SVU Animations started in 2006 as a small furniture and aquarium store housed in a basement on the mainland sim of Furness. Due to the store being located in a basement, the name Variety Underground was chosen.  Mliss Ristow, the owner of Variety Underground, began working on a line of prim shoes to be sold alongside the various other items in the store. Mliss Ristows shoes quickly became popular and soon turned into the flagship item at Variety Underground.  In order to keep up with large demand many satellite shoe only stores were opened under the name Shoes by Variety Underground, which eventually came to be known by the initials S.V.U.  

As Mliss Ristow grew in SecondLife she began to create animations for herself and her friends that filled the void created by the absence of truly hardcore and fantasy role play style animations. These animations were placed into an item for personal use running on MLP 1.0 that came to be known as the SVU Ruff N Snuff bed. When the owner of The Faded Lotus theme play sim asked for a version of the bed for one of the play areas there Mliss Ristow wrote her own bed control script set that overcame many of the shortcomings found in MLP 1.0 and released the product for sale.

The Ruff and Snuff bed was the first item of its type in SecondLife and demand was overwhelming.  SVU became the go to place for hardcore forced style items and animations that focused on edgy, and many times controversial, fantasy role play. SVU customers often requested different styles of animations and devices and as these items were added to the SVU lineup, the store grew.

In 2007 SVU purchased Animatum, a full mainland sim for its own exclusive use. SVU moved from the mainland during the Linden Lab driven adult exodus  by purchasing an island sim and maintaining the store there for many years.  In the years from 2007 – 2011 Mliss Ristow and SVU won many awards for both animation and scripting, saw great press and write ups and maintained an extremely popular presence in SecondLife.

In late 2011 Mliss Ristow was pulled away by RL events and SVU suffered. Without new releases and direct customer interaction SVU squeaked by as a store just paying for its own presence. In 2012 SVU was downscaled to a smaller half sim location where it ran, and waited for Mliss Ristows return.

In 2014 Mliss Ristow returned, rejuvenated, refreshed and ready to get back into SecondLife full time.  SVU acquired RL office space on the US East Coast to conduct business from and the Thunderbird Island sim on Freedom Continent, adjacent to the renowned Bondage Ranch, was purchased and SVU began a comeback....