The Surprising History of Sex Toys: From Ancient Artifacts to Modern Innovation

Humans have been creating objects to satisfy their sexual cravings since the dawn of time, or at least by the time they ever climbed down from the trees. It is well-known that many animals masturbate including our distant cousins the chimpanzees, as well as dolphins and whales, who use their hands, fins and blow-holes for self-pleasure.

“Bruce Bagemihl, in ‘Biological Exuberance’ describes numerous examples among the primates, including female Orang-utans and Bonnet Macaques who manufacture their own dildos from plant materials, males who make masturbation aids by forcing a hole in a leaf, and others who simply use natural materials as they find them, twigs, stones, or fruit, for rubbing against their genitals or for inserting into a vagina.”[i]

“Sexual implements of various sorts have a long and distinguished history in human culture, examples of which have been found from as far back as the Palaeolithic through to medieval times – including some Biblical references – as well as in the ongoing traditions of many indigenous peoples throughout the world”, Bagemihl continues.

Prehistoric Pleasures: Timeline

The following is a comprehension timeline of the sex toy history from prehistoric time to today.

30,000 BC – Oldest known dildo from late stone age made of siltstone found in a cave in Germany.
1500 BC – phallic wood in China was textured then lacquered for women.
600 BC – Greek vase depicts a man using a dildo on a woman as she fellates another man.
500 BC – Introduce olisbos or old-school dildos. Phalluses carved of stone, leather, wood and even tar date back as far as 500BC.

500 BC- ancient Greek-made vase illustrates a woman self satisfying with a dildo.
350 BC – Olive oil for contraceptive purposes starts its new long-term role as a lubricant.
300 BC – The Kama Sutra mentions penis extenders
300 BC – A Greek play includes in its script a complaining woman frustrated she hasn’t pleasured herself with her new ‘scarlet leather-covered dildo’ before her friends borrowed it for their own pleasure.

Ancient History of Sex Toys

500 AD – Ben Wa Balls were introduced.
1200 AD – The first noted cock ring: goat eyelids stretched around male genitals for pleasure; supposedly the dried, intact eyelashes were just fantastic.
1300-1600 AD – In China during the Ming Dynasty between 1368 and 1644, penis rings were made out of jade and ivory and in Japan the first Ben-Wa Balls were made out of lead and mercury.
1598 – The letters D-I-L-D-O are strung together.
1600 – Clit stimulators debuted.
1700 – Women employ water jets to masturbate.
1791 The aristocrat and criminal, Marquis de Sade, opens a language for whips, clamps, and restraints.
1844 – Rubber vulcanization produces a stronger, more elastic material for toys and condoms.

Hysteria and the Evolution of the Modern Vibe

1869 – Dr. George Taylor invents a steam-powered vibrator to help women suffering from hysteria. It hastened women’s arrival at paroxysm (orgasm) and lessened physician fatigue from manually treating the disease.
1880s – Electric vibrators are invented by Jove Relevante and Kelsey Stinner for the purpose of treating female hysteria.
1899 – The Verbatile, a vibrator, is advertised for the first time in McClure’s magazine as a cure for pain and wrinkles.
1902 – Electricity puts vibrators in fifth place for appliance patents, after toasters and before vacuum cleaners.
1907 – U.S. patent given to Louis Hawley’s Penis Stiffener.
1921 – Advertisement in Heart’s magazine aims at the male consumer audience.
1927 – KY Jelly debuts as a lubricant for medical purposes to lessen the discomfort of pelvic exams.
1920s – Pornography is showing vibrators used for sexual pleasure rather than back massagers which causes vibrator ads to disappear and an attitude about their immorality to surface.
1930s – Latex is used to make dildos and sex toys.
1949 – Alfred Kinsey reports that 20% of women use some kind of object for sexual insertion: cucumbers, bananas, candles, and so on.
1952 – The American Medical Association decides hysteria is not an ailment.

The Sexual Revolution

1960s – Vibrators return. Betty Dodson encourages women to use the Hitachi Magic Wand in her all women masturbation workshop.
1966 – Gosnell Duncan, a Grenadian immigrant who was paralyzed from the waist down because of a car accident, invents the first silicone dildo.
1977 – Joni Blank opens Good Vibrations in San Francisco, California starting a trend of sex stores that are clean, inviting, and female friendly.
1980s – sex toy technology produced new softer plastics.

Twentieth Century Toys

1993 – The Original Pocket Rocket by US sex toy manufacturer, Doc Johnson debutes.
1996 – Aneros is designed for the purpose of medical prostate massage but becomes one of the best anal toys on the market.
1998 – Charlotte, a character on the popular HBO series, Sex in the City, becomes “addicted” to a Rabbit Vibrator which boosts awareness and sales of this product dramatically.
1999 – Alabama follows Georgia’s lead and implements a law outlawing sex toys punishable by heavy fines and even jail time. Within a few years the law was overturned, despite the state’s argument that women do not have a ‘fundamental or constitutional right’ to items used for sexual pleasure.
2004 – A woman, mother and Baptist, is put on trial in Burleson, Texas for selling sex toys as a Passion Parties rep.
2006 – A study conducted in The Netherlands finds a high content of phthalates (toxic ingredient) in seven of eight toys tested.
2008 – Federal Court overturns the Fifth Circuit ban on selling sex toys on the basis that it violated the 14^th Amendment on right to privacy.

2008 – Alabama maintains their anti-sex-toy sales law because it is part of the 11^th Circuit. This means it is illegal to sell sex toys in Alabama. If you do, the punishment may include jail time and heavy fines.

The 2000s saw mass growth in technology, the internet, globalization and communication. The sex toy industry followed suite with a huge boom in sex toy shops setting up online, replacing the seedy porn shops of old. Sex toy stores became more sex-positive and woman-friendly, focusing on quality, body-centric and innovative products powered by technological advances. Sex toy consumers became increasingly better educated and sexuality subjects more mainstream due to the internet.

In April 2008, Standard Innovations launched the multi-award winning We-Vibe to rave reviews, the world’s first couple’s vibrator that could be worn during penetrative sex. Called “a gift from the sex Gods” by Cosmo Magazine, it became one of the faster selling sexual health products in history at the time. Created by engineer and inventor, Bruce Murison, who wanted to create “a safe, high quality, eco-friendly sexual aid that enhances the love-making experience for couples,” it remains one of the bestselling couple’s vibes today.

In 2011, bondage and bdsm became more mainstream due to the launch of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise beginning with a trilogy of books, the fist of which sold over 125 million copies worldwide by June 2015. The books were later adapted into the first film (2015), which was an immediate box office success, breaking numerous box office records and earning over $571 million worldwide. It was followed by two sequels, Fifty Shades Darker (2017) and Fifty Shades Freed (2018). In 2015, a whole line of sex toys was created, including several small vibrators, so couples could recreate scenes from the movies and spice up their sex lives.

By 2013, rechargeable vibrators came on the market as a “green” solution to global warming and to help “reduce the environmental impact of battery-operated vibrators.” To that aim, solar-powered vibes were also invented (2007) including the Solar “Eco-friendly” Bullet by California Exotics, as well as hand-powered vibrators with cranks called the Earth Angel, which was made of 100% recycled plastics and materials by Caden Enterprises in Ireland. Unfortunately, neither of these prototypes ever took off, as it took too long to power the solar vibe and who wants to hand-crank a pleasure toy while you are masturbating?

Teledildonics

Teledildonics (or cyberdildonics) is a term first coined in 1975 that refers to robotic sex and computer-controlled sex toys. These devices use “haptic technology” “(recreating touch through force, vibrations, and motions) which sends and receives tactile data between toys.”

It wasn’t until 2011, however, that the first male and female connectable toys were launched, called the iMan and the iLady that could interact, with the male toy controlling the female toy. Then in 2012, RealTouch introduced the JoyStick, a toy controlled by a web cam performer or video that sent touch data to a masturbator. A year later, couples toys Zeus and Her were released by Lovepalz, and Max (a male masturbator) and Nora (a Rabbit Vibe) both from Lovenese came out with the first “bidirectional controls” so they could interact with each other, as well as Bluetooth technology that is controlled by an app.

Fleshlight’s Vstroker was introduced in 2013—an attachment that turned the world’s best selling male masturbator into a virtual reality toy to interact with porn. “Every penetration of your Fleshlight is wirelessly transmitted to your Mac or PC and simulated within the Vstroker-enabled (porn) content on screen.”^[i]

In 2014, a new platform emerged, Kiiroo, with a male and female toy (Onyx and Pearl) that interact together so users can share intimacy. Kiiroo then teamed up to create the Fleshlight Launch in March, 2017, a fully automated male masturbator that connected your Fleshlight™ to the interactive world. In October 2017, OMYBod teamed up with Kiiroo, to create the Fuse (a Rabbit) and Esca (a G-spot Vibe).^[ii]

In the same year that Kiiroo emerged, We-Vibe developed its own Bluetooth app, We-Connect (2014) with the We-Vibe 4 Plus, “to offer smartphone remote control, custom vibration playlists and the ability to share control from anywhere in the world.”^[iii] We-Vibe continued to add Bluetooth technology to their whole line of products to make them remote controlled over long distance.

In 2016 Lovenese released Lush, the first vibrator to be controllable via an Apple Watch and in 2016 they released Hush, the first butt plug that could be controlled at a long distance via Bluetooth technology. 2017, the company created four new products: “Ambi, a bullet vibrator with a unique design; Edge, our adjustable prostate massager; Domi, a super powerful mini wand; and Osci, an oscillating G-spot toy.”^[iv]

In 2021, Lovense ran a 24 hour long Twitter orgy where users could connect to the orgy using the Lovense Remote or the Lovense Connect app and experience vibrations in real-time as Twitter users post official hashtags.

Boy Vibes

During the 2000s and beyond, men’s sex toys became increasingly sophisticated as well, as “metrosexual” devices debuted on the market, and men realized that vibrators were not only for women’s exclusive pleasure. In 2013, XBiz Magazine, “an industry resource for the adult industry, reported that sex toys targeting a male demographic had recently shown an 18 percent increase in sales.”^[i] Some sex experts believe this trend grew out of women becoming more empowered with high end sex toys and sharing those toys with their male partners. In a 2009 survey by makers of Trojan condoms, approximately 45% of men (both heterosexual and gay) “reported incorporating a vibrator into sexual activities.”^[ii]

The Cobra Libre, a strange dust-buster looking male masturbator made in Germany by Fun Factory that appeared in 2012, is a sex toy that vibrates the head of the penis, rather than working only as a thruster or stroker. It got mixed reviews but was very innovative for it’s time. Since then, Fun Factory has come out with the Cobra Libre II and III.

The Male sex toy of the year (XBiz 2014) Pulse by Hot Octapuss, was launched in 2013, and nicknamed the world’s first Guybrator™. Based on medical technology, this pioneering hands-free toy for couples uses “PulsePlate Technology™, a patented ‘piston’-like system that delivers high-amplitude oscillations rather than the low-amplitude vibrations typically found in conventional sex toys.”^[iii] The amazing thing about this toy is that it can be used on a male penis while he is flaccid, so offered a sex-positive solution for men suffering from erection difficulties.

In 2014, Nexus launched the Revo Stealth, a remote control vibrating prostate toy for men said to target the prostate and perineum for amazing orgasms. Based on the award winning Revo and Revo 2, Stealth now has the added benefit of remote controlled technology enabling greater freedom.

That same year, the OptiMALE™, a Rechargeable Vibrating C-Ring by Doc Johnson was released, winning several awards. “Unlike traditional vibrating c-rings designed with the vibrator in a sideways position, the OptiMALE Rechargeable Vibrating C-Ring was conceived with an innovative motor placement that allows for uninterrupted clitoral contact throughout penetration.”^[iv]

Another notable men’s toy launched in 2014 was LELO PINO ™, a Sex Toy Designed Exclusively for Bankers. This toy is notable because it comes with gold cuff-links and a money clip with the expression “Always Be Closing” on it. Many in the sex toy blogging community called Lelo out for having a tacky and sexist campaign.

The Lovebotz Auto Bater by XRBrands was unleashed in 2015, a swirling masturbator featuring a rotating inner chamber with a rubber vaginal sleeve. “This state of the art wireless masturbation tool boasts an ergonomic hand-held design and a user-friendly control pad, with one powerful vibration speed and a unique rotation feature that adds a whole new dimension to masturbation.”^[v]

The next year (2016) Lovebotz also launched the Ifuk Virtual Reality Stroker, a virtual reality masturbator that resembles a Fleshlight with VR Goggles, allowing users to interact in a 3D animated Sims experience, powered by an app. This technology enabled guys to customize the woman of their dreams, with motion sensors built-in to the masturbator.

Genderless Inclusivity

In 2026, there are now several genderless toys of the market for all body types and sexual identities, including the award-winning Cute Little Fuckers (CLF), “designed to be used in a variety of different ways so that they work with as many body shapes and sizes, gender experiences, and physical ability levels as possible.”

The Future of Sex Toys?

According to Forbes, “The future of sex toys is heavily focused on AI integration, haptic technology, and immersive virtual reality experiences, aiming to personalize pleasure and bridge the gap in long-distance intimacy. Key trends include smart, app-connected devices that adapt to user preferences and AI-powered robots that simulate human-like companionship.”

Femtech and women’s sexual wellness will continue to grow

[i] https://www.edgemedianetwork.com/business_finance/corporate/150064/male_sex_toys_show_sales_increase

[ii] https://www.livescience.com/7781-americans-vibrators-study-claims.html

[iii] https://www.hotoctopuss.com/pulse-iii/

[iv] https://www.xbiz.com/news/211922/doc-johnson-nabs-best-couples-toy-in-cosmopolitan-magazine

[v] http://www.lovebotz.com/ae113.php

References:

[i] https://vstroker.com/how-it-works

[ii] https://www.kiiroo.com/blogs/articles

[iii] https://we-vibe.com/media/press-releases/we-vibe-adds-app-only-model-we-vibe-4-plus-product-offering

[iv] https://www.lovense.com/sextoys/about-us

[v] https://www.lovense.com/teledildonics