Reviewing
I went to Tim Connelly’s office at Adult Video News (AVN) back in either 2004 or 2005 when he was editor there. We were sitting chatting as his cocker spaniel was trying to hump my leg and I asked him why so many crap toys had decent reviews (only I phrased the question much nicer). He explained that he came from the music industry and was mimicking their methods- every sex toy submitted for review gets a pass (it’s good for advertising cause the companies advertising pay for the magazine— and no company wants bad reviews; that and he didn’t want the disgruntled phone calls), but Tim explained to me that the space that the toy review takes… “well that’s where you see what we actually liked” (paraphrased).
FreddyandEddy.com came up 2002 as a review website created to spice up a marriage. The first toy review I think was the Erosillator. By 2004 they were hitting their stride and I remember Ian (Freddy) resigning his teaching position because they had successfully transitioned to an online store and were that busy and that financially viable (plus no one had found out he was doing this yet and he really didn’t want to be forced out).
If you read those old toy reviews, it was a temperature gage rating, but there were really no bad reviews. There were some where the red heat wasn’t all the way at the top, but they were all pretty close to it.
Ducky Doolittle had a website of Sexual Curiosities in the spirit of her live shows she’d done as Knockers the Clown. She was a cam girl with a lot of spunk and in the members only section there were sex toy reviews under the heading of “Research”. Ducky is ever the wit and wordsmith—the reviews even when negative ran as fun fodder rather than serious review.
I don’t know what I was looking for when I happened across this video featuring one of Tantus’ toys in Kara Sutra’s Sex Ed 102. She tells me that was 2007. I didn’t realize I had met her before at a toy training at Stag Shop, a chain of retail stores in Canada where she had worked. I sat in front of my screen watching it over and over and I realized this was cutting edge. Video Sex Ed. I reached out and sent her a whole box of toys. What ever she was doing, I wanted Tantus to be a part of it. Her videos were not reviews, they were information based, but she did do some reviews on how to play with some Tantus favorites, plus it spurred her on. She’d been seen. I have always been one of those noncompetitive people who want others to succeed- sometimes at my own folly, but not this time. I believe in mentorship too. I don’t think I mentored Kara, but we became friends and I have from time to time leaned into her knowledge.
Sue Johanson was also reviewing toys. She was on Canadian TV and Cory Silverberg, one of the owners of the sex store co-operative Come As You Are, produced the sex toys she’d review. Ms Johanson was sex positive… sometimes, but don’t get her started on stockings and garter belts ‘cause that was where she drew the line. Garters spelled WHORE!!! She actually did a whole segment how disgusting it was. Sue Johanson was a nurse who in 1970 opened a birth control clinic in a Canadian high school. She then got a graduate degree in communication and counseling and began spreading her program in the public schools of Canada. She was very honest about sex and very funny. Plus, she was like your grandmother, or your mother, but her honesty wasn’t always subtle. She was the first reviewer I’d ever seen be brutally honest. I had a few of Tantus’ toys reviewed on her program. I remember seeing one of the stinkers though. My accountant, Kerri, was watching with me and it was really a bad review and Kerri was so fuming, upset that this Canadian could do such a thing (I have learned Canadians aren’t always nice after all). I thought about it, sitting with the review for a minute and I turned to Kerri and admitted, that dildo is not our finest work. A bad review may have hurt my pride, but I could weigh it with the good reviews she’d delivered to us and it was ok.
When blogging really started to become influential was as Edenfantasies took it as part of their marketing plan. It was brilliant in its simplicity. We’d all given away toys for the press. Edenfantasies put someone in charge of the system and they coached the writing style. They worked a point system where you got discounts on your next toy to review and meanwhile, there was a blossoming of real reviews and a buzz to go visit the site. Bloggers would also come into conflict with the owner/ manager or Eden and leave to go off setting up their own website. Website blogs were blooming. Bloggers became the press. Edenfantasies had sent staff and a few bloggers to Her Blogher conference to recruit. Tantus had sent lots of toys to give away. It was an expensive luxury hotel and it was very expensive to do, but it legitimized the idea to many that sex toys could be mainstreamed in this online area, it wasn’t just about pervy people who liked to stick things up their asses. It also proved that the sex toy reviews could be legitimate on their own.
When Edenfantasies had an internal combustion that blew up the whole program, a video or taped rage of the owner verbally abusing all the bloggers and those employees who were working with them, he had called for a restructuring (the details elude me now it was so long ago) – the bloggers stepped back and waged a war. Employees who interfaced with the bloggers all quit and they threw more fuel on the fire. They took their skills, severed ties, created a vicious calling out against Eden and began in earnest to make real sites for themselves.
I don’t remember if Hey Epiphora had left before the war, I think she had. I do know that I had made one of my bigger mistakes at Tantus President and I had hired Edenfantasies manager who had been in charge of that program, this was before the fall. Tantus hired her as a marketing manager because we hadn’t really had a good one for a year since we’d left San Diego and our brand wasn’t being seen that much. It was 2010 and I was pregnant. Victoria had all kinds of incredible ideas and I’d seen what she’d done with Eden. She seemed ideal. Not all of her ideas would fly right away but she wanted to make a school for basic sex education for sex toys available in every store, training and at least a handout pamphlet. She dreamed of a sponsored RV, wrapped in Tantus logo, doing sex ed with a video blog. She was very gung ho. She was also a little hot headed and didn’t like nos. We didn’t have the budget for all her plans. She got into some tests of wills with Mike our CEO. That wasn’t comfortable. And then Mike had a meeting with someone and needed to know who this guy really was. He tasked Victoria to do this. She was good… way too good. That’s when I found out that Victoria had also worked for the Alumni Association of one of the big Universities, the organization that gets bank from all the former students. She was used to doing deep research on people. She loved doing deep research. She loved finding dirt.
It was after that that I’d seen just how mean that love could be. It was right before July’s ANME and I was a big 6 months pregnant. She lived back East but she’d travel every few weeks, staying at our house and work in the office with her team. I’m not sure why, but she had a hard on for Epiphora. Knowing Epiphora it was probably something like the fact she stood up for herself and didn’t back down from an opinion. Victoria said something though… that she had dirt on Epiphora and she knew how to get her if she got out of line. Jaw Drop. WHAT???
She showed me a picture from a video call she’d had with her, where she had big dildo in her hand. Victoria said Piphs mother didn’t know and she would send the picture in a heartbeat. I was shocked and alarmed and did not know what to do. Things were never really the same and that trade show as she watched pregnant me set up the booth and didn’t want to hurt her nails… I’d pretty much had it. She spent next to no time in our booth and gave notice at the end of the show. Our loss was Doc Johnsons gain… she got her School of Doc (if I remember the name correctly). Piph came out to her mother with ease soon after and her mother became one of her biggest supporters. I congratulated Piph as soon as it occurred. Had I told her about it, I don’t think it would have been nearly as happy an encounter. It’s one of worst secrets I’ve ever known and I struggled with should I or shouldn’t I for a few weeks or months. I monitored Piph like a hawk, so I could intervein at any time if need be. It was horrible. That was such a bad hire. Victoria was the first adult industry person I met who thought reviews should be managed.
And then 2013 there was a new “revolutionary toy.” It had a linear TrueSonic ® linear motor that had raised a whopping $162.000 in a crowd funding campaign. Epiphora named it the Shit Orb.
While she complained that it didn’t match up to its marketing, what she really said was that the marketing was so far afield that she felt she had to defend all the other toys it attacked. Shit Orb became a shit storm on Twitter. She had shot the first volley but a crowd of other bloggers came and supported her words and the industry was not pleased.
I was sitting at a bench outside a bar in Burbank at the January 2014 ANME with the owner of Revel Body, who seemed very nice, the buyer from Good Vibrations and two manufacturer reps, one from fun factory, as they exclaimed how horrible that blog was, and how bloggers should be nice. Revel Body was new, and he’d been taken down hard, he wasn’t saying much about it, certainly he wasn’t making claims of wrong doing, or that bloggers should be kept in their cages… but others were. I sat there listening to this until I couldn’t sit on my hands any longer. I said something that I’ve repeated so many times since “You don’t read the New York Times Reviews for only the good ones. In fact, you only trust them because they review the bad ones and tell you about them.” I don’t say I was popular with that crowd, but I had my say, I wasn’t mean, I didn’t go for the jugular, but I did state what I still believe to be absolutely true.
That one blog was not the first blog that had been negative, but it was so well done that people didn’t remember the real name of the toy, they remembered the “Shit Orb.” And the company didn’t last more than a year or so.
There’s a quote I love by Muriel Rukeyser; “The world is made up of stories, not atoms.” As a whole I struggle to tell the negative portions, because I don’t believe there are bad guys, only mistaken moments. I realize my writing will change with time, as writings of reviews did. Stories evolve and some of the juiciest have fools and follies and those beckon to be told... but I’m not ready.
I have just committed to writing my first book, my second will be about Tantus, but this first is a fictionalized version of an industry tale very few know anything about— and while some would see villains, I’m so far giving them the benefit of the doubt. When I have that one done however, I’ll write the Tantus book with all the skeletons on display and tell where the bodies are buried… well maybe. We’ll see if I can do it without harming others.
TWO books?!?! I can hardly wait!!