How a Simple Wand Started a Sexual Revolution

In the mid-90s, Shay Martin left behind a burgeoning career in research biology to join the family business founded by her mother. That business just happened to be a major name in the world of sex toy manufacturing.

As the second generation of women to lead Vibratex and the famous Magic Wand brand, Shay and her husband Dan have spent the last 24 years building one of the most successful sexual wellness businesses in the country.

The Vibratex Owner and CMO of the Magic Wand Brand grew up in this industry. As long as she can remember, Magic Wand was a legendary icon. “Long before our company took over the brand’s importation and management, Magic Wand was an instrumental part of the women’s movement and the sexual revolution of the 1960s,” says Martin. “Because it didn’t look like a sex toy - and back then you could buy it like an appliance at a department store - it was more accessible than other vibrators and didn’t look phallic in any way.” It didn’t take long before adult store owners realized the benefit of this and began buying vibrators from department stores to resell to their customer base.

"Magic Wand was an instrumental part of the women’s movement and the sexual revolution of the 1960s"

When the Magic Wand came on the scene, it wasn't invented and marketed as a sex toy. “Most of the massagers never were, but it you were in the know and wanted to use it as a pleasure device, you could,” says Carol Queen, Ph.D., of San Francisco, CA, Good Vibrations Staff Sexologist and author (with Shar Rednour) of The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone. “And many did!” Queens says the wand was a game-changer partly because it emerged at exactly the right time; partly because it was a great design (with the large head and long handle the vibration can be powerful but you can easily vary how intense it is); —and it is strong — and vibrates at a frequency that seems to be really pleasing to many.

Read: How the Magic Wand Helped Shape My Orgasmic Pleasure

Queen was really surprised, early in her Good Vibrations tenure (she started working there in 1990), at all the women who had heard of the vibrator but never seen it. “When they came in to buy one, they sometimes looked very surprised, and I figured out that they expected they were supposed to insert it, and were amazed (or, let's face it, freaked out) at how big it was,” says Queen. “External clitoral stimulation wasn't on their radar! Sometimes we gave the ‘about the clit’ speech multiple times a day.”

Sure, there were other, smaller wands in the 60s and 70s, but the Magic Wand prevailed, Queen says, partly because of feminist sex educator and evangelist of self-pleasure, Betty Dodson, and women-oriented shops like Eve's Garden and Good Vibrations. “Only within about the last decade or so have other wands come onto the marketplace, but by now the Magic Wand's reputation is cemented. I believe it was the first vibe with its own Twitter feed!

“Dodson loved the Panabrator – and she really loved the Magic Wand!” says Queen. “Not only did she introduce and advocate for vibrator use at the 1973 NOW Sexuality Conference, but she introduced countless women to the wand in her Bodysex workshops, via her chapbook Liberating Masturbation, and later via her books, videos, and website.

It's impossible to overstate how important Dodson was to women's sexuality education and boosterism in those years,” Queen says. “The first woman-owned store in the US, Eve's Garden, was founded as a direct result of that NOW conference and Betty's vibe ‘evangelism’.”

Read: What We Learned From Self-Pleasure Guru Betty Dodson

Eve's Garden founder Dell Williams went to Macy's to buy a vibe and felt it was a judgmental experience, so she launched her store. Joani Blank and her Good Vibrations customers were so enamored of the wand that once, during some circa 1980 supply chain issues, she went to Japantown and bought a couple of cases to tide her/the store over.