Tue, 2008-10-14 14:29

Photo by Flickr user bcmacsac1. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Coy Pink of No need to be coy says

I’ve always been slightly annoyed about a certain segment of sex toys out there.
Image from Babeland.com. Click for
(non-affiliate) product info.Animal-themed sex toys, to be precise.  What genius decided that women need or want their sex toys to be modeled after animals?  Do the powers-that-be think if a sex toy is shaped like a bunny or a dolphin it will be more appealing to women?  Do they think it’s easier for a shy lady to purchase a dildo with a face on it rather than one that is more life-like?  Even if that is true, how insulting is that?  All of us silly, giggling girls couldn’t POSSIBLY purchase a realistic looking vibrator, NOOOO...  it must be cute looking! </sarcasm>  I, for one, am not a fan of any toy that resembles an animal.  Apparently, I’m not alone…

She said it here.

Oh, and meanwhile TBK of The Beautiful Kind has remarks along the same lines in her review of a different sex toy. (Emphasis mine.)

I’ve never had anything like this up there before, just normal size dicks and smaller butt plugs. It measures in at 6.5 inches in length, which you wouldn’t think is too bad, but it’s bulky, and I was intimidated. It’s like a tapeworm for Paul Bunyan!

AND it even has a FACE – someone in Germany has a sense of humor…this is a product of Fun Factory, an innovative European sex toy company. I am GROOVING on their funky toy line, let me tell you.

Read her review here.

My cached version of photo from TBK’s post.Here’s how I think vibrators and similar devices got those cutesy animal looks and faces. I remember reading years ago, from something by, I think, Susie Bright, that animal shapes and/or those unnerving little smiley faces were originally intended to get around laws against “marital aids” in the country they were first manufactured and/or first became popular.

Back when vibrators first started getting popular in America there were basically two kinds, smooth candle-shaped and “Swedish” ones that strapped to your hand. They worked… ok but they really were adapted from tools for old-fashioned body massage.

Oh yeah, and the candle-style ones were available mainly through mall-based “Spencer Gift” type novelty toy stores which, I’m guessing, meant they had to be indirect about their intended use.

Anyway, when the new ones, specifically the highly-iconic Rabbit, from Japan showed up in the early progressive toy stores (the then-independent Good Vibrations had them very early on) it was a revelation for a lot of people. Sure, Japanese modesty standards are very strong but also very different from our so, for instance, they weren’t particularly shy to design tools specifically for actual masturbation… but they still put bunny ears and little smileys on them.

And naturally when those non-toy “toys” took off here other manufacturers imitated the designs, bunny-ears or dolphin heads and all, without, I think, wondering why. Once manufacturers stopped imitating and started doing their own thing we started getting really specific toys like the Rock Chick (not for everyone but very effective for some people) or the NJoy and Lelo design lines of vibrators and insertables that are beautiful, very functional, well-crafted and… neither toy nor “realistic imitation” of any kind of anatomy whether it’s animal, vegetable, genital, or… toddler toys.**

Anyway, that’s where I think the little animal effects on a lot of toys came from.

—-

A not-irrelevant nerd note: along the same lines of rote imitation of features like bunny ears on popular products, you know how a lot of old “hot rod” race cars were always really jacked up in the back? I grew up in old bootlegger country — the original “Thunder Road” of ballad and movie fame went through both the town I was born in and the one where I grew up! More than one old-timer car mechanic told me they were jacked up not to improve performance but so that they’d look normal when driven with sometimes hundreds of gallons of illegal booze in the back. And yeah, on days off when the drivers would unload and race them those cars won… but it was the size of engines and skill of the drivers, not the height of the (unloaded) trunks that mattered. Nevertheless, 50 years later the misperception about functionality lingers… as does, evidently, the impulse to keep putting cartoon eyes on Coy’s and TBK’s sex toys “marital aids” sex and/or masturbation tools.

[** I added that last clause to make it more clear that “cute” and “anatomically correct” aren’t the only alternatives. —fl]