Liberator wedge conversion kit - restraints discontinued by Liberator - review by Kayla

The Liberator Wedge Conversion Kit is a kit that can be used to change your Wedge into a black label (kinky) Wedge. This kit does not actually include the Wedge foam itself - It's intended as an addition to the original Liberator wedge. The pictures don't actually show everything that does come in this kit - it includes the blindfold, the two handcuffs, an extra cover (with clips for the cuffs - called the "Black Label Cover"), a cuff connector, and two cuff extenders as well as a positioning guide. The Black Label Cover is made from microfiber just like a regular cover for Liberator furniture. The straps for the cuffs are all made of nylon, and the actually clips are made from plastic. The accessories are all made from the microfiber as well and include velcro to hold them in place. For some odd reason, this only comes in a black-cover, leopard-print accessories color scheme. The boyfriend hates leopard print, so this bothers him.

The Black Label Cover is really nice. It feels exactly like our original cover did straight out of the box. It pretty much just *feels* like sex. Really, it does. It's soft, luxurious feeling - like velvet. The only difference from this to a regular cover is that this includes a piece of nylon sewn in on each side of the Wedge where a "Receiving" end of a clip waits to be used. (That sounds naughty.) The nylon pieces are securely sewn on and won't be tearing anytime in the future. It is possible to put the cover on backwards, but it won't zip up that way, so don't worry about it and just flip the Wedge over. The cover itself is extremely easy to put on. It was a less-than-ten-second process. You just unzip the old cover to reveal the waterproof layer underneath then zip up this cover on top of it. It really is the same color except for the inclusion of the nylon straps. For that reason, I'd recommend that, if you are in the market for a Wedge and plan on buying a conversion kit, pick out a non-black Original cover. That way you can have two different colors. We currently have two black covers now which isn't as fun.

The handcuffs are made of the same, luxurious feeling microfiber (seriously. I can't think of a single material that feels more sexy than this microfiber.). They were laid out flat during storage and shipping, so they tend to be a little stiff when first taken out of the box. Both of the cuffs have the "giving" end style of clip, so it will fit in the other pieces fine. The backside shows the leopard print in areas, but it's mostly black. The cuff is amazingly well sewed together, and upon close inspection, I can't find many flaws about the stitching at all. The cuffs close with a velcro attachment - this means that the cuff is extremely adjustable. It's hard to express how large and versatile this cuff is. It works perfectly for my 150-pound boyfriend's wrists *and* ankles, and it works just as amazing for my 300-pound wrists and ankles. It really does do quite a bit of adjusting because of the velcro and will fit a huge variety of sizes. On smaller people, (like the boyfriend), this can even function as a lower-thigh cuff. The large variability in size is because the positions you can use with this will vary just as widely.

The blindfold is made of the same microfiber material, so it's just as soft. The frontside of the blindfold shows the leopard-print pattern. The backside has a plain back as well as a lump. The lump appears to be some satin that's been padded on the bottom side of the blindfold to provide a "barrier" from the bottom of your eyes to the outside world to avoid letting light in. It does a relatively decent job - compared to other blindfolds of it's shape, this doesn't let much light in. However, since the bump also is padded around the nose as well as the eyes, it lifts the blindfold off the face just a little bit and allows a bit of light in. The blindfold will fit a variety of heads because it secures by velcro. One side of the blindfold's ties is a piece of receiving velcro while the other side is the "attaching" velcro which is attached to a piece of elastic which will give it even more "give". I recommend getting this a little tight to let the "padding" work best. However, it is pretty comfortable to wear and doesn't press uncomfortably on the eyes while worn.

The "hardware" included is a connector piece and two extenders. The connector allows you to connect to the two cuffs to each other to make "handcuffs". The connector is made of a nylon strap and two "receiving" clips - it can not be adjusted for size and sits at about four inches. The extenders are two different straps of about three feet in length. Each end has a receiving extender, and while these could work for handcuff use, they'd make pretty sad handcuffs since they wouldn't limit your range. These are intended to be used by attaching one end to the Wedge's clip and the other to the cuff to give you more motion in the cuffs. The extenders can be adjusted easily by just pulling on the adjustable strap. The extenders tend to get tangled in themselves in storage, so try to keep them apart or in smaller baggies.

So about the actual use: As long as you realize that you are cuffing yourself to a pillow, this works great. It is a pillow - plain and simple. If your "prisoner" isn't resting their weight on the Wedge, they can just take off and run (the boyfriend did a couple times thinking he was cute.) However, they won't get very far because, unless you have the extenders on, the victim can't actually can't uncuff themselves from the Wedge unless they bend into epic-awkward positions. It requires using like a leg and a thigh. The pillow just moves with their attempts to get freed, so they actually can't. (I'm sure this would be easily if the cuffs were on the ankles not the wrists.) The victim can easily escape if the extenders or connector piece is used. The set held up amazingly to some pretty rough use, and it looks just like it did when we first got it. I really don't have many complains about the set - it does exactly like it advertises, and you won't be disappointed as long as you remember that you *are* cuffing your partner to a pillow. To alleviate this problem, make sure someone has their weight resting on the pillow.

The Position Guide included does include some positions for the Wedge with the Black Label attachment, but it isn't many - just five. It also includes positions for the Wedge and Wedge/Ramp combo, though, so if you get the Ramp conversion set, you'll be good to go. Basically, it recommends doing missionary with the hips elevated and the (for the sake of easy example) woman's wrists in the cuffs. We also did it with the guy's wrists in the cuffs (with the extenders), but since his weight was on his hands, where in the world would he be going anyway? On a from-behind position, the woman's wrists can be put into the cuffs, but it may cause some strain and pressure on the head (which is now supporting the weight), unless you use the extenders to give her some room to make herself comfortable. You could possibly using the cuffs on the man in this position to give it a sort of being "forced into having sex" type of feeling, but he won't be able to get as much leverage if he can't use his hands.

If you choose to (and this is a good one!), the cuffs can be used without the wedge and just placed on both of the woman's ankles and, using the extender, you can choose to place them at a comfortable place to keep them up in the air for g-spot pleasure with the hips elevated. If the Wedge is being used as a head-pillow for girl-on-top, the guy can have his hands restrained up by his head. Overall, the positions this adds can seem like only a "few", but if you get creative (and that's half the fun!), there are tons to be had! Just remember that the cuffs don't *have* to be used while attached to the Wedge, and that the connectors and extenders add a huge variety of positions possible.

The packaging was pretty non-exciting. It just comes in a reusable giant storage baggie (like one you'd put your food in, but a foot tall). The baggie has a a resealable top and all of the pieces to your set are neatly folded inside of this. It can be used for future storage of the accessories as well though I did find it pretty hard to get the cover back in this comfortably.

Care for this kit is amazingly easy. The cover can still be thrown in the wash (this kit doesn't come with care instructions like most Liberator products do for some reason.) I haven't tried it, but since the cuffs and blindfolds are made of the same materials, in the wash they can go too. I'd recommend putting all of these "Black Label" Liberator products in a lingerie bag (even if you don't for your original covers) because the clips might get caught on something or make a lot of noise in the washer. Since the Wedge has the waterproof layer, you don't have to worry about making messes on the cover, and it can just be unzipped and tossed in the wash. Any lubricant can get messy on this.

For storage, I'm keeping all of the accessories in the original packaging, but we haven't decided what to do with our extra cover yet.

Some notes: This may read a little awkward because I really, really hate using this extended format. With a passion. So this was written for the standard template, but because the standard template doesn't accept anything over 800 words (this is 1800), extended template it was.

Note #2: I was stuck between voting this a four star and five star. The deciding factor really was the price, and I'd hate for it to lose a star just because I'm a broke college student. The price seems a little high to me, but for someone with more disposable income, I'm sure it isn't too bad. I also was a little annoyed by the lack of actual bondage because, well, it's a pillow, but in retrospect, you really should expect the pillow portion, so I can't really downgrade it for that either.

Overall, I'm fond of the Liberator Wedge Conversion Kit. It provides pretty much everything I want to experience with my bondage kit on such a small piece of Liberator furniture. The pieces are all well-made and encourage me to come up with some creative ideas to use them. My only complaint is the price seems a little high. Considering that the Wedge is only twenty dollars more than this kit, it seems a tad silly to make it cost so much. However, since Liberator sells the covers for the set at half of the price of this conversion kit, basically half of this price is the cover and the other half is all of the fun accessories, which, when compared to other bondage gear, is about in the right price range. Overall, though, as long as you remember to get some weight down on the Wedge to make the bondage effective, this is a fun little kit!