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The ‘guybrator’ began life at a trade show in Las Vegas, with its founder manning a one-man stand and wondering whether anyone would buy the product.

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

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

The device’s zany founder, Adam Lewis, has had a long obsession with creating sex toys for men, which started as a youngster when he experimented sexually with a vacuum cleaner.  

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

Pulse creator Adam Lewis (Hot Octopuss)

Pulse creator Adam Lewis (Hot Octopuss)

‘It’s very much about sexual health: it’s no longer a seedy back-alley 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, bigger vibrations) to the frenulum on the penis, or the ‘bridge’ of tissue connecting the head of the penis to the skin.

‘It was something that we never expected: the whole premise of our project was to create a sex toy,’ Lewis said.

The product was adapted from a medical device that was used to allow men to have children after spinal cord injuries, and Lewis aimed to create a consumer version.

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

‘We got this huge reaction from the therapeutic space within the first six months, and it wasn’t something we had targeted 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 had their prostate removed, which often leads to erectile dysfunction.

He said: ‘There are a whole raft of people out there who have some kind of ailment that prevents them from getting an erection. Before our product, they couldn’t have an orgasm.

For people in wheelchairs, the Pulse means that they can have orgasms without relying on carers, and Lewis said that he has had many letters saying that people who never thought they would orgasm again can now experience pleasure.

Lewis, from the UK, came up with the idea of his ‘guybrator’ more than a decade ago while lying awake after a house party – and got up at 3am to write a business plan.

or people with erectile problems, it is life-changing (Hot Octopuss/Pulse)

or people with erectile problems, it is life-changing (Hot Octopuss/Pulse)

‘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 was so focused on women at that time.

But he added: ‘All ideas are ridiculous, until you have a go and prove that they are not ridiculous.’

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

‘I contacted a few design agencies to help turn this into something tangible – and most of them ran for their lives.’

As he researched the topic, Lewis said he was ‘amazed’ when he discovered that there were no real male sex toys, and everything was a masturbation sleeve or blow up doll – with no unique technology, and all based on the familiar up-and-down movement.

or people with erectile problems, it is life-changing (Hot Octopuss/Pulse)

or people with erectile problems, it is life-changing (Hot Octopuss/Pulse)

Lewis came across a medical report about how vibratory stimulation was used to allow men with spinal cord injuries to father children, and had been used successfully for 10 years to make men ejaculate in surgical theater for a specific goal.

Lewis said: ‘The medical devices weren’t using vibrations at all, they were using oscillations. 

‘Rather than vibrate, it used a disc that went up and down like a piston, creating this tap tap tap sensation.’

The amplitude (the amount the disc traveled) was key. Lewis said: ‘Around two-and-a-half millimeter was the ideal amplitude. Most vibrators have very low amplitude, and that’s true for any sex toy currently that has a motor with an offset counterweight. ‘

‘Vibrations aren’t that great for penises. It has to be oscillations.’

‘That was a big watershed moment,’ he said. ‘It validated my ideas, and it was a proven medical procedure.

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

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

When Pulse initially launched, Lewis had no idea if it would succeed (Hot Octopuss)

When Pulse initially launched, Lewis had no idea if it would succeed (Hot Octopuss)

The product uses oscillations rather than vibrations (Hot Octopuss/Pulse)

The product uses oscillations rather than vibrations (Hot Octopuss/Pulse)

Lewis made contact with U.S. industry expert Shaye Saldana – meeting her at a truck stop in California – and she agreed to be the company’s brand manager. Lewis said that this was a crucial step towards conquering the all-important American market.

Developing the product was more difficult than Lewis had anticipated, taking more than three years.

Lewis said: ‘By the time the product was ready to launch, everyone was quite familiar with us, and so when we did launch we were able to launch incredibly quickly, we had been speaking to retailers for years.’

A key step in the process was coining the term ‘guybrator’, Lewis said. ‘Everyone knew what we had invented. It just sparked a storm. It’s only in retrospect you realize how unusual and how lucky we were that everything just 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 the ability to make love, again, into relationships where the man couldn’t have an erection and thought that the cup of thought that that kind of intimacy and, and shared pleasure was lost to them.’

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This post first appeared on Daily mail