Materials
One material is not a preference. Here is the difference between porous and non-porous, what the marketing words actually mean, and five checks to run before you buy.
Yes, for anything used repeatedly. Body-safe silicone is non-porous, so it can be washed properly, does not hold odor, and keeps its surface over time. TPE is softer and cheaper but porous, so it cannot be fully cleaned and gradually degrades. Jelly and PVC are typically softened with plasticisers and are the materials most worth avoiding in this category.
The short version
Body-safe silicone is a non-porous, phthalate-free material that can be washed clean and keeps its surface over time, making it the standard for a personal massager. Body-safe silicone vs TPE is the comparison that decides whether a device can be cleaned at all, which is why it comes before every other line on the spec sheet. Size, shape, color and power are personal preference — there is no wrong answer to any of them — but the material has one.
The material is different. It is the only line on the specification sheet where there is a genuinely better and worse answer, and it is also the one that is hardest to check, because it cannot be judged from a photograph and the vocabulary used to describe it is deliberately fuzzy.
So this is a guide to what the labels mean, in plain terms, without alarming you about chemistry you did not ask about. The short version: one group of materials can be cleaned and will keep its surface, and another group cannot. Everything else follows from that.
According to the Wikipedia entry Silicone (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicone), cured silicone elastomers are chemically inert and effectively non-porous — which is the same property that makes them usable for medical implants and for kitchenware that has to be washed and reused for years.
Non-porous materials such as body-safe silicone can be washed completely clean because they have no microscopic openings for moisture, residue or bacteria to enter. Porous materials trap what gets into those openings and cannot be fully cleaned, no matter how much soap you use — and that single distinction is the whole argument.
Non-porous means the surface is effectively sealed. There are no microscopic openings for moisture, residue or bacteria to sit in. You can wash it, rinse it, dry it, and what is left behind is nothing. Body-safe silicone is non-porous. So are glass and medical-grade stainless steel and hard ABS plastic — which is why a smooth plastic handle is perfectly fine on a device whose body is silicone.
Porous means the surface has microscopic openings. TPE, jelly, soft PVC and low-grade rubber are porous. You can wash them, and washing removes what is on the surface, but not what has gone into the openings. They also absorb moisture, hold odor, and degrade faster because the surface is continuously exposed to what it has taken in.
This is why a porous material cannot be “cleaned properly” no matter how much soap you use, and why the advice to wash your device after every use does not have the same result on a TPE product as on a silicone one. It is not a question of effort. It is a property of the surface.
If it is non-porous, it can be cleaned. If it is porous, it cannot — and everything else about the material follows from that.
The practical reason this section matters is that the material is already decided for most of what you would actually buy here. Every model in this catalog is built from body-safe silicone rather than jelly or soft PVC, so the “which material” question collapses into “which silicone build” — and the differences that remain are weight, waterproofing and motor count, not safety grade. The Pip is the lightest of the handheld models at 66 g and fully waterproof; the Halo is the $45 entry point, splash-proof and battery-powered; the Loop 2, Cradle and Trace are all IPX6 with magnetic charging. None of those is a material compromise — they are three different shapes of the same safe base material, and reading the rest of the spec sheet tells you which one fits, not whether it is safe to use.
Body-safe silicone is the grade to look for: it is non-porous, phthalate-free and formulated for prolonged skin contact, which describes a property set rather than a single certificate. The names on product pages — liquid, food-grade, medical-grade — describe grades and processing, not one fixed specification.
“Body-safe silicone” is the phrase that matters most, and it describes the property set rather than a certificate: non-porous, with a smooth closed surface, formulated without phthalate plasticisers, and suitable for prolonged skin contact. It is what you want to see stated plainly — the smooth silicone you can feel under your fingers is the non-porous surface doing its job, not a coating.
“Medical-grade silicone” is stronger language. Genuine medical-grade silicone exists and is used in clinical devices, but the phrase is not tightly regulated in consumer marketing, so on a product page it is worth treating as a claim to be checked rather than a guarantee.
“Liquid silicone” and “food-grade silicone” describe how the material is processed and what grades of the same base chemistry it meets. Both are legitimate terms. Both say something useful about softness and purity without saying anything about who verified it.
“Premium silicone” says nothing at all. It is an adjective, not a specification.
The useful question is not which of these words appears, but whether the brand can tell you what the material meets. DuckDuo devices are body-safe silicone, the materials meet CE, RoHS and FCC requirements as well as FDA material standards, and material safety data sheets and test certifications are available on request — including SGS documentation. That is the level of specificity worth asking any brand for, and the fact that they can produce it is the answer.
Mark Miodownik makes the materials-side version of the same point in [Miodownik, 2013]: what a material is fit for is decided less by how it looks on day one than by what its surface does over time.
The questions this section raises are answered in one place: the personal massager FAQ we get asked most.
A TPE device is worth being fair to: a reasonable choice for something you will replace, but a poor one for weekly use over a year, because its porous surface cannot be fully cleaned. Thermoplastic elastomer is the material most often confused with silicone.
TPE is genuinely soft. It is cheaper to produce, it can be molded into shapes that hold a very pliable form, and it is not the same category of concern as jelly or soft PVC. For a low-cost item, a short-term purchase, or something where extreme softness is the point, it is a legitimate material.
The problem is porosity, and it brings three practical consequences. It holds moisture, so it is harder to keep fresh. It takes on odor. And it degrades faster — a TPE surface tends to go sticky over months rather than years, because the same openness that lets it absorb also lets it break down.
As a rule of thumb: TPE is a reasonable material for something you will replace, and a poor one for something you intend to use weekly for a year.
The distinction that gets lost in most guides is use case, not material. TPE used externally, by one person, kept clean and replaced when it turns tacky is a manageable risk. The same material used internally, or shared between partners, is a different proposition entirely, because the failure mode is bacterial rather than chemical — the surface holds what it has touched, and cleaning cannot reach below it.
So the honest position is narrower than “avoid TPE” and stricter than “TPE is fine”. It is fine outside the body, for one person, with a condom if you want the cleaning to be simple, and with a hard rule that a sticky, discoloured or cracking surface means replacement rather than another wash.
Soft jelly and PVC are softened with phthalate plasticisers that migrate out over time, which is why these materials turn oily, sticky and unwashable and are the group most worth avoiding. “Jelly” is not a material name — it is a marketing name for a soft, translucent plastic, usually soft PVC.
That is the specific chemistry at issue. Phthalates are used to make hard PVC flexible, and their use in products intended for prolonged skin or mucous-membrane contact is restricted in a number of markets for that reason. We are not going to overstate it: it is not a claim that one exposure does harm. It is a simple risk-management position on a product you will use repeatedly, wash, and keep for a long time.
There is a second, more immediately noticeable problem. Phthalate plasticisers migrate out of the material over time. That is what is happening when a soft plastic product starts to feel oily or sticky, and it continues. A jelly product that felt soft and pleasant in the first month can be tacky and unwashable within a year — and once it is sticky, it collects everything.
Soft jelly and PVC are also porous, so everything said about TPE above applies. The combination is why this group is the one worth ruling out at the selection stage rather than the one to weigh up on price.
CE, RoHS and FCC cover a device as an electronic product — its electrical safety, hazardous-substance limits and electromagnetic emissions — rather than certifying the material on its own. Three sets of documents get mentioned on product pages, and they are not interchangeable.
ISO 3533:2021 is the international standard that sets design and safety requirements for products intended for direct contact with genitalia, the anus or the mouth. It is the closest thing this category has to a governing standard, and it addresses design and safety requirements rather than certifying a specific material.
CE, RoHS and FCC are electrical and electronics compliance: they concern the device as an electronic product — its safety, its restrictions on hazardous substances in electronics, and its electromagnetic emissions. A device that meets them is a device that meets the requirements for an electronic product sold in those markets.
FDA material standards refers to the standards that materials intended to contact the body are measured against. It is a statement about the material rather than a certificate for the finished device.
The honest reading is that no single one of these is a complete answer, and a brand quoting only one should expect a follow-up question. What you are looking for is a brand that can tell you the material, what it meets, and which documents it can send. Certifications and material safety data sheets are exactly the kind of thing a legitimate manufacturer has on file.
The most common assurance on a product page in this category is also the one with the least behind it: the FDA does not approve devices in this category.
In the United States these products are generally treated as novelty items rather than medical devices, which means no agency reviews what is inside them before sale. “FDA approved” is therefore not a claim anyone can make about a finished device in this category. “Medical grade” is not a regulated certification either; at best it gestures at a biocompatibility standard such as ISO 10993, and for most products that gesture is not independently verified.
This is worth stating plainly because the phrase is everywhere and the check is trivial: ask for the test report and the name of the laboratory that produced it. A supplier who has one will send it. A supplier who does not will send an adjective.
There is a related gap that surprises people. Phthalates are restricted in children’s toys in both the United States and the European Union. There is no equivalent restriction for devices in this category. The material that would be illegal in a teething ring is, in most markets, unregulated in a product designed for mucous-membrane contact — which is why the burden of checking falls on the buyer rather than on a regulator.
That is also why a supplier’s paperwork matters more here than in almost any other category. Which documents exist, which ones we can hand over, and which claims we deliberately do not make are all recorded on the DuckDuo factory story page — including the ones we would rather a buyer checked than trusted.
While you are here
If the listing will not settle the material question, three physical checks will, and only two of them are worth doing.
The oil test is the most useful. Wipe the surface with a dry paper towel, seal the product in a bag and leave it for a week. Silicone comes out dry. PVC, jelly and TPE come out tacky or with a faint oily film, because the plasticiser has kept migrating.
The smell test is second. Wash with warm water and unscented soap, dry it, and smell it the next day. Silicone smells of nothing. A persistent sweet, plastic or chemical smell after washing means plasticiser, and no amount of washing will remove it.
The flame test works and should still be skipped. Silicone chars to white ash and will not keep burning; PVC melts and drips; TPE goes gooey. It also damages the product, produces fumes you do not want to breathe when the material turns out to be PVC, and a coated TPE can fool it.
One popular check is worthless: bending it. Soft silicone and soft TPE bend the same way. Firmness tells you about the formulation, not the material, and the two questions get confused constantly.
Before you buy, look for a named material, a stated compliance such as CE, RoHS, FCC or FDA material standards, and documentation like a material safety data sheet the brand can supply on request. Run these checks in order; the first eliminates most of the field on its own.
| Check | Good sign | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Named material | “Body-safe silicone” stated plainly | “Soft-touch”, “velvet-feel”, “premium material” |
| Stated compliance | Specific standards named — CE, RoHS, FCC, material standards | “100% safe” with nothing behind it |
| Documentation | MSDS and test reports available on request | No way to ask, or no answer |
| Lubricant guidance | Says to use water-based lubricant | No guidance at all |
| Cleaning guidance | Specifies soap and water, and a water rating | Vague, or recommends alcohol wipes for silicone |
On that last row: a listing that recommends alcohol wipes on a device it calls silicone is telling you something. Repeated alcohol exposure is one of the most common reasons silicone goes tacky, and a brand that understands its own material would not suggest it.
The phrase “silicone-feel” means a product is not silicone at all, while “silicone-blend” usually means a small proportion of silicone mixed into another material such as TPE. Here is a short glossary of phrases that sound like material descriptions but are not.
“Silicone-feel” means it is not silicone. If it were, the listing would say so.
“Silicone-blend” usually means a small proportion of silicone mixed into something else, most often TPE. Ask what the proportion is; the answer is rarely forthcoming.
“Skin-safe” is not a material specification and has no standard behind it.
“Hypoallergenic” describes a lower likelihood of reaction, not a material. It can be true of several materials in this category.
“Non-toxic” is the same problem: it is an assurance about the absence of something rather than a statement of what is present. The useful alternative is “phthalate-free”, which names the thing being excluded.
Search the product page for the word “silicone”. If the only hits are “silicone-feel”, “silicone-blend” or a bullet point that never names a material, stop there.
Not sure which one?
Message us and describe your routine — where, how often, on your own or with someone. You will get a straight answer about which device fits, usually within a few minutes, and we would rather recommend the cheaper one than the wrong one.
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A body-safe silicone device typically outlasts its own battery rather than its material, while a TPE device often needs replacing within a year of weekly use because it degrades. The differences between materials are least visible on day one and most visible a year later.
| Material | Porous | After a year of weekly use | Cleanable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Body-safe silicone | No | Surface unchanged; any failure will be the battery, not the material | Fully |
| TPE | Yes | Softer and slightly tacky; light odor developing | Surface only |
| Jelly / soft PVC | Yes | Noticeably oily or sticky as plasticiser migrates; unwashable by this point | Not effectively |
| Hard ABS plastic | No | Unchanged, which is why it is used for handles and remote shells | Fully |
Read the third column as the answer to the real question: what will this cost me over its life? A silicone device that lasts three years and a TPE device that gets replaced annually are not the same purchase, even if the second one is half the price.
Body-safe silicone needs only warm water, mild fragrance-free soap and complete drying — no alcohol, no household cleaner, and water-based lubricant only. For silicone specifically: warm water and mild fragrance-free soap, before and after every use, then dry completely. Never leave lubricant on the surface.
For TPE: the same wash, plus two additions. Dry it more aggressively, because it absorbs moisture rather than shedding it. And replace it on a schedule rather than waiting for a failure — with a porous material, the useful life is set by absorption rather than by visible wear.
For jelly and soft PVC: the care advice is limited because the material is not cleanable in the way the others are. Wipe the surface, keep it dry, and treat it as a short-life item. If you are still choosing, this is the group to skip rather than maintain.
Buy body-safe silicone unless you have a specific reason not to, because it is the only material that supports a simple wash, dry and store routine you can stop thinking about. Three sentences cover almost every case.
Buy silicone unless you have a reason not to. It is the only material that lets you set up the simple routine — wash, dry, store — and stops thinking about it.
Ask what the material meets, not what it is called. Grades and adjectives vary; documentation does not.
Treat the material as the one decision you cannot work around. You can add an app later, decide you wanted more power, or start on a lower setting than you expected. You cannot make a porous surface non-porous.
Every device in the DuckDuo range is body-safe silicone, the materials meet CE, RoHS and FCC requirements as well as FDA material standards, and MSDS sheets and SGS documentation are available on request. If you are weighing two devices and the material question is the thing holding you up, tap Chat to Order and ask — we will tell you exactly what is in it, and if a cheaper device from somewhere else suits you better, we will say so.
The models this guide refers to
More on materials, cleaning and storage
Where to go next
Everything below is a public source you can open yourself. Where a claim in this guide rests on someone else’s work, it is listed here rather than left floating.
Every figure in this guide that carries a source also appears in the site-wide table of where these numbers come from: market data, where each row states what the number measures and what it does not apply to.
In practice it means two things: the material is non-porous, so it can be cleaned properly and does not harbour bacteria in microscopic openings, and it is formulated without the plasticisers that are the specific concern in soft materials. It is not a regulated certification — which is exactly why the useful version of the question is “what material is this, and what does it meet?”
TPE is generally considered a softer and cheaper alternative, and it is not the same category of concern as jelly or PVC. The practical problem is porosity: TPE has microscopic openings that hold moisture and residue, so it cannot be fully cleaned and it degrades faster than silicone. It is a reasonable material for a low-cost item; it is a poor choice for something you intend to use weekly.
Soft PVC is usually made flexible with plasticisers from the phthalate family. That is the specific chemistry at issue, and it is why soft PVC products intended for prolonged skin contact are restricted in some markets. These materials are also porous and tend to become sticky as the plasticiser migrates out over time. For a device you will wash and reuse, it is the material group most worth avoiding.
You cannot verify it from a photograph, so look at the listing instead: does it name a material, state what the materials meet, and offer a material safety data sheet on request? A product described only as “velvet-touch silicone-feel” with no material named and no documentation available is telling you what you need to know. Price is a weak signal, but a very low price for a silicone-bodied device usually means the silicone is a coating over something else.
For anything used repeatedly, yes. There are legitimate reasons to choose another material — a lower price point, a specific softness, or a shape that only molds well in TPE — but if a device will be washed and reused regularly, the material specification is the one thing worth being strict about. It is also the only part of the decision you cannot work around later.
Yes, one rule: use water-based lubricant with silicone. Silicone-based lubricant can soften and degrade a silicone surface over time, and oil-based lubricant is also best avoided. Water-based lubricant is compatible with every material discussed here, which makes it the simple answer.
There is no fixed lifespan, but a body-safe silicone device that is washed properly and stored dry will typically outlast the battery rather than the material. Replace it if the surface cracks, if it goes sticky, if there is an odor that survives a proper wash, or if it stops holding a charge. Those are failure signals, and none of them are reversible.
Assume nothing and ask. Body-safe is not a material, a grade or a standard — it is a phrase any seller can print. A listing that will not name silicone, TPE or PVC is telling you something by omission, because a seller using platinum-cured silicone has every commercial reason to say so. Ask directly which material it is, and treat a vague answer as the answer.
No — TPE is a reasonable material for products that are not used internally, and it is cheaper and softer than silicone. The problem is specific: it is porous, so it holds moisture and cannot be fully sanitized, and it turns tacky over time as plasticiser migrates. For an external massager replaced every year that may be an acceptable trade. For anything used internally, or anything you want to keep for years, silicone is the material without that failure mode.
The grade affects purity and how the surface behaves over time more than it affects the initial feel. Platinum-cured silicone is consistent and leaves no residue; cheaper peroxide-cured material can carry a faint smell and a shorter life before it dulls. What you notice in practice is that the surface still feels the same after a year, which is the real argument for the higher grade.
You cannot confirm it with certainty at home, but there are two useful checks. Silicone is stable when warmed and does not turn tacky; TPE softens noticeably and starts to feel sticky. And silicone tolerates heat in a way elastomers do not, though do not run a flame test on a device you intend to keep. The reliable route is a named grade plus a test report reference, which is why documentation beats any home test.
No. In the United States these products are generally treated as novelty items rather than medical devices, so no agency reviews what is inside them before sale, and “FDA approved” is not a claim anyone can make about a finished device in this category. “Medical grade” is not a regulated certification either — at best it gestures at a biocompatibility standard such as ISO 10993, and for most products that gesture is not independently verified. The check is the same in both cases: ask for the test report and the laboratory’s name.
Yes, within limits. TPE used externally by one person, kept clean and replaced as soon as it turns tacky, discolored or cracked is a manageable risk. The same material used internally, or shared between partners, is a different proposition, because the failure mode is bacterial rather than chemical — the surface holds what it has touched and cleaning cannot reach below it. The rule that follows is narrower than “avoid TPE” and stricter than “TPE is fine”: outside the body, one person, and replacement at the first sign of breakdown.
Look for the material named on the page, not the phrase “body-safe” on its own. If a listing will not name the material, treat that as the answer. You can also message us before ordering — we will confirm what a specific model is made of rather than guessing from a photo.
Yes. Wholesale is our existing models as they are; private label is the same molds with your branding, packaging and colorway. Minimum order quantity is 300 units per SKU on existing molds, and 1,000 units for a custom mold. The compliance pack ships with the quotation. The four routes are compared line by line on the OEM and private label manufacturer page.
Tackiness usually means the material is breaking down, and it is far more common in porous or plasticised blends than in platinum-cured silicone. The practical test is simple: if the surface feels sticky after washing and drying, retire it. A stable silicone surface should feel the same after a year as it did in week one.
No, and the difference matters — they are not interchangeable labels. “Body-safe” describes how the material behaves against skin: non-porous, phthalate-free, able to be cleaned. “Medical-grade” sounds like a grade but is not a regulated certification in this category, so it describes an intention rather than a verified property. The checkable version of the same question is which named material is used and against which standard it is tested — here, food-grade silicone with a migration report per SKU.
Yes, and you should ask for them before the sample rather than after the deposit. What to ask for is a certificate naming the material and the batch, not a generic statement that the product is body-safe — the second is a marketing sentence and the first can be checked against the supplier the factory bought from. The wholesale page lists the documents a sourcing team should request from any factory, ours included.
It should be, and the way to make sure is to name the material in the order rather than assume it carries over from the sample. Private label changes the branding, the packaging and sometimes the color; changing the material is a different decision with a different cost, and it should appear as a line in the specification rather than as a surprise in the first shipment.
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