Warming, cooling, and arousing substances add an enjoyable element to my play, enhancing the experience and helping my fantasies feel more realistic. Intimate Earth’s lineup promises new, exciting, and safe experiences with their lubes and serums. However, the more I look, the more dubious I am of their entire brand and whether they’re actually committed to these values.
About Intimate Earth
Intimate Earth is a women-designed brand that sells lubes and serums with safety-conscious ingredients, enhancing pleasure without harmful chemicals. Their products are organic and not tested on animals, furthering their commitment to quality. Their products are available through both their own website and through retailers like PeepShow Toys.
I was skeptical the first time I checked out their site. With products like an anal relaxing serum and a tightening serum, it made me wonder about their drive for safety. Relaxing serums can make it difficult to feel injuries, and tightness tends to result in discomfort for the receiving partner. (It can be safer and more enjoyable to work towards a stronger pelvic floor than to seek tightness.) I don’t fully know what to think of these products, to be honest. But I do think people should have access to products they want, and at the very least Intimate Earth is trying to make these without ingredients that significantly numb or dry out the tissue.
Key word: Trying. There are inconsistencies between the brand’s website and products. Their anal relaxing serum claims not to use numbing ingredients, but it includes clove bud oil, which is primarily made up of the anesthetic compound eugenol. Their About Us page says “we wanted to make products that do not have the harmful chemicals found in many personal care products such as paraben preservatives, glycerin, menthol, etc.” yet many of their products include glycerin, some even as the first ingredient.
After trying out their products, I reached out to Intimate Earth with questions about these contradictions regarding glycerin and numbing ingredients, but did not receive a response.
After trying a couple of other enhancers—including a warming arousal oil that I love and a minty gel that gets the blood flowing—I wanted to see what else was out there on the market, particularly with warming ingredients. I checked out Intimate Earth’s lineup and picked up these three:
- INTENSE Clitoral Arousal Serum (minty serum, $24.95/1oz)
- MOJO Warming Libido Glide With Horny Goat Weed (warming lube, $19.95/4oz)
- MELT Natural Warming Glide (warming lube, $14.95/2oz)
Intimate Earth refers to lubes (both theirs and other brands) as glides. I’m not certain if this is a branding thing, a way to get around censors, or an attempt to get the term to take off.
Their website had a 10% welcome coupon popup, so I got about $6 off the order of $60 (before shipping). None of these contain silicone ingredients, so they should be safe for use with silicone toys (and glass and steel, which shouldn’t react to lubes anyway), but the Intimate Earth also sells silicone and hybrid lubes which are not safe for use with silicone toys.
Ordering
The products arrived in a standard USPS shipping box that was slightly bulging because the arousal serum bottle was a little too wide for it. No damage was done, but it’s an interesting choice to ship products in boxes that don’t fit. If that box had gotten tossed on the ground, I could have ended up with a cracked lid.
The caps on the lubes are standard click caps. They’re fairly stiff and it hurts a little to click them open. Not enough to deter me from using them, but enough to be uncomfortable. The lubes are also liquidy and always drip down the side no matter how careful I am, so I have to be ready to wipe off the caps.
There was a small issue with my order: The pump cap of the arousal serum didn’t work correctly. I managed to get only a bead of serum out after tens of pumps, then nothing else. The cap is built into the bottle in a way that I’m not certain it could be safely removed.
I reached out to the brand and, since the cap was defective, they immediately sent a replacement. I didn’t introduce myself as a reviewer at that point, so my entire experience was as a standard customer. The new bottle took about 8 pumps to prime (with a bit of a whining noise) before it produced a pea-size amount of gel, and was subsequently able to dispense the gel with each pump. I’m pleased with the way their customer service resolved this.
While I purchased directly from Intimate Earth, this article contains affiliate links to PeepShow Toys as well as links to Intimate Earth. If you’re looking to buy toys alongside these products, I would suggest checking out PeepShow Toys or your retailer of choice. If you want to shop Intimate Earth’s full lineup, you’ll have to go directly to Intimate Earth’s site. If you’re looking for the best deal, shop around; retailers may have different prices and sales at any given time.
INTENSE Clitoral Arousal Serum
INTENSE Clitoral Arousal Serum (which also comes in a GENTLE version with the same ingredients) uses peppermint oil to stimulate blood flow. It includes arginine, which may interact with certain medications.
There’s a bright green tab that needs to be removed before dispensing the gel. Since it’s a pump bottle, it takes a few pumps to prime. This took 8 pumps to prime and it made a noisy whine while doing so. The cap makes a clicking noise each time I press down on it. Once primed, a full pump dispenses thick gel in the volume of 1-2 peas at once. The volume dispensed depends on how much air gets caught in it; some pumps seem to be half air.
I rub the gel across my entire t-dick. After a couple of seconds, the sensation of minty coolness hits me, and it is strong. I have to sit there and wait through it before I can really do anything else because it’s so powerful. It doesn’t tingle and doesn’t make me hard, but it does make my tissues swell due to increased blood flow. While the sensation itself isn’t arousing, it is pleasant and makes for a unique sensation I wouldn’t get otherwise, so it fulfils the desired purpose.
My goal for arousal serums is less “make me feel horny” and more “make me feel different.” If it increases my arousal, that’s just a bonus.
While it’s strong, it’s also soft. If you’ve ever compared chewing gum flavors, you may find that some have a very sharp flavor, while others are softer and gentler. This feels like a soft mint that embraces the skin, absent the stab of sharpness that some mints have.
The first few minutes are a journey: It’s all mint for a moment, then a minty burn for a few minutes, then settles back into the minty coolness with a low minty burn by the fifth minute. After the first five minutes are up, the sensation eases up into something much more comfortable.
After that five-minute mark is when I like to play. It’s a steady sensation that lingers if I don’t touch my clit and instead just play with dildos. The mintiness intensifies not with skin contact (as some warming serums do) but with pressure, so if I rub myself or use a grinder, it washes over me in a wave.
The gel itself is plush and very thick, which makes rubbing myself satisfying. The luxurious feeling of the gel partnered with the intensified mintiness makes me more aroused.
After ten minutes, the minty burn is fully gone, leaving only a moderate intensity cool mintiness that comes and goes in waves while rubbing myself.
By 15-20 minutes, the minty sensation fully fades. It’s a reasonable amount of time, although I find myself wishing it lasted another ten minutes without having to reapply. Reapplication brings with it the initial five-minute kick, though, and I enjoy that.
I tried it internally (like a taster of their G-spot Stimulating Gel, which has similar ingredients) and the mintiness faded pretty quickly, but I think it did successfully stimulate my G-spot since that area felt slightly larger and more tender than usual. While the Clitoral Arousal Serum doesn’t have a recommendation for internal use, I wouldn’t mind trying out the G-spot Stimulating Gel at some point.
It’s perfect for my medical play fantasies. Also good if I’m itching for something different than my usual. For just getting me aroused? The satisfying slickness does most of the heavy lifting.
MOJO Warming Libido Glide With Horny Goat Weed
MOJO Warming Libido Glide is not a water-based lube as I had first assumed. I figured, okay, there’s no silicone, no oil, so it’s water-based. I was wrong and should have paid more attention to the ingredients. This is a glycerin-based lube.
I’ve had glycerin in lubes before without issue. I have not had glycerin-dominant lubes, however, and I normally wouldn’t; it can impact osmolality (which can dry out sensitive tissue) and encourage yeast due to sugar content. I definitely do not want a yeast infection. I’ll admit it’s my bad for buying a lube that I probably shouldn’t use, but I tried it to see how it worked out.
Glycerin is a sugar alcohol. None of my other lubes with glycerin have ever been sweet, but this lube is very sweet and pleasant to taste. It’s very slick. After use, my hands feel sticky as if I were handling syrup, which makes me want to stop playing and go wash my hands.
Interestingly, Intimate Earth themselves say not to use lubes that contain glycerin.
Upon application, I get a whisper of warmth for a couple of seconds. Applying a little or a lot doesn’t seem to change anything, nor does skin contact. So the warming sensation, for me, is a huge miss.
The horny goat weed is an interesting ingredient. I’m not sure if it does anything for me or not. After a couple of tries, I’ve found that after using this lube during a session, I get horny again an hour or two later. (Not great if I use this lube for a session late at night.) That said, I’m not 100% sure if that’s an effect of the lube or just my body in general on those particular evenings. If it is an effect of the ingredients, then having the effect kick in a couple hours later is not ideal.
It’s slick and tasty, so could potentially be good for stroking a penis or as part of a blowjob, but I would not recommend it for use anywhere near a vulva and would not recommend it as a warming lube.
MELT Natural Warming Glide
MELT Natural Warming Glide is also a glycerin-based lube, although water is the second ingredient. It has the same sweetness, slickness, and syrupy stickiness that the MOJO glide does, but is a little less overbearing on the sweetness.
I tried five drops of it on my clit during a session and felt nothing but the disappointment of sticky hands.
An hour later, well after I had finished playing, my vulva started to warm up significantly.
It didn’t feel like warmth was being applied from the outside, but the inside. That’s how Intimate Earth says their products should work: They make the body warm itself up. I didn’t feel any tingling, only the warmth, kind of like the residual warmth of a friction burn except much warmer, and it was very warm for a solid 20 minutes.
Honestly? I’m not keen on that kind of warmth. I prefer the spark from spices. But the biggest disappointment is that it took an hour to kick in. It’s honestly very concerning, considering how strong it felt when it finally took effect. What if I had tried ten drops? Would it have still taken an hour to kick in, and then been even more uncomfortable? Or is there a limit to how much it warms up?
I don’t want to test it again.
Overall
Intimate Earth’s INTENSE Clitoral Arousal Serum does exactly as promised, and boy, is it intense. The mint is softer than the sharpness of menthol without dulling the strength, and the thick gel is luxurious to rub with. If you want a serum that will knock you on your back for a few minutes before lingering for 15 minutes, this may be a good fit.
MOJO Warming Glide and MELT Warming Glide should not be used with vulvas due to the risk of yeast infection from the glycerin, and they may take an hour or more to kick in. I cannot recommend them.
While I had a great experience with their customer service when it came to replacing the defective product, I don’t feel comfortable recommending the brand as a whole. Intimate Earth’s website is very sparse with usage details for these products (aside from recommending a pea-sized amount for the minty serum) and how long they may take to kick in. The brand contradicts themselves by advising customers to avoid lubes with glycerin yet including these in their product lineup, and by stating their relaxing serum has no anesthetic effects yet including clove oil.
It makes me wonder about the actual safety of their relaxing and tightening serums—if Intimate Earth will go against their own values when it comes to glycerin, are they cutting any corners or falsely advertising products to make them seem more safe and appealing than they really are? What about their other products? It’s not the fact that they use glycerin that concerns me, but the fact that they use it while openly calling it harmful.
Would I trust their minty serums again? Maybe. I like this one more than the other one I’ve tried and I’ve tested it a few times with no ill effects. But I wouldn’t trust their other enhancers, and for standard lubes, I’d rather stick with tried and trusted lube brands (like Wicked Sensual or Sliquid) instead of gambling on Intimate Earth’s.
Intimate Earth Website
Intimate Earth at PeepShow Toys
INTENSE Clitoral Arousal Serum from Intimate Earth / from retailer
MOJO Warming Libido Glide With Horny Goat Weed from Intimate Earth / from retailer
MELT Natural Warming Glide from Intimate Earth / from retailer
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General disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, dildo reviews are written regarding vaginal use, packages were shipped discreetly, and products are safe to use with water- or oil-based lubes. For general questions about fantasy toys, please refer to my Guide to Fantasy Toys.