I received Thumper Royal as a complementary gift from a Doc Johnson representative at a work function. Although I was super excited about getting a new toy, I was a bit put off by the fact that I couldn't find its material listed anywhere on the box. Although it didn't smell at all upon being taken out of the box, being new and freshly trained for working retail in the sex toy industry, I'm all about knowing what materials are in my toys so I put Thumper Royal aside and forgot all about it for two months. One day soon after discovering Edenfantasys.com, I happened to look up the Thumper Royal page and lo and behold, it's just made of hard plastic and rates an 8/10 for safety. I was so pleased to find this out, but it's a shame that the information wasn't made readily available on the box so I could have felt good about trying this out sooner.

Off the bat, I found the shape of the toy a tad awkward. The end of the toy is a bit bulbous, with one side fairly rounded and one more prominently pointed side that I found kind of pointy. I prefer my g-spot stimulation to be a bit less directly focused and the less prominent, more rounded side of the head looked more inviting for that prospect. In the end, I stuck it out with the pointy side and it was fine. Subsequent uses have been more comfortable from start to finish, so perhaps the shape just takes getting used to.

The g-spot point does works wonderfully for clitoral stimulation, though hard plastic may not be everyone's favorite texture for that.

Being a bit on the small side, I'm partial to slim toys and liked the look of Thumper Royal for this reason. It has a circumference of 3 1/4" and an insertable length of 6", with nice subtle ridges running vertically up the shaft. My issue was that I wanted to go ahead and insert the 6", but I didn't like having to sacrifice the g-spot stimulation for penetration. A terrible choice to have to make, clearly. Eventually though, I did forgo the g-spot stimulation for the deeper penetration and had a fine time with it, but it was unfortunate that I couldn't have my cake and eat it too.

The vibrations were quite nice for a toy running on 2 AA batteries. Thumper Royal has 10 settings that are a lot of fun to play with. I didn't find myself wanting more power than the toy could provide. That being said, I'm not one to need or want extremely intense levels of vibration, so those who are used to a higher vroom factor may be disappointed.

My only beef with the vibration was the noise. It's not a buzzing that you'd hear through a door, but in an otherwise quiet room it is definitely very audible on the higher settings, even when under the covers. I don't like to hold onto a toy the entire time I'm using it, but I did end up doing so with this one because letting go meant that my hand was no longer muffling it and the buzzing was really distracting. I actually opted to use it on a lower setting just so it would be a bit quieter. Granted, in a setting with a bit more background noise this wouldn't be as much of a problem, but most of my self-love happens in bed at night when the bee level is really obvious.

The controls on the toy are located on the very bottom, with one button to scroll upwards through the settings and one for scrolling down. Neither one is a traditional on or off button. If you press the down button when the toy is off, it turns on at the 10th function as if the off setting is just an 11th function you can scroll through like any of the others. The two buttons are the same size and shape and I did have a bit of confusion trying to change the settings while using the toy, and accidentally pressed the wrong button. It wasn't a big deal, though it was definitely distracting and I'd prefer some other kind of differentiation between buttons beyond labeling them “up” and “down” which is no help when you can't see the bottom of the toy.

Cleaning is easily done with warm water and antibacterial soap. The toy claims to be waterproof, so giving it a good washing should be easy and worry-free. I didn't test its waterproof claim myself though, and I am a tad skeptical of how resistant the buttons would be to water leaking in.

This toy hasn't seen the light of day in two months. Just thinking about dealing with the pointiness of the tip turns me off of ever choosing it at play time - I like a little bit of pain sometimes but not *that* kind of pain. Too pokey. I'm still holding onto it because it seems wasteful to throw out a toy that's perfectly functional and only been used a handful of times, but I really wish it was sterilizable so I could pass it on to a friend or something since this isn't ever going to get much (any) use at my house.