If Jack Frost has been nipping at appendages other than your nose this season, here’s one solution: a $249 lube warmer that works only with proprietary lube pods.
The curved white device looks like a cross between a sex toy and one of those high-speed hand dryers. Sexually active persons in frigid climes will delight in the balmy blobs that spurt forth when a hand (or apparatus of your choosing) waves under the dispenser.
It’s a far more elegant affair than reaching over, squeezing a bottle, and rubbing two hands together for a few seconds, maybe breathing on the lube a little. Most people can get by with just such primitive techniques and a sense of humor about a momentary cold shock. But for the truly temperature-sensitive, igloo-dwelling, or independently wealthy, this bedside machine, which amounts to a personal assistant holding a bottle of lube in her armpit and squeezing it on command, would make a lovely instrument of self-care.
Like a Keurig coffeemaker, the Pulse (“a whole new way to warm your world”) only takes “Pulse pods,” tiny plastic containers of lube that run $25 for a set of six. Right now, the company is only selling silicone-based lube, a no-no for people who use silicone toys, though water-based lube is in the works for the spring. Each pod contains nine squirts of lube, meaning each squirt costs about 46 cents. Can you put a price on warm, cozy genitals, though? Can you?
Still, I tend to side with Food Network star Alton Brown on implements he calls “unitaskers”—products with just one use, like a tortilla warmer or hot-dog scorer. “I have railed against unitaskers for 20 years,” Brown told NPR last year. “I’ve come around to liking them as strategic gifts for people you don’t like.”
Were Brown inclined to opine on sex gadgets, he’d surely advise against spending $249 on a lube warmer that leaves you stuck using one brand of lube for life. Because the holiday spirit has me feeling good, giving, and game, I’ll offer one better alternative: Hold your dildo over the radiator for a few seconds and buy yourself a popcorn trolley instead.
