Good Vibes Only

PSA: You can get these surprisingly decent sex toys at your local drugstore

It's time to put those rewards points to good use.

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Earlier this summer, I was roaming the aisles of Walgreens waiting out the pharmacy’s lunch break when a familiar swirl of purple, teal, and orange caught my eye. I’d seen that pattern before, and very recently — but I definitely didn’t expect to run into it here as I checked errands off the ol’ To-Do list. When I turned to get a direct look, sure enough, there was a vibrator looking back at me from the top shelf. And not one of those tiny little buzzers you occasionally see sandwiched discreetly between the KY and the condoms, either. It was a massage wand, in all its glory.

As it turns out, plusOne and other sexual wellness brands have quietly been increasing their presence in drugstores for some time now. The Vibrating Wand is one of three Clio Designs plusOne toys Walgreens carries in-store, and half a dozen others can be found on the website. They’re everywhere: CVS, Target, Walmart… even Kroger is prepping to carry some. Now’s probably a good time to check how much rewards cash you’ve racked up.

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Right around the time I first encountered the plusOne wand in the wild, a box filled with an assortment of the brand’s toys showed up on my doorstep, courtesy of its PR firm. The sex toy maker has its own version of just about every popular design out right now, from a suction simulator to a feather-shaped tickler. It released its new Dual Vibrating Arc — which, as the packaging notes, can be used for non-sexual massaging also — earlier this year and most recently dropped what it calls the Fluttering Arouser, which “incorporates suction, vibration, and a flickering tip” to get you off. And honestly, they’re all pretty damn good.

Affordable and accessible — plusOne’s products are not luxury toys, and that’s a big part of what they have going for them.

There’s something for everyone — and none will break the bank.Input/ Cheyenne MacDonald

The body-safe silicone feels as smooth and soft as that used by any of the more expensive names in the game, not suffering from that gross sticky texture some of the cheaper products out there can exhibit after some use, and they feel good in your hand. There’s none of that cheapo, lightweight plastic nonsense to the designs either (or the weird rattling battery space that tends to come with it). These vibes are sturdy, pleasant to the touch, and easy to clean.

You can now get a good vibrator in the same trip as your Saturday morning grocery run

In terms of how they get the job done… well, they get the job done. Each toy comes with its own set of varying vibration patterns, and there are enough options in terms of product design to ensure there’s something for everyone. plusOne isn’t reinventing the wheel here, that’s not the point.

What is the point, then? You can now get a genuinely good vibrator for under $50 in the same trip as your Saturday morning grocery run. Hell, you can even add one to your wedding registry if Target is your site of choice. Maybe that’s not a big deal to some, but consider the fact that not everyone is comfortable going into a sex shop, and not everyone lives in a situation where they can have sex toys delivered to their place of residence, and not everyone has even seen a vibrator up close enough to demystify the concept, and so on and so forth.

Sexual wellness is just another part of overall wellness, and making it easier to come by only helps to further diminish the stigma.

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