There is a chain of lingere stores in the Seattle area that caters to the mainstream, middle-class shoppers looking to spice up their sex lives: a broad wall of condoms, lingere in the front, massage oils, flavored lubricants and novelties in the middle, a small nook of unchallenging porn and a wide variety of sex toys in the back. Given the state of the art in porn, the sex toys reflect a wide variety of activities: some bondage toys, a panel of dildos, a panel of mostly anal toys, a panel of masturbation sleeves, that sort of thing.
I go there a couple of times a year, mostly to renew my condom supplies, and I noticed a change in the toy selection. Among all the random, non-threateningly sized sex toys, this particular chain always had one gag dildo: something absolutely monstrous. For a while, the standard toy found in all their shops was the Caterpillar, which is guaranteed to scare the hair off a mundane, although I know one store had a Cannonshot, and another had a Ream-And-Dream. Think: Two liters, or almost six pounds, of latex in each of these. All of these are from the same manufacturer, TSX Toys of UK.
Recently, though, none of the stores have had anything like that. I decided to ask the woman behind the counter. "Someone bought it," she said, indicating the space where the Caterpillar used to stand.
"You not going to re-order?"
"People kept buying them," she said, and for some reason she sounded distraught at the very notion. "Those aren't the kind of thing we want to be known for. So we decided to stop ordering them."
I didn't persue it further, but that sounds like a weird decision: you sell sex toys, you find a brand of sex toys that sells so well you keep selling out, and you discontinue carrying that brand? That doesn't seem like a smart business decision: it's not as if other patrons had to know who was buying the monsters, or why.
I go there a couple of times a year, mostly to renew my condom supplies, and I noticed a change in the toy selection. Among all the random, non-threateningly sized sex toys, this particular chain always had one gag dildo: something absolutely monstrous. For a while, the standard toy found in all their shops was the Caterpillar, which is guaranteed to scare the hair off a mundane, although I know one store had a Cannonshot, and another had a Ream-And-Dream. Think: Two liters, or almost six pounds, of latex in each of these. All of these are from the same manufacturer, TSX Toys of UK.
Recently, though, none of the stores have had anything like that. I decided to ask the woman behind the counter. "Someone bought it," she said, indicating the space where the Caterpillar used to stand.
"You not going to re-order?"
"People kept buying them," she said, and for some reason she sounded distraught at the very notion. "Those aren't the kind of thing we want to be known for. So we decided to stop ordering them."
I didn't persue it further, but that sounds like a weird decision: you sell sex toys, you find a brand of sex toys that sells so well you keep selling out, and you discontinue carrying that brand? That doesn't seem like a smart business decision: it's not as if other patrons had to know who was buying the monsters, or why.
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