From the mailbag...

I manufacture large men’s flesh-toys with my little start-up Suckatash Men’s Toys. With all the startups in Seattle now, I feel positively in vogue. Except this isn’t a tech startup and there’s not a lot of VC interest in a girl who spent her post-college years working in China who then noticed men’s sex toys were a market dominated by low quality plastic, inflated prices and misogynistic brands that seem to believe the only type of toy worth selling is one modeled after a star’s nether regions. Enter: The Booty. It’s a 10lb rump modeled after research into men’s sexual brains.... There are only a small handful of brand that design quality products, good value products and listen to their customers. I chalk this up to margins as well as supply and demand. No one is rally competing for men, especially the heterosexual man as a customer.

The Booty 2.0 (preorder via Indiegogo) comes with "two holes and two ribbings." But these two bolded phrases are what leapt out at me while I watched the video: The Booty 2.0 is "a toy that rocks against you [that's] plastic and it's porous, so this is what makes it feel great, it feels as close to the living thing as anything I've discovered. I've had girls touch this and giggle, because it's that realistic."

Working backwards: I didn't think straight boys liked it when girls giggled at their toys. And more importantly: porous materials are generally frowned upon when it comes to sextoys. So it was odd to hear a sextoy manufacturer citing her sextoy's porousness as a selling point. So I emailed Suckatash back: "Can you tell me what the toy is made of? What material? You mention that it’s porous, which is something most recommend against, due to difficultly cleaning?"

Hey Dan,

I arrived into the sex toy world through the back end (pun acknowledged), working in manufacturing and supply chain management. For women's toys, the industry standard of silicone coating has risen across the board. But mens toys are a different scene. Aside from Tenga and their silver ion little eggs (the material has silver in it) all mens toys are made out of a derivative of thermoplastic rubber (TPR). I don't care if a company calls it phanta-flesh or cyber skin, at the end of the day, it is all TPR because it is such an encompassing term for this material on the manufacturing end.

Our first model was this same type of TPR that you see in other large flesh toys, porous with mineral oil. That's what makes any flesh toy feel really great. For the first model, our break through was design of the butt, so that it actually rocked against the user—hands free. [For our] current model, we reinvested in the hardware for more sophisticated heating and cooling of the rubber. That process, is what makes a difference in the quality of the finished product. So instead of seeing the pores in the rubber (like most large flesh toys or toys after they get dust in them) the Booty 2.0 looks more glazed. Kinda like Barbie bent over.

Cleaning wise, both channels come together like a wishbone so when you clean it it exits away from you, on the front end. The rubber accommodates and entire scrubby brush and we are big fans of Swiss Navy's toy and body cleaner but mild antibacterial soap works too.

The porous nature of rubber is what gives the toy the feeling that it is closer to sex with a real person and away from blowjob machine. The cons of cleaning a large flesh toy are really just a part of caring for it. There is not a material on the market that could fix that. We investigated doing the whole thing out of silicone but the same dimensions would be way too heavy and our R&D guys confirmed it would really uncomfortable.

In terms of high quality large flesh toys, besides us, it's really only Japanese domestic brands that have had enough competition and consumer feedback to step up their manufacturing. But if you buy from them it is an arm and a leg to ship over. That's why our shipping outside the US is so high, it's just the weight of the product. Which is also a pro of the product.

Anyway, I could talk about manufacturing all day long. A more interesting new trend within the industry is how camming is exploding. Privately funded trade shows are popping up all over the world. We were just down in Vegas and looking ahead, a lot of lines are gonna get blurred.

Hope this is interesting!

Kind regards,

Mj