Interview with Step of Cute Little Fuckers Sex Toys
Princette Puppypus, Trinity, and Starsi toys. Photo courtesy of Cute Little Fuckers.
Step (they/she/he) is the creator of Cute Little Fuckers, a personal and approachable company that creates gender-inclusive products that can be enjoyed by everyone. That is, they make sex toys for folks with vaginas as well as sex toys for folks with penises… all wrapped up into one incredible product!
But don’t take our word for it. Here is the transcript of our podcast interview below. You can also download or stream the audio podcast here!
You can save $5 off your order from Cute Little Fuckers when you use the code BETWEENOURTHIGHS at checkout!
Between Our Thighs: We’ve made it clear on the Between Our Thighs blog that masturbation is good for you, whether done manually or with a sex toy. For those of you that take advantage of the latter option, or who are simply interested in sex toys, there’s actually a lot going on behind the scenes.
Today, we’re talking to Step of Cute Little Fuckers, an adult toy company based out of California who creates fantastic little creatures in an effort to make sex toys more personable, approachable, and gender inclusive.
So, let’s get to it. How are you, Step?
Step, Founder of Cute Little Fuckers: The world is crazy!
BOT: I know.
Step: Oh, my gosh. Where in the world are you located?
BOT: I’m in Toronto, in Canada.
Step: Okay, I’m in California, in the San Francisco area.
BOT: Oh, boy.
Step: Yeah, so the world’s on fire, on top of everything else.
BOT: Literally!
Step: Literally on fire.
BOT: Oh, my goodness. Wow. Are you guys safe, wherever you are?
Step: Yeah, luckily I am.
BOT: Okay, that’s good.
Step: Yeah, I’m really grateful for that. I’m not particularly close to any of the fires. There are fires north, south, and east and the ocean is to the west, so the air quality is terrible here.
BOT: Wow.
Step: Yeah, it’s really, really gnarly. Even more, I feel like my home is like a space station.
BOT: I can imagine!
Step: Isolated from the rest of the world. There was this crazy day on Wednesday, there was so much ash in the air, the sun never came up. Like, you couldn’t see the sun; it stayed dark all day.
How are you? [Laughs]
BOT: [Laughs] I’m great, I’m great! There’s no fires here, but in terms of COVID in Ontario, the numbers are going back up. But school started last week, I believe, so…
Step: Womp, womp.
BOT: Yeah, I don’t know. Such crazy times.
Step: Such crazy times.
BOT: Anyways, so, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself?
Step: Yes, totally! There are good things in the world, too.
BOT: Exactly!
Step: There are some, and I’m lucky in that I get to participate in them and create some of them. So, hi, I’m Step! I use them/them pronouns and I’m the creator of Cute Little Fuckers, which are adorable, gender-inclusive sex toys made for all bodies with their own names and characters. All the toys are shaped like adorable monsters and it’s really fun, and so I’m lucky enough to get to create those.
BOT: That’s awesome! So, what did you do before launching Cute Little Fuckers and what made you want to launch the company to begin with?
Step: Definitely a great question. So, before Cute Little Fuckers I did a mix of things. During the day, I did a lot of community development, particularly in the electronics world. In school, I studied electrical engineering and physics.
BOT: Wow!
Step: Yeah, but I always loved people, so then I went and generally worked with a lot of companies to do community development. Specifically, in the electronics world, so it was a lot of online stuff, working with online communities.
I did that during the day, and then in the evening, I worked on a lot of queer activism and on sex-positivity things. I ran a lot of events in San Francisco and Oakland in California and create some video content. I was working with a queer activist collective called Loud and Queer that I started and was kind of fun and wild, where I was… It kind of felt like I was living this double life, where I was [doing] electronic nerdery during the day (and I use “nerdery” very lovingly”) and then queer sex-positivism at night. It was alright, it had its own stresses and challenges, but overall, it was pretty good.
I was at least happy that during my day job, I was able to be openly non-binary, so I was really glad about that.
BOT: That’s amazing!
Step: Yeah, really amazing. So, I was like, "You know what? Things are pretty good, like, I'll stay here for a little bit." But little did I know, the world had other things for me.
At one point in time, I was working and my hands started hurting and arms started hurting, and then my hands started going numb. I stopped physically being able to use a computer and I went to a bunch of doctors. People thought that it was maybe carpal tunnel, but nobody really knew what was going on. Then, the same thing started happening to my feet and my legs, and so they knew that it wasn't carpal tunnel. It was very terrifying and very strange, and I had to leave my job and my career because I physically couldn't use a computer anymore at that point in time, and I had no idea what was going on with me.
Yeah, so it was at this point where I'm like, "Honestly, I don't know if I'm dying or if this will just pass in a couple of months and I’ll be totally fine. I have no idea what my future looks like and now I have no job or anything like that, [so] what do I do now?" In this kind of void of a future, the thing that decided to pop into my mind was this funny conversation I had over a year before, where I was talking to a bunch of friends and someone jokingly said, "Pokémon sex toys," and everyone laughed. One person was like, "Wow, I'd actually totally buy that!" and another person's like, "I'd buy that!" and I was like, "I'd buy that!"
BOT: I'd buy that! [Laughs]
Step: And I go, "That's a funny idea, huh," and for some reason, that conversation popped into my mind. I was like, "Really, is this future — as I stand contemplating what [my] future life is — cute monster sex toys? Is [that] what jumps out at me?" And it was! So, I decided to spend some time exploring that idea and a lot of things led to a lot of things, and suddenly, here we are with Cute Little Fuckers, and they're real things in the world.
BOT: That's so exciting, and just how you brought it from just an idea into a real thing. Like, a real manifested thing.
Step: Yeah, it was one crazy adventure. I shouldn't say past tense, it continues to be one crazy adventure, but yeah. I'm really, really very grateful for it.
BOT: It sounds like it was also just a fun process, as well.
Step: Yeah, absolutely. It was a very fun, intriguing process. You know, I started out just by thinking like, "Okay, sure me and a bunch of friends want cute monster vibrators, but is that really something other people want? Or is that just me and my weird friends?" Because it could have been!
And so, I went and I tried to interview whoever I could about the idea. I tried to interview mostly people who I didn't already know. Friends of friends of friends, sort of thing. I got a lot of overwhelming response, overwhelmingly positive responses. Like, okay! Let's give this a try.
So, then I went prototyping the toys and it ended up prototyping them all [at] a mixture of at home, and at friends' places, and at some hackers' spaces around here that just have cool equipment for people to use to build things. [It was] with a lot of support from my community, because my hands were very limited, had a lot of limited use, so I had a lot of people here and there, showing up and pulling levers for me and poking buttons on computers. It took a while, but it was very patient. I just let it happen as it unfolded, and slowly and surely, before I knew it, I suddenly was holding the first Cute Little Fucker prototype in my hand and showing it people. Everyone was so excited.
BOT: That's so cool! Like, I'm excited and I'm not even there for the unveiling. And I read online as well that you had this crazy success on Kickstarter and it was completely funded in just twelve hours, or just under twelve hours.
Step: Yeah!
BOT: Can you tell us about that?
Step: Definitely! So, the Kickstarter story was really wild and it goes to before even launch. As somebody — a queer, disabled, non-binary individual — I didn't have a bunch of funding that was sitting around [to] try to make these weird sex toys, so it [was] just kind of throwing together prototypes with what I could scrape together. I really wanted to do crowdfunding, because crowdfunding is a great way when you have a lot of people who are interested in a thing and you want to make it come to life, but you don't have the capital. It's a great way of leveraging the excitement to bring the capital together to actually make it happen.
BOT: For sure.
Step: I really wanted to do crowdfunding — in particular, wanted to do Kickstarter — but, at one point, I was telling some people about this in one of these interviews that I mentioned and someone was like, "Oh, Kickstarter. They don't allow sex toys on their platform." I was like, "What are you talking about?" and they sent me this article on some big publication that [said] the future of sex toys will not be crowdfunded, apparently. It was a whole article about how Kickstarter doesn't allow that.
I contacted some people at Kickstarter who I actually happened to know from my previous daytime work, who were the heads of community for design and technology. They didn't have the ability to make decisions on things, but they did community management, just like I used to do community management. I contacted them, and I was like, "I have these awesome sex toys! I really want to fund them on your platform. Can I not do that? Agh!" They were like, "Wow, this project's really awesome." They loved the inclusivity of it, the emphasis on sexual education aspects of it, the fact that I'm not some big company who's just leveraging Kickstarter to get a bunch of PR, that I'm actually a creator.
BOT: Yeah.
Step: It was essentially on every single checkmark, besides the sex toys. It was like, this is exactly what we made this platform for. So, the people I knew there said, "We want to see if we can push this through. We'll be an inside voice for you. We don't have any decisions, but we can help you, just like we do as the community managers." So, I worked with them and kind of was trying to get it through the process and was talking with Kickstarter for about seven months, actually.
Before it went live, it was a full seven months of being like, "I want to do this." It was very hot and cold, they're like, "This is just so in line with our mission. I think we can make it happen," and then them talking to some people there and then saying, "Oh no, no, but it's against our policy." And it's like, is it actually against your policy? And they're like, "Actually, it's because of our payment platform." Then, I got the payment platform to give an OK, and then it was this very hot and cold conversation for a long time.
And then, finally, it got to the point where I'm like, our prototypes are ready, everything is together. It is time to launch this thing. I need to know now. I sat down with my friend there and was like, "I need to launch this. I want to use Kickstarter, I can try a different way, but it's time for it to come to life." They said [that] the individual of the company are for it, but the company as a whole is against it. I was like, "What does that mean?" Like, a company is just a bunch of individuals.
"Can I get involved in the conversation? Can I write a letter? Can you send the people who are actually making this decision a letter?" My friend said, "Yeah, definitely," so I wrote this whole letter.
The thesis of the letter was [that] this isn't a conversation about sex toys on Kickstarter, this is a conversation bout showing up for queer and other under-represented communities when it's not super easy to do. Because, the fact is that is you're blocking inclusive sex toys on the platform, you're also blocking expression for these individuals who are really marginalized in society, and that was kind of what the crux of the letter was. I wrote it and it was very spicy, and I sent it to my friend. I was like, "Let me know if you think I need to tone it down, or edit it down. Any edits."
BOT: [Laughs]
Step: The response was just — they sent me two emails, back-to-back — and it was, "Mic drop. Already sent it." So, they were like, "This is awesome, I'm not even giving you a chance to revise it, and they just sent it.
Over the next two weeks, they were giving me updates on how the letter was going all throughout upper management and they were like, "Our head of legal is reading it and trying to figure out what to do." And then, just one day, I'm eating dinner and I check my emails and I just got the generic 'Your Kickstarter campaign has been approved' email.
BOT: Oh, wow!
Step: I sent it to my friend and was like, "Is this for real?" My friend was like, "Hold on, let me check," and they’re like, "Yeah! You're good to go, you got approved." It was like, "What?!"
So, after all of that, that was just to get it on Kickstarter.
BOT: Wow!
Step: I didn't even know if this thing was going to work, and so finally, I got the OK. A couple of weeks later, I launched ono Kickstarter. I had no idea what it was going to do and it still feels surreal today to watch that ticker go up. The entire project was fully funded in under twelve hours; we reached about three times our goal by the end of it and I'm still, to this day, floored by the loving response everyone gave.
BOT: Well, you can just feel your dedication. I'm not even looking at you — it's all audio — and I can feel the dedication just pouring through.
Step: Thanks so much!
BOT: You're welcome!
Step: I just really love it. [Laughs]
BOT: And so, obviously, there was this resistance, but did you find or experience any social resistance in your entrepreneurial journey? Or, on a more positive note, if there were any encouraging social changes that you noticed in your life because of this newfound profession of yours?
Step: This is a great question! You know, at this point, a lot of those changes had already occurred. I mentioned, kind of, this dual life I was living previously. With that, half of it was doing a lot of queer and sex-positive activism, so I already kind of broached a lot of those a little earlier on in some of the decisions I made in my life. I mentioned I also was openly non-binary in my previous day job as well, and those were all hurdles that really set me up for this. Getting involved in queer activism and already going through that with my family and coming out on the other side and going through the hardships of them trying to understand what's going on and not getting it, [but] eventually accepting me and coming to peace with what's going on there.
Same thing in my social life. It just went through a real upheaval. I already just didn't leave room in my life for those people, and so I didn't have a lot of those. By the time I came around and was like, "I'm going to make sex toys. I'm now disabled and what am I going to do for my future? It's going to hopefully be adult toys." Because I already went through that process earlier in my life, when that was the time, I had so much community support that this wasn't out of nowhere. So many people already knew me for the incredible for I did in that world, that when I'm like, "I can't use my hands anymore. Can anyone be my hands for a day while we try to make some sex toys?" There was a tonne of people who were like, "Yes, me! I'm down, that sounds awesome."
It didn't feel like I had to unshell myself to do this. I had already gone through that process and I'm really grateful, because I think if I wanted to do this without having been as bold and open about myself and my life as I had earlier, it would have been a lot harder. I wouldn't have been connected with people who really shared my values, really respected what I did and were interested in supporting me in that.
BOT: Without even realizing, you were kind of setting the foundation for this future in the sex toy industry.
Step: Absolutely, absolutely. I did not know it at the time, but I absolutely was and I would not be here without my community. Absolutely.
BOT: Okay, I'm stealing this from your website (quote), that "Cute Little Fuckers is an effort to make sex toys more personal, approachable, and gender-inclusive." Would you say that this is Cute Little Fuckers' mission statement?
Step: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. There are so many toys out there and yet, somehow, as a non-binary gender-fluid person — previous to Cute Little Fuckers — when I went into a store, somehow it didn't really seem like there was anything that was for me. Anything that felt appropriate. Also, just so many toys are so serious. I feel like you're either going for the realistic, hyper-veiny whatever toy, or you're going for the NASA space probe design vibrator. [Laughs]
BOT: Yes! [Laughs]
Step: Those are your options and I was like, "I want something fun! I want something personal." I have a lot of personality, I was a toy with personality. I want a toy that feels like it's actually inviting me to play with it, not just some tool I hide in my drawer to do the job. So, that's absolutely the Cute Little Fuckers mission statement: to bring more of this fun playfulness and active inclusiveness into the adult toy world and into your bedroom.
BOT: That's awesome! And so, from a personal perspective — you kind of did touch on this — but what do you think is the importance of inclusivity in the toy industry, and how do you think that other companies can work towards being more like Cute Little Fuckers?
Step: Yeah, inclusivity is so important and it's becoming rapidly more and more important as time goes on. I mean, for a while, companies could get away with just showing the straight, thin, white couple on their website and for some reason, that was considered okay (even if it already made a lot of people feel bad). That's not the case anymore! Just look at the world we live in! People are not okay with these old values of pushing people out of the way to make something easy to digest.
What really makes people feel good is feeling like they're welcome. There are so many different types of people out there.
I remember reading an article recently that was quoting that something like forty percent of Gen Z identifies as non-heterosexual and that's almost half of the population! And that's just of the people who are open. There's so much more than that and I think people are becoming more connected with the fact that sexuality and gender are a bigger thing and a more fluid thing. [They] are rapidly not feeling connected to the toys that are out there, they want things that make them feel welcome. It's just the way of the future; I really, really don't see it as any other way.
So, how can other toy companies do it? Just stop gendering your products. Really, just stop making toys that are so specific to one gender, or that you think is so specific to one gender. A lot of people don't know this because a lot of people assume that gender and genitals match, that all men have penises and things like that, and that's not true, because trans women [may have penises, too]. Why bother cutting out whole portions of your potential users and making them feel really shitty, when you could just — instead of saying "for men" on the box — make it a toy that does what it does and whoever identifies with it, identifies with it. It almost feels easier to do that! Maybe I'm just speaking [this] because for me it feels easier; I couldn't imagine making toys any other way.
I guess it's just easy for me, but it's just such an important thing now, in this time where Block Lives Matter is a huge thing and I just see this as a sign of people saying, "No! We're not okay with this prioritization of different people and different aspects of culture. We need things that really include everybody."
BOT: Yeah, things on all fronts are really needing to change, I think, and it's great to see how this year — even though there's been a lot of chaos and stuff happening — that in so many ways, our culture (at least Western culture, from what I've noticed, because we're in the Western world) it’s really changing for the better. Or starting to change for the better. There's some awareness coming about and there's conversations happening.
Step: Absolutely, absolutely, and all good change requires some effort and turmoil. Hopefully, all of this chaos we're seeing in the world is really just a sign that things are actually really changing, rather than just changing on the surface.
BOT: Mhmm. Sex toys, obviously, also have a lot of health benefits. Did you want to talk a little bit about how using sex toys cannot just improve physical and genital health, but also mental health?
Step: Yeah, absolutely! Gosh, I just can't think of a better stress reliever.
BOT: [Laughs] It's so true!
Step: Stress is just one of the leading causes of so many health issues that, if you can manage stress, you just have such a leg up on so many aspects of physical health and, especially, so many aspects of mental health. Stress is extremely taxing on the mind. It's really hard, especially now in the world we live in, and even in the culture pre-COVID. But now, during COVID, stress levels are just through the roof!
It's not the healthiest to just push through it, you need something to relieve yourself, to relax. To relax your body, to relax your mind, to give yourself that time to recoup, feel good, and sex toys are incredible for that.
BOT: It's so true.
Step: I've never used a sex toy to seen someone use a sex toy, where after using it, they immediately felt stressed. Again, right? They do it and they're like, "You know what, things aren't that bad. I'm just going to lay down and smile for a little bit."
BOT: "And take a little nap." [Laughs]
Step: Exactly! [Laughs]
That's huge for mental health! I mean, giving your mind a break from all of that pressure is just — I can't emphasize enough how much that can really do for managing stress and depression and all of these big things. I'm not a physiologist, so I don't want to dive too far into how exactly these mechanisms work, but I've definitely talked to people who have basically said that they've gotten through their depression with sex toys.
There are some periods where there's not much you can do. In COVID right now, there isn't something you can fix and suddenly we can all go outside again and parties and have fun. It's just a hard period that, unfortunately, we just need to get through and take care of ourselves and be gentle to ourselves as much as possible during this time. So, make sure — whether you're using toys or not — make sure you're getting yourself off a little in between, because it'll help the time pass a lot more pleasantly and be a lot healthier for you.
BOT: So, if people want to relieve their stresses of the day, you offer three toys, as of right now.
Step: Correct.
BOT: Do you want to tell us a little bit about their names and what inspired them?
Step: Sure, sure! So, we have three toys right now. The first is Princette Puppypus, they're a purple octopus puppy, their pronouns are they, them, or the Royal We. They're favourite things are pizza and butt stuff.
BOT: [Laughs]
Step: I guess I'm going on a little bit of a tangent, but this is important. So, all of the toys are made from extremely high-quality silicone and they all have the same electronics inside, which is a USB-rechargeable five-speed and five-pattern vibrator. I've had a lot of people say it's some of the strongest vibrators they've ever used that they didn't have to plug into a wall. Like, if you've got the huge ones that you plug into the wall, they'll out-match these, but as far as a handheld USB-rechargeable vibrator, these are some of the strongest out there. They really have a nice rumble to them, rather than the bzzzzz kind of annoying, like something is tickling or scratching you kinda feeling.
BOT: Oh, yeah!
Step: They've got that deep rumble, so I just wanted to put that out there to give you a little bit of a background.
The biggest things that change as the actual shape and that design of the toy. Oh, I guess one last thing is that they're all also made to be used in multiple ways. So, Princette is really easy to hold; it's a very ergonomic design. It makes for an incredible clitoral stimulator, also is a functional butt plug, as well. There are a number of other uses. The packaging actually, of all the toys, has a little comic that has a couple suggested uses for the toy. We really want people to explore what sensations work for them and explore all the different, unique ridges and edges and angles and smooth features of the toys to figure out what works for them. We don't want to just say, "This is a toy that is only used to stimulate a clit at this angle, with this side of it." No, there's so much to that and all bodies are different. We really encourage people to explore.
So, we've got Princette, a very explorative toy. We also have Starsi. Starsi is a coral-coloured starfish, so their back is very smooth and their front has some interesting textures. They're a very wide, flat toy. They're great for stimulating.
On their back, they can stimulate really wider regions, which a lot of people enjoy, or the tips of the arms of the starfish are also great for really pinpoint sensations. Starsi was also made with people with genital dysphoria in mind. Because it's such a wide toy, you can use it on your genitals to cover them and remap your genitals mentally to give you a pleasurable experience. We've had a lot of trans people who have never enjoyed a sex toy before because it always made them feel dysphoric really fall in love with this toy.
BOT: That's incredible.
Step: Really happy about that. And then our third toy is Trinity, which also has two little characters on it: Tripp and Trine. They're a polyamorous trio together. Their pronouns are she, he, and xe, respectively. Their favourite things are hugging, dancing, and cave exploring.
Trinity makes a great insertable toy. Tripp and Trine protrude out to create some really great prostate or G-spot stimulation and also create little ledges if you wanted to use it as a butt toy and have different levels of depths for a but plug. Also, the vibrator is the strongest where the Tripp and Trine characters are, so that can also be used as a great external vibrator, as well.
So, like I said, all three of the toys are really versatile. On our website, you can also get all three of them together in what we call the 'Poly Pack,' and of course, there's a discount for swoopin' them all up at once. [Chuckles]
BOT: That's awesome. What inspired the names for each of them?
Step: That's a great question! They just sort of came to me. Yeah, they just sort of came.
With Princette Puppypus, 'princette' is a gender-fucky, gender-neutral form of 'princess' or 'prince,' so I really liked that, and they have a little crown if you look on their character. Their design is kind of a puppy-octopus fusion, which is really fun. So, I guess that their character just sort of emerged.
Starsi is a starfish, so I thought that was really cute. I also thought 'Starsi' was a sweet name and their character is a very sweet character.
Trinity, I thought was fun because it's was a very bold, bouncy name and also, there are three of them, so Trinity — kind of alluding to the three characters.
Really, I don't know. How do you come up with names for things?
BOT: I know!
Step: You just kind of look at something and its personality speaks to you. For all of them, for each toy they have so much personality. They also have characters in a web comic, which bring even more personality to them. I just kind of got to know them first, and their names just sort of came to themselves.
BOT: And they're literally and figuratively colourful.
Step: Yes!
BOT: Are you planning on expanding your product line at all, and if you are, what kind of products would you like to offer in the future?
Step: Definitely! We will definitely be making more toys. We've recently started designing some of our next toys, though we're not releasing any of the information about that yet. So, you'll have to follow along with us to see what sort of crazy things will come out in the future, but I can definitely say that we are making new toys and they're really fucking cute and I can't wait for them.
BOT: Oh, you know I’m going to be following along on this!
Step: [Laughs]
BOT: Are your toys made in the U.S.?
Step: Our toys are manufactured overseas, they're all designed and prototyped in the U.S. We have a really incredible manufacturing partner; all the manufacture are adult toys. They are professions in the industry. We work with them because they've been doing this for several decades and bring a lot of experience that we just couldn't have brought ourselves, being such a new company. So, I'm really grateful for them.
We do all of our prototyping and designs in-house in Oakland, California.
BOT: That's awesome.
Step: Yeah.
BOT: Is environmental sustainability and important consideration for your company?
Step: Yeah, absolutely. So, environmental sustainability is a really difficult challenge in the adult toy world, but it's definitely something we've spent a bunch of time thinking about. Unfortunately, a lot of the body-safe toys aren't really biodegradable or recyclable very much, which is definitely a shame, but it's important to put things in our bodies that are good for our bodies, rather than things that are going to harbour bacteria.
So, the way that we've tried to strike our balance is focusing on two aspects. One is longevity of the product. Because we do make our toys in high-quality silicone, they will last a very long time, and so people can use them and use them and use them, and they're very, very easy to clean. On top of that, we also made the electronics removable from the silicone portion, so that if you did have to dispose of them, you can dispose of them correctly. Also, silicone lasts forever, electronics will go through some wear and tear.
So, if and when the electronics do die out, we can just take the electronics out and put in new electronics to continue the life of that toy, rather than have to manufacture more toys and bring more than is needed into the world.
BOT: That's brilliant! That's such a great idea, and I've never — I mean, there might be — but I've personally never seen any other companies that offer that. That's amazing.
Step: Yeah, it's a pretty unique thing. I spent a lot of time racking my brain on it, so I'm really proud that we've come out with that and how it works. We have thousands of toys out there and every once in a while, something doesn't work. It just happens, no one knows why. So, it's been really great, instead of being like, "Well, here's a whole new toy, but what do we do with this whole silicone?" Be like, "Nope, here's just the one part you need fixed, and your toy is still super wonderful and working."
I'm really grateful that we can reduce our waste as much as possible, in that way.
BOT: That's great, and from what I've seen online — I actually came across Cute Little Fuckers on Instagram — people are loving the products and absolutely just raving about them. You're definitely doing something right! [Laughs]
Step: Yeah, it makes my heart explode every time I see it. It's tough, because my heart's been exploding a lot recently! [Laughs]
BOT: [Laughs] Hopefully, all in good ways!
Step: No, yeah, all in good ways, all in good ways! Just the amount of love that we've seen on social media or on our reviews. There's a couple of the products, where I'm like, "Jeez, I really hope somebody gives us a less than five-star review, just so that everyone doesn't think that these reviews are fake." Because any time you see a product and it's just five-star reviews and after twenty reviews, you're like, "Something's up here." You know, everyone expects less than a five-star review, but so many people have been loving our toys so much, that I'm grateful that that's the problem I have to deal with.
That I'm like, "I hope people don't think that they're fake because all of the reviews are so good!" That's a pretty good problem to be having. Again, whenever I read someone's reviews to see how happy it's made them, it makes me smile so deeply.
BOT: Actually, on that note, how does customer feedback — whether it's positive, like these raving reviews, or if it's a suggestion — how does that drive changes in your production?
Step: Basically, we like to listen. When manufacturing things — from feedback to design updates — it is a little bit of a long lifecycle. When we see what people review on our site, we have documents that we take notes on what are the features people are really enjoying, what are some things that didn't work for some people. I am very much taking those into account while we're working on this next round of toys.
What are the things that were missing in the last round that people are really asking for? What are things that people really loved and we can maybe work them into a different form factor with a different toy? So, we listen to that a lot.
Also, during the Kickstarter campaign, we made it interactive where we actually had four toy designs on the Kickstarter campaign, and we had people vote for which ones came to life as we raised more money. So, the three were the ones that people voted for and that was really fun to get that dynamic, inter-activity into it.
I'm not sure exactly how we're going to do the next toy, or round of toys, but I really would love to do something interactive like that, as well. Where we bring a couple of designs to people, or maybe even open it up to the community and have people make their own monster designs and people can vote on them, and we can really make it interactive to see what toys come to life next.
BOT: That's a really great idea! I like that.
Step: Yeah, it's a lot of fun! [Giggles]
BOT: So, what else makes Cute Little Fuckers better than the other sex toys that are currently on the market? What else makes you different?
Step: It's in the actual engineering of it, that our vibrators are really strong and rumbly. So, if you really like that kind of stimulation, our toys are really going to speak for you. If you're looking for something that has a lot of cute personality, a toy that you can leave on your nightstand and will actually be a fun character in your room — something that people would see and not even think it was a sex toy, would this it was just some cool figurine that you got somewhere — then these toys will really speak to you.
If you're looking for things that make you feel awesome and included in your gender identity, or sexuality, or race, or whatever it is, really, these toys will speak to you. If you're looking for things that are easy to hold or are made with some disability in mind, these are really made for you, because I'm disabled, and I really considered that when putting these creations together. If you're just somebody who wants to get a toy that supports a really great cause and really great company, I hope this also speaks to you, as well.
We spend so much energy and resources creating good sexual education materials. Even on the top of our boxes, it says in big letters: 'Support sexual education.' We spend a lot of time and energy creating more awareness in the adult toy space, writing articles for industry magazines, telling people the importance of being inclusive, because it’s amazing how many people haven't thought of that there. I just think that there's really a lot of aspects of what Cute Little Fuckers is doing that can really deeply speak to a lot of people.
BOT: And I also noticed that you have a toy donation program?
Step: Yeah! Yes! So, you can either just as an item on the site or while you're checking out, donate some money or pay some money to buy people who are low-income, trans, disabled, POC folx, or single parents who would like a toy but otherwise couldn't afford it. We actually collect money from people who want to contribute to that and give toys to those people.
That's just been amazing, to see people who are just in really hard times, who could really just use some of that stress reduction that we were talking about earlier.
BOT: [Laughs] Yes!
Step: How just the amount of overwhelming gratitude we've seen there. That idea actually started during the Kickstarter campaign, when somebody reached out and they said, "I just love this project, I love what you're doing. I'd love to get a bunch and just have you give those to people. Is that okay?" And I was like, "Yeah!"
So, we set it up and they got a bunch and we put up toys. I think for Kickstarter, you had to do some sort of contribution, so it was like a dollar for a toy and just for low-income — at that time, it was just low-income trans folx. Just specifically [saying], "If you've been following along with project and wished you could contribute but can't afford it, this is your opportunity!" All of the them were gone within twenty minutes! Every single one was accounted for when we put it up there, and it was cool just to see how many people were following along and really resonated, that were then able to also get a toy and participate in that way. It was really, really incredible.
And so, we've kept it up!
BOT: That's great, to see people come together like that.
Step: Yeah, it's been wonderful.
BOT: Do you have any concluding thoughts on how to spread sex-positivity throughout the world?
Step: Talk to people about it and normalize it. Just be positive about it, be confident in it. It's amazing what sort of conversations you can make normal just by approaching them as if they're normal conversations.
If you approach a conversation feeling awkward and shy about it, people pick that up and [think], Oh, maybe I need to feel awkward and shy about it. But if you just talk confidently and openly, people will really open up and respond to that, and it's cool! You can use that in a number of ways. Hopefully, if you get our toys and like them, you can do them with the toys, and that's also been a cool thing.
I've seen a lot of conversations sparked because of these toys in places they normally wouldn't. People who normally wouldn't talk to people about toys, but then they say, "Look at this crazy adult toy company!" or "Oh, my friend made this, look at this!" There's this half a second where people are like, "Oh wait, are we talking about sex?" but then they see the toys and they're just so disarming, right? They're immediately like, "These is so sweet and this doesn't have to be so hard to talk about. I mean, look! It's a cute monster toy. What am I supposed to be uncomfortable about? There's nothing uncomfortable about that."
Yeah, so that's my advice!
BOT: Do you have anything else you wanted to add?
Step: You should totally check out our toys! You can check them out on CuteLittleFuckers.com. We generally have some cool either discounts or limited-edition toys, or all sorts of cool stuff going on the site, so definitely come check that out. You can follow us also on social media at @cutelittlefkers on all of the big social media platforms, and we'd love to have you be part of our community in whatever way that makes sense to you.
BOT: Awesome. Alright, thank you for talking.
Step: Have a good one!
