The Silicone Mini-Oscillator from California Exotics is a clitoral stimulator for women looking for a challenge. It's like that boyfriend you just knew you could change, because he was in a band and had cool hair, so if only you could train him to show up on time and eat with a fork, it might be true love. The Silicone Mini-Oscillator is not anything like the Eroscillator 2 Plus or even the Synergy. If you want one of those, buy one of those, because just like that bass player with the bad table manners and the ability to sleep until four o'clock on a Wednesday never got his MBA, no matter how many alarm clocks and power ties you bought him, the Cal Exotics Mini-Oscillator is never going to gently oscillate you to orgasmic bliss.

That's not to say all hope is lost. If you're determined to find a use for this toy, it can be done. It just requires creativity, willpower, and ridiculous amounts of water-based lube.

In my experience, the area best stimulated is not the clitoris directly, and certainly not the legs of the clitoris, but rather the upper portion of the clitoral hood. If you like that area manipulated with a light but rapid touch, and have a fair amount of patience, you might well love this toy.

Couples who wish to roleplay some kind of mad scientist's lab experiment might also find this weird little toy an interesting addition to a scene, as it's capable of producing some weird sensations.

Those brand new to sex toys should avoid this one, as it will likely provide a disappointing and frustrating experience, rather than the fun and pleasure that so many easier to use toys can and will provide. So if you're shopping for a first toy, please, I beg you, find something else.

The body of the Mini-Oscillator is made of hard plastic. It smells and tastes like hard plastic, although there's nothing about it that really inspires one to want to lick it. The interchangeable silicone heads are made of TPR silicone, which is soft to the touch on most of the attachments, although a couple have harder ridges than others. These heads have a matte finish which is reasonably good at hanging onto lube, which is good, because they have quite a bit of drag without it.

TPR silicone is not pure silicone, and therefore it has some porosity. Extra care should be taken to keep the parts clean.

The size of this oscillator is quite possibly its best feature. It's small and easy to hold, making it less cumbersome than its more expensive distant cousins. (Very distant cousins, remember. Cousins that probably don't even know they're cousins, and therefore could marry, even if they're not from some poorly stereotyped culture that regularly goes about marrying off cousins.)

Snapping the individual heads onto the oscillator is only moderately difficult. Be firm, yet gentle, and they'll click into place. The four different heads provide seven different unique surfaces for stimulation, which is a plus.

Hiding this toy is easy enough -- it will easily fit into a small cosmetics bag, and if it's discovered, it doesn't look like a sex toy. Pretend it's for polishing silver or something. It might even do a pretty nice job actually polishing silver, if a demonstration becomes necessary.

Personally, I wouldn't travel with this toy. It has small parts, and small parts love to get lost. So unless your preferred method of unwanted toy disposal is to abandon them in hotels, you might want to keep this one home.

The primary function of the Mini-Oscillator is to thrash back and forth rapidly. Applied to sensitive areas, the resulting sensation can prove quite painful. If applied too firmly, the pain stops, as pressure overpowers the motor. With an extremely light touch, and a significant amount of good quality water-based lube, the sensation becomes pleasant. However, maintaining that light touch requires a fair amount of both patience and willpower.

A button at the bottom of the toy controls the speed -- two nearly identical speeds are available -- as well as the power. It's fairly hard to press while in use, which means it's necessary to start the toy before aiming it at your bits. This is a problem only because this can result in the loss of a few drops of the liberal amount of lube that needs to be applied to the head.

I found that transporting the freshly lubed and running toy to its field of engagement was amusingly reminiscent of an egg and spoon race. Only balancing a raw egg on a spoon while riding a galloping horse is easier.

The Silicone Mini-Oscillator is a moderately noisy toy. It can be heard through a closed door, but it doesn't sound like a vibrator, so if you routinely use power tools or kitchen appliances in your bedroom, your housemates might not be the wiser.

This toy is not waterproof.

Since the heads on the mini-oscillator are made of TPR, avoid using silicone lubricant. It's also very important to store TPR toys away from pure silicone toys, as well as other toys made of TPR. The chemicals in TPR are meant to bond with silicone, and it's best for everyone if they aren't allowed to bond with the silicone in your other toys, resulting in dented or even melted toys.

The plastic portion of this toy is easy to clean, as it can simply be wiped down with a damp cloth or a baby wipe. The individual heads should be washed thoroughly with hot soapy water after every use, lest any bacteria try to hide among the many bumps and ridges.

For storage, I tuck each head into a tiny satin bag meant for jewelry, remove the batteries from the main component, and zip the whole thing into a small cosmetics case. The heads can probably touch each other safely enough, despite being TPR, but this way I only need to clean the head most recently used.

The cardboard box displayed only a picture of the toy, and so gets points for a lack of scantily clad women, but since it was bigger than necessary to hold the toy, and not particularly impressive, I didn't save it for storage.

It is recyclable.

As for instructions, the box contained only a confusing diagram that, as near as I could tell, was meant to describe how best to insert the batteries incorrectly. Once I stopped trying to read them, I found the batteries much easier to install.

I chose the Silicone Mini-Oscillator knowing that I might face an uphill battle in finding a use for it, but I simply could not silence my curiosity. It definitely provided the expected challenge. In the end, I'm not sorry to own it, but I doubt I'll use it very often. It offered no help in deciding whether or not to invest in a more expensive oscillating toy, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.

As for recommending it? Well, I'll say this -- I won't recommend it to anyone who doesn't have at least enough patience to sit still and read my entire review carefully. There's a chance you might like it, but please know exactly what you're getting, and it's not the Eroscillator.

In the name of science, I took the oscillator for seven different test drives before arriving at a method that produced the desired result. The first time I tried it, I didn't start out with lube, and I found the thrashing oscillations unpleasant at best. By lightening the contact, I made it tolerable, but not pleasant or arousing. When I added a small amount of lube, things improved only slightly.

By trial seven, I'd learned a number of things about the toy and how not to use it, and I finally discovered a method that worked well. The end result was even -- to my surprise by this point -- pretty dang good. By this stage in the ongoing experiment, I would have been happy just to achieve an end result, so I was surprised by this success.

Here's what that success involved: First, I applied a liberal amount of water-based lube to my own body, and covered it over with a baby wipe, which I pressed gently into the contours of my anatomy. Then I lubed up the head of the toy with Toyfluid, which is the lube I've found works best for removing unwanted drag from silicone toys. I turned it on fairly close to where I wanted it, and turned it over only once running. Using the lightest touch I could make myself use, I held the toy over the spot I chose to stimulate, which in my case was the upper portion of the clitoral hood.

Then I concentrated on some good erotica as best I could, without forgetting the dangers of inadvertently pressing the toy too hard. The very good end results then crept up on me, around page five of the story in question.

In an alternate test, I sacrificed my least favorite TPR bullet sleeve, sliced a hole in the end of it, and used it to anchor one of the oscillator's heads onto the end of my Little Steel Vanitas (basically, the Little Chroma). That test produced excellent results, although probably more due to the prowess of the Little Steel than due to any particular quality possessed by the TPR attachment. I firmly resolve to test all of the heads in that manner, often if necessary.