How an ‘intimate moment’ with a vacuum cleaner gave rise to the ‘guybrator’ – the first sex toy of its kind that helped millions of disabled men orgasm again

The ‘guybrator’ started life at a trade show in Las Vegas, where the founder manned a one-man booth wondering whether anyone would buy the product.

The jet black, Darth Vader-like sex toy for men has now sold two million times and is available on every continent.

It has been life-changing for people with back injuries and men who have had prostate cancer, allowing some people to have their first orgasms in decades.

The device’s crazy founder, Adam Lewis, has had a long obsession with making sex toys for men, which started when he experimented sexually with a vacuum cleaner at a young age.

But times have changed since then, he told DailyMail.com: ‘A lot of people don’t realize how scientific the sex toy industry is these days.’

‘It’s very much about sexual health: it’s no longer a shady industry. It’s also hi-tech: we had waterproof devices long before the phone industry did.”

The $100 Pulse vibrator works by delivering highly targeted oscillations (slower, larger vibrations) to the frenulum on the penis, or the “bridge” of tissue that connects the glans to the skin.

“It was something we never expected: the whole premise of our project was to make a sex toy,” Lewis said.

The product was a modified version of a medical device used to enable men to have children after spinal cord injury, and Lewis wanted to create a consumer version.

He discovered that the product was ‘life-changing’ for many people with medical problems.

“We had a huge response from the therapeutic community within the first six months, and it wasn’t something we had focused on at all,” he says.

It can be used when the penis is flaccid, making it a revolutionary device for men who have had prostate cancer and have had their prostate removed, which often leads to erectile dysfunction.

He said: ‘There are a lot of people who have some condition that prevents them from getting an erection. Before our product, they couldn’t have an orgasm.

For people in wheelchairs, the Pulse means they can have an orgasm without having to rely on caregivers, and Lewis said he has had many letters saying that people who never thought they would have another orgasm can now experience pleasure .

Lewis, from Britain, came up with the idea of ​​his ‘guybrator’ over a decade ago when he was lying awake after a house party – and got up at 3am to write a business plan.

“I always wanted to have my own business, whatever it was,” he says. ‘I wanted to be the master of my own destiny.’

The idea sounded “ridiculous,” Lewis admits, because the sex toy industry at the time was so female-centric.

But he added, “All ideas are ridiculous until you try to prove they’re not.”

Lewis said: ‘We wanted to create a male sex toy that was different from anything currently on the market. I had an idea, and two vibrating sex eggs and a sock.

“I contacted a few design firms to turn this into something tangible – and most of them ran for their lives.”

While researching the subject, Lewis said he was “astonished” to discover that no real male sex toys existed, and that everything was a masturbation sleeve or blow-up doll – with no unique technology, and all based on the well-known up-and-date techniques. -downward movement.

Lewis came across a medical report on how vibration stimulation was used to help men with spinal cord injuries become fathers, and how this stimulation had been used successfully for a decade to make men ejaculate in an operating room for a specific purpose.

Lewis said: ‘The medical devices didn’t use vibrations at all, they used oscillations.

“Instead of vibrating, it used a disk that went up and down like a piston, creating this tap-tap-tap sensation.”

The amplitude (the amount the disk traveled) was critical. Lewis said: ‘About two and a half millimeters was the ideal amplitude. Most vibrators have a very low amplitude, and that goes for any sex toy that currently has a motor with a compensated counterweight. ‘

‘Vibration isn’t great for penises. It must be vibrations.’

“That was a big turning point,” he said. ‘It confirmed my ideas and it was a proven medical procedure.

Lewis said he contacted a Danish medical supplier, licensed the technology, and “very quickly” realized he needed to speak to people who knew the market.

One sex toy expert turned to Lewis and said he was skeptical because the toy was “counterintuitive” to the way men had masturbated since the Stone Age, saying, “You want to reinvent male masturbation.” but admitted: ‘If you can make it work, it would be fantastic.’

Lewis contacted US industry expert Shaye Saldana – meeting her at a truck stop in California – and she agreed to become the company’s brand manager. Lewis said this was a crucial step towards capturing the all-important US market.

Developing the product was more difficult than Lewis expected and took more than three years.

Lewis said: “By the time the product was ready to launch, everyone knew us quite well, so when we launched we were able to launch incredibly quickly. We had been talking to retailers for years.”

An important step in the process was coining the term “guybrator,” Lewis said. ‘Everyone knew what we had invented. It just caused a storm. Only afterwards do you realize how unusual and how lucky we were that everything fell into place. We just thought it was normal.’

The company has now created a ‘Duo’ version for couples, where both partners can experience vibrations.

He said: ‘It brings this intimacy and ability to make love back into relationships where the man can’t get an erection and thinks the idea of ​​that kind of intimacy and shared pleasure has been lost to them. ‘