Sometimes a toy’s biggest fault is the way it’s marketed. Sex and Metal’s handcrafted, cherry-red Nipple Traps (the Traps are one item, but the name implies I should be talking about them in the plural, so) are as pretty as every other steel contraption the company makes, but they don’t function all that well as actual nipple traps. They’re listed under the "Slave Jewelry" category on the company's website, so maybe the makers are aware that the toy can’t compete with the fierce items on its "BDSM Devices" page (like the Severe Pinwheel, which I reviewed here.) Whether the Traps are functional or decorative is up for debate, but either way, the traps should be able to accomplish two obvious tasks: clamping onto the nipples and staying put. The traps get a D+ for both of these tasks; they do the job, but they don’t do it well enough to even be considered average.

First, getting them on. The two twelve-inch-long steel rods have to clamp down on both nipples at the same time and each side has to be tightened separately. This means you’ll need at least three hands to put them on without struggling mightily: one hand on each end to hold the rods in place above and below both nipples, and one hand to tighten the thumb screws. It’s easy enough to work a three-handed torture-device application into your D/s dynamic (“Hold this in place while I make you squirm, slave!”) but you better remember to save the bondage for last.

You also better make sure your slave’s nipples are on the same plane. This is easier to do if there’s fat under them that you can squish down, which means these Traps are designed to be used mostly on women. I had a much easier time helping my boy toy put the device on me than I had trying to get it to affix to his non-existent tits. And once the traps were on me, they stayed on through a bit more movement than they did on him. We couldn’t get the traps to reliably hang on through more than a little jiggling, though, no matter how tightly we turned the screws or whether we draped the (functionally useless, aesthetically dubious) metal chain around the wearer’s neck.

I thought I’d reached my verdict: the traps had a very narrow utility: female sub, who can help attach them, while lying still and not getting hit with anything fun. Then I had a flash of what I can only humbly call brilliance, but which other people might call a flexing of my practical perversion skills (No one would call it that.) In any case, I managed to successfully pervert something that was already supposedly designed for perverts. The shape of the Traps reminded me of the titular chopstick in Kitty Stryker’s Kink Academy video, “Labial Chopstick Techniques,” and I figured I might as well try to affix the damn thing to my vadge.

Reader, I did. And it was wonderful. Provided you have a little more meat on your curtains, the Nipple Traps work amazingly well as labial chopsticks. They can be applied with only two hands, they stay on through all kinds of movement, they can be tightened for pain and loosened slightly for pleasure, and that dangling metal chain that once was purposeless morphs into the perfect place from which to hang weights. If you’re at all interested in doing genital teasing or torturing on the be-vadged among us, and particularly if you’re interested in having it done/ doing it to yourself, you should head over to the Sex and Metal site and add this to your collection. Meanwhile, I think I’ll alert my contacts that they might want to rebrand the device as Lori’s Labial Love Locks… or, you know, something equally catchy that makes more sense.

Disclosure: Sex and Metal provided the author with the product for this review but did not provide any compensation for writing it. The review reflects the author's honest opinion and is not a paid endorsement.