Doll mania – Three sexes, aliens, and a market nobody knew existed
Dolls have come a long way since the old days of the inflatable doll. So has the market for these dolls. The doll fans are now upmarket, paying up to $15,000 for the new, ultra-realistic dolls from Japan and the US. That’s more than slightly interesting, because the adult toy market is arguably the pickiest in the world, and it’s highly competitive. Getting this sort of market share, paying this sort of money, isn’t easy.
The dolls saga
The new doll mania started quite recently. The new Japanese dolls have been getting a lot of publicity, and the “sex robots” from the US created a huge splash on the internet. It’s unusual for mainstream media to pick up on the adult toy industry at all, but even it managed to get out of its conceptual chastity belt long enough to do some TV coverage.
The dolls, in fact, have created marketing history, penetrating a market that nobody really knew existed. The typical image of sex dolls is the inflatable, and usually the primitive type of inflatable doll, circa 1950. As usual, the media is way behind the market, but in this case, so are the marketers.
If you check out the net for sex toys, you’ll see a very different picture of the adult toy market from the one in the media. The toys, unlike the marketing, have become very sophisticated and fun-based. The dolls are at the front end of this market, including the “she-males”, dolls equipped for all occasions, and the alien dolls, like Area 51, with a few well-deserved wisecracks from copywriters about “restricted areas”, and things the government is trying to keep from the public.
The fact is that the adult toy market, unlike mainstream media, has grown up a lot, and the market has diversified way beyond its old public image. The dolls are the start of a big move of the adult market into technology, and they’re likely to bring the industry with them, expanding the horizons of the industry while they’re at it.
The future
Exactly where the adult toy industry will go from here is going to be very interesting to watch. Fortunately for the human race, this industry includes a lot of humour and fun, including the very tongue in cheek inflatable animals, and the bucks night/ hens night dolls.
Imagine these things with software, the same capabilities as the robots, cyber skin and with personalities and some good remote controls… The possibilities are literally endless. It’ll be interesting to see how the politically-correcting- everything-to-death crowd respond to the new concepts, too. The new adult toys are a glimpse of humanity when it wants to have fun, and the cries of outrage should be a hoot in themselves. It’s a matter of opinion exactly how moralistic you can get about an inflatable cyber-cow, but history says someone will probably have a fit. Whatever the future holds for the love dolls and their descendants, it won’t be dull.
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