Note: The names of most toys in this article have changed due to manufacturers’ whims.
I wanted to call this article “the vibrating dick project.” Working in Good Vibrations’ retail stores, I had so many customers in the stores ask me about vibrating cock rings, I couldn’t resist trying them myself. Vibrators are my sex toy of choice, as they are for millions of women. Nice as fingers are, a vibrator is cooking with gas. Vibrators are the greatest thing since sliced bread — and they’re the side that bread is buttered on.
Since I couldn’t stand selling vibrating cock rings to grinning couples and solo women another day without doing the research myself, I donned the lab coat, called in an order, and sent my surprised and excited research assistant to make a pick-up.
Most sex toys stores carry a few vibrating cock rings, and technically they’re not all cock rings. Standard cock rings like the Pleasure Rings, the Romeo Rings or the Neoprene Cock Ring are rings or a strap that go around the back of a man’s testicles and up and over the base of the penis. This creates a constricted ring around the whole cock and ball package, and the tension can be intense or light, depending on what turns him on. Cock rings with snaps are adjustable so you can play with the pressure. This can also help slow down the blood flow out of the penis, helping some guys last a little longer, though cock rings aren’t a reliable tool for maintaining erections.
A vibrating cock ring is a small ring that provides vibration against a female partner’s clitoris; some slip down the shaft only, while others stretch to act like a regular cock ring and go around both cock and balls. They all differ in one way or another. This is what I noticed when I watched my boy toy eagerly rip open the padded envelope — that not all vibrating cock rings are created equally, or made to fit uniformly. The Bunny Ring Vibe was the first vibe out of its package, which was a bit of a struggle, followed by a search for batteries, which we’d forgotten to buy. Sorry, TV remote control.
I made a mental note to myself to keep a) scissors handy so I look cool when I open the tough little plastic packages without my teeth, and b) keep batteries at the ready for all sex toy adventures — keeping the mood when experimenting on squirming, impatient young men is essential. But in a flash I got the Bunny up and running, purring actually, and managed to get just his pants and boxers off before making him lie down and take his medicine.
The Bunny has a nice stretchy ring that I fit easily around his whole package, settling the big pink bunny at his pubic bone. The big pink bunny looked ridiculous. We looked at each other and laughed — I mean, what kind of pervert designed this thing?
The Bunny had a low, mellow buzz that came from its small vibe with a nice variable speed adjustment. I climbed on top for a sample buzz and found the light buzzing a nice starting point while I adjusted to accommodate penetration while mashing a little pink wabbit between us. My partner’s penis didn’t really vibrate; all the vibration was in the bunny at the base, designed to target my clit.
Ultimately, the bunny wasn’t hitting me in the right spot — a testament to the “one size fits most but not all” rule of sex toys. But the cock ring effect was pleasant for my boy, and the vibration was minimal for him at best. Taking the bunny off carefully was a task, as I realized that soft pink jelly rubber is easy to snag on pubic hair. So from them on I lubed up all toys going near his pubic hair with Wet Platinum, and they slid on and off with ease.
I had been very curious about the Neptune Ring Vibe, the vibrating cock ring that has been around Good Vibes almost as long as I have. I’ve sold more of those little pink dolphins than there are fish in the Monterey Bay Aquarium and I’ve been dreaming about wrapping that little pink ring around some lucky guy and going for a ride. My day had come, and hopefully so would I.
Batteries in, dolphin working great, and onto him it went. We tried it on his lubed-up shaft (hint: lube the boy, not the toy — ahhh!) and attempted a fit. One of the things I was beginning to notice was that he needed to be all the way inside me for me to feel the buzz, so as delicious as thrusting was, the vibration was intermittent. I was on top and the dolphin still wasn’t hitting my clit in that just-so way, and my bright boy had an idea: doggie-style.
Changing the position meant changing the vibe, so he cleverly turned the cock ring upside down, providing a nice buzz to his balls, and I got on all fours. Boy, this was sweaty work. The Neptune hit a little better that way, but I still needed a stronger vibrator. The Cyber Ring Vibe held much promise, so we switched vibes again. However, the softskin had a strange scent, so we actually stopped the action to get up and wash it off, which was later well worth the interruption.
This was a much bigger vibrator housed in a thick softskin ring that slid down over the shaft of his penis. The vibrator was louder but much stronger, and the softskin had a nice thick ridge that put more pressure on my clit — what I needed. We were back to woman-on-top, and that’s as far as we got before we both blasted off.
In all, I wasn’t totally satisfied with the vibrating rings, but that has a lot to do with anatomy. Like with the earth-moving twice-as-nice vibrators, the distance from shaft to clit vs. where the vibe hits doesn’t always fit. Also, where some women like intense vibration and may demand more from vibrating cock rings, others will like light stimulation and find that these vibes suit them to a “T.” I thought that the vibrators would make his whole shaft vibrate and was even concerned that he might not like it, or that the sensation would be too intense.
But he only felt the vibration faintly around his pubic bone. Interestingly, I tested a vibrating cock ring that we do not carry side-by-side with the vibes mentioned in this article and found it had some of the same challenges, though the other vibe had the new pulsing technology and could be cranked up quite strongly. In all, it’s not a foolproof way of making the man into the machine, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun trying.