Review: Dame Pom

Sex toys are often categorized by their shape and general function. Rabbit vibes are two-pronged vibrators with a little extra prong for clitoral stimulation. Magic wands are shaped like a big thick wand with a blunt vibrating end. Bullet vibes are small, compact little tubes shaped like—you guessed it—bullets. 

This vibrator, the Dame Pom, is shaped like a marshmallow Peep. It eludes simple categorization, and that’s why it’s one of our all-time favorites.

Photograph: Dame

The Pom’s shape plays a big role in its versatility and approachability. It’s super cute and has a little beak on one side, which is great for delivering targeted stimulation to a small area, whereas the body of the toy diffuses the vibrations over a larger area. 

The entire thing is made of a soft, squishy, pliable silicone, and pressing it against your body or an erogenous zone helps it conform to the contours of your hand and your body. It's this design that makes it transfer powerful vibrations to those deep subcutaneous nerves.

I appreciate the thoughtful placement of the buttons too. There's one on each side toward the bottom, and they are very easy to locate without looking, thanks to their shape. The vertically depressed button is for cycling through five vibration patterns, and the horizontal depressed button is for intensity. The latter is technically two buttons to increase or decrease intensity levels (there are five choices). This design makes it really easy to adjust the experience to your liking on the fly.

It’s impressively powerful for a toy of this size. At full intensity, you can put it down and watch it wiggle its way across the table. If you hold it up and look at it, you can see the vibrations blurring the edges of the toy. Putting it beside a similarly sized toy, there’s a visible difference in the power of its upper-limit vibrations.

It's not all about the highest levels, though. The mark of a well-made vibrator motor is evident from the quality of its lower-end vibrations. On low settings, can you still feel it below the surface of your skin? With the Pom, you definitely can. It’s very gentle, but you can still stimulate your deep tissues.

The penis and clitoris share a lot of anatomical structures, and quite a few of them are below the surface. The bulb and crus of both the clitoris and penis extend down along the vulva and the scrotum, respectively (think of a wishbone-shaped organ). It’s important to keep this in mind when shopping for a vibrator. The best ones stimulate the nerves at the surface of the skin and the nerves and structures well beneath.

The Pom does this very well, and that’s impressive for its size. Most other vibrators I've tested in this shape tend to do a good job of stimulating surface nerves, and on higher intensities, you can feel the vibrations internally. With the Pom, you can feel that deep nerve stimulation even at lower intensities. It’s awesome.

This toy has been sitting on my nightstand for more than a year. In that time, it’s seen extensive use and shows no signs of external wear and tear. The silicone hasn’t discolored or separated from the body of the toy. The buttons are every bit as responsive as the day I unboxed it. The motors are still quiet, still powerful, still going strong. Only the battery has started to show some signs of aging.

Courtesy of Dame

The battery life on the Pom has always felt a little short. At the highest intensity, I can usually get about 40 to 50 minutes of use. I can push it to about an hour if I keep the intensity level low. When it was brand-new, though, I could reliably get an hour out of it at the highest intensity. It'd be nice if there was a way to replace the battery to breathe new life into it. The magnetic charging cable is also short. In my bedroom, the outlet isn't right next to my bedside table, so I had to do some creative cable management to get it to work.

The star of the show here isn't so much Pom's longevity, but rather its shape and design sensibility. The most common toys are a motor or shaft wrapped in plastic with a thin layer of body-safe silicone. It’s a very technical way to design a sex toy: Minimize the distance between the genitals and the stimulation device (the vibrating motor), simplify the shape, make it as pared down as possible. One-size-fits-all. 

But this mindset doesn’t consider the human on the other end. There is no average body. There is no average genital or erogenous zone. Our bodies are weird, man. Every single one is strange and unique in its own beautiful way. 

That’s a lesson the US Air Force learned in the 1950s when it attempted to redesign the cockpits in fighter planes. The Air Force developed a set of measurements to define an average pilot’s overall shape and size. The one-size-fits-all approach. But once the data came in, the problem was obvious: The average pilot didn’t exist. Instead, the Air Force had to instruct manufacturers to design cockpits to be adjustable to the statistical edges, so individual pilots could comfortably fly despite their unique body shapes.

Attempting to make products that appeal to an average means you’re sometimes making a product for nobody instead of everybody. Dame took the opposite approach with the Pom. The flexible, unique shape can fit any body, any genitals, and it has a powerful motor to deliver rumbly vibrations alongside targeted stimulation over a small area. 

It’s an impressive feat, and after testing dozens of sex toys, it’s still one of my absolute favorites. Just make sure you keep it on the charger.