Not like the Fleshlight, which is flamboyantly anatomical in design—some variations are even molded to resemble the crotches of particular person porn stars—the eggs are downright discreet. “It seems to be like a enjoyable tech product, although it’s not that techy. And it appears virtually asexual,” Lieberman says. She thinks the eggs seem like what Apple may launch if it ever bought into the intercourse toy market.
Tenga says all of those decisions are deliberate: Approachable aesthetics have all the time been a key a part of the corporate’s attraction. “For many individuals, the eggs have been the primary time they noticed a intercourse toy that didn’t seem like a intercourse toy,” says Andreas Nishio, a longtime Tenga worker.
“Many individuals nonetheless have of their coronary heart a sense that intercourse toys are shameful or soiled. However this can be a cute little egg. It’s a lot simpler for them to choose up.”
Tenga now considers itself as a life-style firm greater than anything, with a concentrate on wellness. In Japan, its merchandise choices embody a complete specialty line of streetwear, and its flagship Tokyo retailer is within the upscale Ginza purchasing district moderately than neighborhoods sometimes related to intercourse retailers and maid cafés equivalent to Akihabara.
At this explicit second, the nonthreatening and ambiguous look of Tenga’s eggs may make them much more interesting in nations like the USA which can be quickly changing into extra conservative. In Texas, for instance, there’s at the moment an effort to introduce laws that may make it unlawful to promote intercourse toys in drugstores.
It’s a part of a wider push to ban or suppress sexual expression. “When you have a masturbation sleeve that appears like an egg and that would plausibly be bought as, say, a stress-relief ball,” says Lieberman, “in an more and more anti-sex American society, that may enable this product to exist in additional locations.”