I know i’m setting myself up to be slammed but I just hope this post won’t generate any non-design related comments. cough
I have realised that sex toys are relatively pretty expensive with the more intricately detailed ones going for at least $50.
Why is this so since they are manufactured in such large quantities to be distributed to sellers internationally?
Is it because of the material that its made of? e.g. silicone, water-proofing.
or Marketing reasons etc?
Thats the only reason that i can think of because the whole vibrating mechanism is pretty simple and i don’t think its too expensive to create that bit.
karim rashid and marc newson designed some?
so far i’ve only heard tom dixon and scott henderson designing those.
and i wonder if the end-user is paying such a high price only for the “branding” of the product and not the quality.
thing is…even those “non-designer” ones go for about USD$60 to USD$70.
Never having purchased such an item, I can’t really comment on prices…
I hope that these companies use the right materials. If they do – medical-grade plastics are not cheap. If the item is going to be used, er, internally, you can’t have mold release agents all over it, or offgassing during the product’s life, or disintegration, or any (even mildly) toxic compounds/glues. A big lump of silicone isn’t the easiest compound to work with either, as it doesn’t stick to anything, and it’s hard to run a product with the consistency of jello through assembly lines.
With a similar product like a condom, the price is in the extreme quality control. You could blow-mold a polyethylene baggie the same shape, size, and wall-thickness of a latex condom for under a cent, but the precision needed to guarantee a miniscule failure rate drives the manufacturer’s cost up to, I’m guessing, about 30-50 cents each.
Then again, probably a lot of it is just profiteering, and (as stated) novelty/marketing.
There are a few people in my school who sweep the awards ceremonies each year with the “most likely to design something that ends up in an adult store” award. Perhaps they’ll show up here
I think it has to be the material and for some of them, the labor. Check out the realdoll site, those things are a lot more expensive than I would’ve imagined. You could buy a small car for the price of some of those.
The whole sex/adult entertainment industry is a huge market. People like to try to ignore things related to it but sex is a base, driving instinct in our lives along with the drive to eat and protect ourselves and loved ones.
I would say that it’s high price fixing systemwide, because it’s a fairly niche market, there isn’t lots of competition driving the prices down (we’re yet to see the Ikea vibrator, for example) and when people have fetishes for these things they’ll pay-up. I doubt there are enough purchasers to drive the price down drastically, although I expect business post-internet shopping’s arrival has boomed. I don’t even know if there’s that much demand for cheaper sex toys. People always want cheaper sofas, cheaper televisions etc. but cheaper sex toys?
I hope that these companies use the right materials. If they do – medical-grade plastics are not cheap. > If the item is going to be used, er, internally, you can’t have mold release agents all over it, or offgassing during the product’s life, or disintegration, or any (even mildly) toxic compounds/glues. A big lump of silicone isn’t the easiest compound to work with either, as it doesn’t stick to anything, and it’s hard to run a product with the consistency of jello through assembly lines.
Good point Arclight.
That being said, i really shudder at the thought of the safety of the sex toys manufactured and sold in China.
Not saying that the manufacturing there is bad…hey…look at Sony ericcson…their stuff is made there. But with sex toys which would probably fall under the “medical device” category due to the high safety standards they have to adhere to, I really doubt the Quality Control of products manufactured over there because I’ve seen how little the emphasis on QC is over there in the beauty equipment industry for the local China market.
I’m so glad there’s a pretty constructive discussion going on in this topic.
Btw, Realdoll is kinda freaky.
I think they skirt around the whole medical grade safety thing by stating on the packages that they are sold as “novelty items” only and some actually say they’re not to go inside (to put it nicely) even though we all know everybody’s not reading the box warnings and are doing other things with them.
I saw a report on some consumer affairs board. Lots of porn stars have there own line like Jenna Jameson and all that. More people buy the products endorsed by the famous porn stars. So companies have to pay for the right to use the porn stars name and face, which drives the price of the product up. Porn stars also have there mouth and ass and all that molded and sold (the make more selling those items then in there films).
I do not know if this is one of the reasons these products are really expensive, but I figure this could have something to do with it.
