can read more about how to evaluate potential purchases here.
Second-best: store your toys separately
If you don’t want to say goodbye to your jelly- or rubber-based toys just yet, you can prevent them from melting by storing them separately from one another. You can do this by putting them in different drawers, wrapping each toy in a sock, or storing them in neat little satin bags.
This isn’t an ideal solution, but if you’re not prepared to throw out your toys and buy silicone ones, it’ll have to do.
Third-best: stick to water-based lube
To prevent problems with incompatible lube, you can also just stick to water-based lube all the time. Again, this isn’t an ideal solution – the best solution is to throw out any toys made from reactive materials and buy better ones. But if for any reason you don’t want to do that, sticking to water-based lubes will help you avoid a melty dildo.
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