I am an organic chemist, but not in the field of polymers. I have two experiments in mind to test this out that I will do tonight, when the lab is empty. My love pacifier might not survive tho, but I'll take this one for the team.

1) Silicone is supposedly able to stay flexible to temps down to -100C. TPR, generally, becomes brittle below -25C. I will drop the love pacifier in a -78C bath and see how it fares. This is not going to be conclusive, just suggestive.

2) Silicone is supposed to be insoluble in everything, except acids, and also gnarly reagents that will chemically degrade it. I will attempt to dissolve a chip of the Love pacifier on every single organic solvent I have access to.

I was considering putting a chip of it in for elemental analysis, but my reading has led me to conclude that it will be tough to get a definitive answer, as silicone polymers are many and varied in composition.

Stay tuned for an update! Please note, no matter what I find, I'm just an anonymous person posting on a forum, so take it with a grain of salt.

(and yes, this is fully me procrastinating instead of writing a certain epic document...) less

I emailed Cal Exotics once last year about this when the Love Pacifiers started to be labeled as silicone and the person that emailed me back said it was 100% silicone. I have yet to do a boiling test on mine, but it sure doesn't smell like TPR, even when it's up to your nose. less

So, I put it to the test. My love pacifier stayed very malleable at -78C, not at all brittle. In fact, I would say it's "bendability" stayed the exact same as it is at room temperature, and as it is after it comes out of a pot of boiling water.

But I don't know enough about TPR blends to say that this for sure means it's not TPR. The reading I've done says TPR blends tend to get brittle somewhere around -25C.

As for dissolving it....well, my love pacifier is now missing a chunk (just in the handle), which I cut up into 8 pieces and put into vials with a variety of solvents, and it didn't seem to dissolve in anything. I put it in hexanes (think: gasoline), acetone (think: nail polish remover), toluene (think: paint thinner), as well as ethyl acetate, butanol, dimethyl sulphoxide, dicholoromethane and tetrahydrofuran. And of course, it doesn't dissolve in water either. *shrug*. I'll check in on the silicone chunks tomorrow, and in a few days, to see if they're swelling and/or dissolving. I will also eventually dry down the solvents to see if they've extracted anything (if anything is dissolving out of this material I will be able to see a residue)....but preliminary results say this stuff is pretty inert to these organic solvents.

Now I should note, there are some pretty skookum plastics out there that are pretty solvent resistant. However, they're real spendy. It wouldn't make much sense, in my mind, to go to the trouble of labeling something as 100% silicone, and then making it out of high quality plastics instead of silicone - we're talking the same price category here, at least in lab land.

As noted previously, I will follow up in a few days, I am still quite open to seeing the error in my ways here (please chime in if you have any other info), and although I am an organic chemist, I am not a polymer chemist, or a silicone chemist, and finally, I am for all intents and purposes, just an anonymous person posting on an internet forum. So take it with a grain of salt. less

Red, I am really impressed by your scientific enthusiasm. Labeling this product as silicone TPR we were trying to be on the safe side. Because by US law you can call material silicone when it contains at least 10% of silicone and some manufacturers often misuse this label. Although I would love to get the complete list of elements in this or any other toy I've read it is a really complicated thing to perform chemical analysis on silicone or any other polymer. We value and trust your opinion and decided to classify this toy as a silicone one. The change has been made. Thank you all for the valuable discussion and caring. less