@rainbow-puppies asked via fanmail:
Do you know any good, cheap places to get a chew thing in Australia, QLD?
I kind of hate it when fellow Aussies ask me this--not because of the asking, but because I wish for an answer that gives you what you need. We’re all stuck suffering the combination of Australia Post’s ridiculously-high shipping prices and the already-high local costs of items, and since chewables are difficult to purchase in stores, it leaves online retailers as the best solution.
The truth is that I don’t have an online, Australia-based retailer that I can recommend as cheap. Some sellers aren’t too expensive, and there’s quite a few different therapeutic or child-focused sellers of stim toys (including chewables), but most of them have shipping costs running between $8 to $13 AUD per package. When most chewables are priced at around $20 AUD, it’s just not an affordable purchase for us--and I know many of my followers are in the situation of paying for their toys themselves, whereas the clientele of therapeutic stores is usually parents. It makes such a difference, given that parents directed to those sites are usually prepared to pay whatever is needed, and I wish Australia had an equivalent to Stimtastic, where the focus is very much on the idea of teenage and adult ND folks buying their own disability aids.
Your first option is to check out Chewigem Australia. Their items are priced around $22 AUD with $7.50 AUD flat rate shipping--the lowest shipping cost I’ve ever seen for an online Aussie retailer. However, every week they have a new featured item on 20% off sale, so it might be worth watching to see if something that interests you comes on sale. It’s not a massive difference, I admit, but it’s worth considering.
Your second option is Stimtastic. Depending on the item you’re purchasing, even though you’re paying for international shipping from the US, you can sometimes get two chewables for a little less than the price of purchasing from Chewigem. Yes, it is ridiculous that I’m recommending that Aussies purchase from a US retailer to save money, but Stimtastic’s pricing is cheap enough that it makes up for the higher shipping costs.
As an example so you see what I mean--an average chew pendant necklace from Chewigem costs $29.50 AUD total, shipping included. I recently purchased the Dulcimer ($4.50 USD) and the UFO ($5.50 USD)--$10 USD plus $8.80 USD shipping. After dollar conversion, it worked out to be approximately $25 AUD. This doesn’t work quite as well for the more expensive chew pendants, but you can still get two chewables for the same price or only a few dollars more than you would if you purchased one locally from the cheapest vendor. Given that Australia Post of late have been horrendously slow in delivering local parcels, the week-to-ten-days delivery I’ve had from Stimtastic means only a slightly longer wait time.
(And if you’re only buying one chewable from Stimtastic, you’re absolutely saving money versus Chewigem!)
I honestly haven’t found most of Etsy’s offerings to be affordable once shipping is added, and I don’t recommend it, at least not for Aussies.
My last suggestion is incredibly “purchase at own risk”: eBay. There’s a lot of listings offering inexpensive ($5 AUD or less with free international shipping) chewable beads and pre-made pendants--many of them quite similar to Stimtastic’s offerings. Increasingly, these listings are making reference to chemical exclusions and are using words like “food grade”, but remember that you don’t know how accurate this is. Stores like Stimtastic and Chewigem are invested in making sure that their wares are safe for their customers, and since most chewables will be used frequently and long-term by stimmers, safety absolutely has to be considered here. You don’t know if this chewable will leech chemicals over the long term.
I’ve actually bought a few of these chewables and am waiting for their arrival, because I tend to use them for fidgeting more than chewing and a few dollars for a silicone fidget pendant is a bargain. (I bought three pendants for $8.22 AUD shipped.) But, while eBay has become a wonderland of stim, the truth is that this immense selection has resulted from sellers realising that there’s a market for stimmy items. These listings so often say “autism”, but I don’t ever forget that my autism has suddenly become a category to which people can market their products. Their items are not always fashioned with my needs and safety in mind, just my PayPal account.
(Here’s a search for chew jewellery, BIN listings only, sorted by low-to-high.)
My recommendation would be this: eBay’s offerings might be suitable for testing. If you want to try out a new shape in a pendant, for example. Then it’s reasonable, because you’re only shelling out a few dollars and you’re not planning to use this as a long-term chew. If it works, then go to Stimtastic and buy something similar. (The Braid, Annular and Droplet pendants, for example, all have cheap eBay equivalents.) As far as I’m aware, the danger with plastics leeching bad chemicals is compounded over time, so one or two short usages on an experimental basis shouldn’t be a problem.
Unless you’re like me and you just plan on fidgeting with this chew jewellery, though, I wouldn’t recommend buying these as a replacement for a more-expensive item from a community-reputable dealer, simply because it’s very easy to say your product is food safe irrespective of its actual safety. Given the amount of eBay listings I’ve seen that directly copy text from other vendors, I have little to no trust that these items are actually food safe.
I’m well aware that many stimmers don’t have money and that chewables are expensive, and do seek out less-safe alternatives. I don’t want to shut people down by going “that isn’t safe” and ending the conversation there, not when I know that the risk of leeching plastics might actually be safer than chewing on other things not designed for chewing. That $3 eBay pendant might be the safest affordable alternative, and it’s awful that people so often have to choose the least unsafe thing instead of just getting the safe thing. For this reason, I’ve included the eBay link, although I cannot freely recommend it as a source.
But I do want to make it clear that it’s really hard to know the safety of these cheap products. If chewing is a primary stim for you, while I acknowledge that not every stimmer can do this, I’d recommend investing a little extra money in your ongoing safety.
I hope this helps. Again, I wish for better solutions for Aussie stimmers. I hope that one day chew pendants become available in our department stores the way they are in US Walmarts. That would be a fabulous thing!
- Mod K.A.
