Master D and I went to “The Everything to do with Sex Show” here in Toronto on Saturday November 20th just to see the sights and what was new. This was by no means our first visit to the show, we weren’t there last year but were there the previous 2 years and I was there a few times before I met Sir. We got passes from one of our favourite vendors Lovestyle adult toys and so we figured we would see what was new and exciting in the world of sex.
We got to the show and when we got inside the first thing we see are the lovely girls from Lovedreamers.com, offering a free vibrating cock ring if you sign up to their mailing list this sounds good to us and bodes well for the show, already free swag and fun swag at that. So after we signed up we figure we would do this systematically. Start at the right side of the show and just do it aisle by aisle.
The first booth we see is for Sgt. Splatter’s Paintball, Umm can someone please tell me how this is related to sex? Yes they had Anissa Holmes appearing at their booth but I can’t see the relationship to the topic. This wasn’t the only booth I didn’t understand being there. There was also Psychic Jasmin, International Automotive, Wow Wow Nails, an arts and crafts both selling bookmarks and earrings that weren’t the least bit erotic unless you were planning on spanking your partner with the flat end of the book mark. 2 separate booths one on each side of the show for a company selling hair straighteners and Perfume Direct who were selling discounted main stream perfumes. None of these seemed to have anything to do with actual sex.
Now on to the vendors… There were the standard assortments of booths from the bigger name sex shops Cupid Boutique, Love Shop and Lovedreamer.com all selling mostly the same products and all at around the same price as each other so if you had planned to shop around for the best price for a toy at the show you probably weren’t going to do it with them.
That being said we would like to send a shout out to all the wonderful ladies at the Cupid Boutique booth for being friendly and assisting us in finding the right toy for Master D, and spending time with us discussing the newer toys in the market and which toys we the ones that they had tried and really liked.
Another shout out goes to the staff at Lovedreamer.com’s booth they were friendly, helpful, and in most cases it was clear they had tried the toys and could explain them. When I discovered they were selling the Je Joue ‘Sasi’ Rechargeable Personal Pleasure Device and their demo model was out of power I asked if they had another one charged, the girl helping me went to find it without any questions, realizing that without being able to see it work, I probably wasn’t going to shell out $150 for it. They had a great deal on the sqweel and I finally got to play with it but we didn’t get it right on the spot thinking that we would come back to do our shopping at that booth, but didn’t get back to them because I stated to get a headache. One of our friends was running an errand to their store for me tonight and when he mentioned that we were at the show and that this was for me to the person helping him they actually remembered who we are and remembered talking to us at the show 9 days ago, that was just impressive.
Now on the other end of the spectrum the Love Shop get a big raspberry in their general direction. They seemed seriously under staffed and when I asked a question about a glass toys warranty they laughed at me telling me there was no guarantee on any glass products from any store, at which point I informed them both Lovedreamer.com and Lovestyle Adult toys both stood behind their products and would replace them if they got damaged. Sir went to buy a small pair of adornments for me and it took him 15 minutes to pay for the product because there was one girl working the single register they had there and the lineup was huge.
There were the usual booths we expected to see there… Aslan leather, B.A.R.E Restraints, Condom Shack, Good for Her, Lovestyle Adult toys, and the Suicide Girls. We had expected that both Condom Shack and the Suicide Girls would have had a bigger presence there but they had very small booths and the Condom Shack really didn’t have a great selection. Good For Her didn’t have anything you couldn’t get at their store and there were no discount that I could see which was rather disappointing.
Special shout outs go to Lesley & Greg from Lovestyle Adult toys who have some of the best glass toys I have ever seen or felt, they also had the best discounts on their products that we found at the whole show. My one new toy from the show this year was their Leo. Another shout out goes to Carrie of Aslan Leather who are not only the makers of my favourite collar, but also remembered seeing Sir and I at the Church St. Fet fair and taking a picture of my collar back then as it is still in great shape for a collar that gets quite a bit of use for so many years. And last but not least Beth from B.A.R.E. restraints who has made the original cuffs set I presented Sir with when he decided to collar me and I accepted, and the replacement set when someone stole them at an event after a play session, she also made the rat tail flogger and moose flogger that are pictured in Master D’s post on floggers.
Some of the new additions to the show for me were Clips4Sale who were offering a free trial of their video service, Ecosex, and Silicox. Now Ecosex is no stranger to me as I have been to the store and love seeing what is new and exciting, I think the wood toys they are carrying are great and I’m looking forward to eventually trying them out.
Now Silicox get our new and interesting award, Master describes their product “like Meccano for grownups.” The whole premise is they have a standardized attachment and you can get various bases and dildoes to attach to them, it works sort of like the Vac-U-Seal system but with more versatility and an easier time removing the toy from the base. We look forward to seeing what this toy company comes out with next.
Another interesting award goes to Work or Play on the Go, for this collapsible dungeon furniture. Their folding bench collapses to just 8 inches wide and is small enough to hide under a couch, but still very comfortable to use. We are defiantly going to be picking up one when we have the money. They also have a St. Andrew’s cross that folds down into a hockey bag but it still incredible sturdy when it’s put together.
There were a few booth I was expecting to see there but didn’t including Come As You Are, and Leather Beaten both have been there in past years. But after talking to some of the vendors they were saying some vendors took a serious hit last year with the recession. Also the fact that the Hamilton, Calgary, and Toronto shows were one weekend after another made it so that some of the vendors couldn’t afford to do them all or they had difficulty getting their stock from Calgary to Toronto in time and some didn’t have enough stock to do all the shows. I noticed that attendance seemed to be down from the previous years and one of the organizers later confirmed that is was down by about 15% due to various reasons.
The big draw in past years for us is the community dungeon, and this year we weren’t really impressed. There was lots on information being passed around and lots of volunteers showing the equipment and talking about safety and prevertables but in the past years you were able to actually get your sub on a bench or cross and do some light play. This year it felt very uncomfortable and removed as all the equipment was behind ropes and it seemed like only volunteers were allowed to use it. We later found out it wasn’t the case and we could have used it if we wanted to but they really didn’t make any effort to communicate that to the visitors.
We were originally not going to be going to the show because the biggest factor for us is the cost of the show. It was $25 per person at the door, and if you drove in another $13 for parking. Since we live on the outskirts of the GTA we would have had to either drive in costing about $25 for gas or take the GO and then the TTC so that would be another $22.50 per person just to get to the show. So we were looking at between $88 and $95 just to get us in the doors without any shopping. That’s a lot of money just to get into the show, and with its reduced size and in some cases a lack of serious sales, if we hadn’t gotten passes and had to pay at the door I would have been very disappointed. All in all like any event it had it’s high and low points, we had fun and reconnected to some of our friends in the community and would go back in the future, but if you were coming to play or to get some serious deals this wasn’t the show to do it this year.
