UVXY
ProShares Ultra VIX Short-Term Futures ETF
stock BATS ETF

Tried for years to play VIX options. My best year was up a few hundred dollars, my worst year was down several thousand. I finally gave up and realized that, maybe more than any other derivative in the market, making money on VIX is almost completely luck and exceptional timing.
The only thing I’ve ever consistently made money on was buying puts several months out and several strikes deep ITM on $UVXY when there is any significant spike in vol. $UVXY is, by its nature, designed to go down over time. So well-timed puts can make you money. Fairly deep ITM to negate some of the extrinsic premium

You are right I completely forgot about skew. Totally agree we would be at a 12 under more normal situations. On the flip side we can pop to mid 20s in an instant.
Ive been buying UVXY 7 DTE .4 delta calls on Fridays with decent success lately but definitely not dropping 50k on vol products haha.