Liebe Seele are a BDSM gear manufacturer I actually hadn’t heard of before they emailed me, asking if I’d be interested in reviewing some of their products. Based in Japan, they make (primarily leather, although there are some vegan options) bondage and impact gear. I honestly spent so much time just looking at some of their offerings, because everything looks absolutely gorgeous. Liebe Seele have a few themed lines, so much as I love the idea of a matching set, I asked to review products from a few different lines to get a good overall view of the gear they make.
The ball gag I’m reviewing today is from the Wild Gent line, which Liebe Seele described as using a ‘combination of durable dark brown goat skin and super soft velvet’ to reflect the ‘contradictory beauty between the samurai’s wildness and gentleman’s tenderness’. The Wild Gent Collection has a variety of gear, including wrist and ankle cuffs, a leash and collar, a blindfold, this gag, a riding crop, and a whip. Prices in the line vary from $22.95 (for the blindfold) to $99.95 (for the whip). I also have toys from two other collections—the Wine Red Tawse Paddle and White Liebe Cat O Nine Tails—that I’ll be posting reviews of in the next coming weeks.
Ball gags are one of those classic BDSM gear pieces, and I own—tbh—more of them than I have any need for. This means that ball gags are also one of those pieces of gear that I get super fussy about. Just as I get fussy with rope—I want particular materials, particular diameters, particular lengths, and whipped ends—I’m really discerning about what I want from a ball gag. I don’t necessarily want something new and flashy, just something that’s a perfected version of the classic ball gag. But the Liebe Seele Wild Gent Ball Gag? Damn near perfect.
The Specs
The Liebe Seele Wild Gent Ball Gag is brown goatskin, black silicone, and silver hardwear. The silicone ball (approx 42mm diameter) is also cast into a strap of silicone, which is just shy of 13 cm end to end. This is connected (using two popper fastenings) to the leather straps, which adjust to fit heads between approximately 45.5 and 65 cm circumference. The silicone ball part of the gag has three holes, each approximately 5mm diameter.
The Leather & Stitching
The Wild Gent Ball Gag is actually the first piece of goat leather gear I’ve owned, as everything else has been cow leather. It doesn’t have the same strong leather smell as the other leathers I own. There definitely is a leather smell if you get it right up to your nose, but it’s not the same overpowering scent of either the other leather I own or the other leather items Liebe Seele sent me. It’s not something I’m too fussy about, and I definitely can see it being a benefit to those who aren’t too keen on the smell of leather, especially as a ball gag is up in your face all the time.
The leather surface has the characteristic granular, pebble-like texture of goat skin, which may seem like very heavy texture if you’re used to cow leather—my partner wondered if it was corrected grain to begin with. Stitch work on the gag straps is really fantastic— even at my fussiest I could only identify a single stitch that was partly out of place.
The Gag In Use
So I’ve waxed poetic about the design, the leather, and the stitching. How did this gag actually feel in use? Well, like I said in the introduction, I’m not really looking for a ball gag to rock my world, only to perfect a classic design. The praise I have for the Liebe Seele Wild Gent Ball Gag may seem like splitting hairs, but the small things really add up.
The first thing I want to highlight is the fact that the silicone part of this gag isn’t just limited to the ball itself. On some of the other gags I own, the ball immediately connects to a strap, where on the Wild Gent Ball Gag, this part of the gag is also silicone. This means that every part of the gag that actually touches the wearer’s mouth is silicone, and while this isn’t a feature unique to the Wild Gent Ball Gag, it’s something I really love. Firstly, it means there’s no risk of a strap cutting into somebody’s mouth, like there could be with leather with less neat seams. Secondly, it avoids the issue I’ve found with some of my older gags, where the strap frays or disconnects from the ball a little due to a combination of wear and moisture. Thirdly, it makes the gag a whole lot easier to clean and sanitise. While sanitising a ball gag isn’t quite so important with a ball gag as it is with insertable sex toys, it’s still something I really appreciate as somebody who plays with multiple people, who aren’t fluid bonded to each other.
Another thing that helps with cleaning the ball gag is those popper fastenings that are used to connect the ball to the straps. I initially thought these were an emergency release system—they do kind of work for this, but YMMV—but later found they make it so easy to disconnect the ball part of the gag for cleaning.
Something else I love about this gag is the holes in the ball itself. I mostly own solid ball gags, and something I’ve found I don’t like about them is having to manage the amount of saliva in my mouth through swallowing. While drool isn’t a kink for everyone, I really enjoy it, and boy does this gag make me produce a lot of drool. On top of helping with breathing, the holes in the ball also meant that saliva dripped out of my mouth super easily, both relieving me from the task of managing the amount of spit in my mouth and producing a really intense amount of spit for my top to look at.
Overall
I think it’s pretty clear that I love the Liebe Seele Wild Gent Ball Gag. It’s not a groundbreaking design, but it makes a few small improvements compared to the gags I currently own, and all those steps add up. I’m trying to grasp at anything I didn’t like about it, and the only thing I can think is that the D rings that connect the ball gag to the straps aren’t welded, which would be my preference? But that’s totally me grasping at straws, especially since there’s unlikely to be the kind of tugging on a gag that makes welded d rings necessary on other bondage equipment. Overall, I adore the Liebe Seele Wild Gent Ball Gag—it shot into my 2021 top 5 products immediately—and think it’s absolutely worth the price tag of $32.95.
This product was sent to me by Liebe Seele, in return for a fair and impartial review. No affiliate links were used in this post.
