Pokemon Go is one of the most successful apps in the industry’s small history at 100 million downloads. It’s reeled introverts out of their rooms and into the real world, helping them become active and to form friendships by just walking around their communities. Smart business owners have also benefitted from the Pokemon Go craze by harnessing the app to gain more foot traffic.
The sex industry is not one to be left behind. The beautiful thing about the sex industry is that everything is up for parody. Misty has been giving enthusiastic blow jobs on PornHub for years. A trip down the Etsy search bar will lead to Pokemon themed lingerie. That includes everything from Pokeball pasties to Pikachu corsets. So, to absolutely no one’s surprise, there is now a line of Pokemon sex toys called Pokémoan. Bulby, Charmy, Squirty, and the anal plug Piky are here for your enjoyment IRL.
(To be fair, sex toys aren’t unique to the 2016 rise of Pokemon. The Pikachu butt plug was always on sale on ThisIsWhyImBroke.com. That’s 4 inches of plug and 21 inches of yellow tail.)
Pokemon sex toys point to a much larger condition in which we are obsessed with owning the things we love. As a child, my watered down description of the show itself was people walking around this world, seeing a Pokemon, commenting on how cute they are, and then trying to capture them. With Pokemon sex toys, you are literally putting a version of a Pokemon inside you.
None of this is new. Fanaticism is assuming sense of ownership. Creative fans like to commemorate shows and comic books with cosplay, which can be sexy, and fan fiction, which is usually erotic.
This is not to say that themed sex toys are a bad thing. Like I said, the best thing about the sex industry is how it uses the erotic to parody our lives. And cosplay and fan fiction allows the audience to interact creatively with a popular form of art, and that only strengthens the relationship between creators and fans. I do think, however, that we need to ask ourselves why we feel a sense of ownership, sometimes even in the kinky sub/dom sense, to fantastical things, like Pokemon. The answer might be weird. The answer might be enlightening, but a heightened self-awareness about how we interact with products all around us is always necessary.
The next step from here? I’m thinking Pokémoan and Tinder Social join forces and help fans arrange orgies. Can we start a petition for this?
Gem Blackthorn is QMT's Sex Columnist, and the author/curator of Lust Thrust Thursdays. Send her your submissions and questions at sexsexsex [at] queenmobs.com