TOYS TO THE RESCUE

Welcome to month 2 of our lockdown and the news only gets better for users of Revactin. All signs are pointing to people turning to sex to cope with boredom and the stress of isolation. This recent article from Wired UK shows that all sorts of sex-related things are on the upswing at this time of crisis – from sales of sex toys to virtual dating sites and just plain old reports of more sex at home, which is why that energy that Revactin helps give you couldn’t come at a better time.

It got us thinking about all sorts of things including just how long sex “toys” or aids have been around.
Well, it’s not surprising that the answer is a very, very long time. The oldest “sex toy” ever discovered is said to be a siltstone phallus dating back 28,000 years from Germany! At 8 inches long and 1.1 inches wide it is an impressive sight. It is actually made up of 14 different pieces, so it shows a lot of skilled care and attention was put into its making. Appropriately siltstone is a common sedimentary rock described in geology texts as “commonly used as a low-quality filler when better materials are not locally available”. We kid you not.

The Greeks and Romans were all over sex toys. The Greeks claim traders in the city of Miletus made and sold objects called ‘olisbos’, intended to help wives achieve sexual penetration while their husbands were away. Roman phallic charms of the time were known as fascinum and were even found in the ruins of Pompeii, and it was believed that the symbols could ward off evil spirits. Used in ancient Roman religion and magic, the fascinum referred to the god Fascinus. The phallus was used to summon divine protection.

Of course, the Italians coined the term “dildo”, from the Latin for ‘dilatare’, which means ‘open wide’, and the Italian for delight, which translates as ‘diletto.’ The French are credited with the first vibrator called a Tremoussoir. It was a handheld, wind-up contraption designed by physicians. But it was good old American industrial ingenuity that gave us a steam-powered version called the Manipulator before an electromechanical vibrator was developed in 1880 by Dr. Joseph Granville. After that, we never looked back…just down.

So the Germans started it, the Greeks and Italians used it everywhere, the French refined it and finally, the Americans came in and industrialized it! Here is a great article that delves more deeply into the history of sex toys.

OK, that’s enough sex talk. One of the other ways we can make lemonade out of this enforced inactivity is to turn our attention to the “next big idea”. All of us have had ideas at one point or another that we are certain will be the thing to make us rich and famous. Well now is the time to get it together and start putting pen to paper. If you are going to go down an internet rabbit hole you may as well do it while researching your idea and discovering whether someone has beaten you to the punch. If they haven’t then let’s start to put some business plan flesh on that idea bone. Enlist friends to help with design, financing, marketing, distribution, legal and all the other elements necessary for bringing an idea to life and potentially turning it into a business.

And while you are at it maybe you can create a solution that directly helps people or our planet in this time crisis. Instead of creating the next virtual sports league, how about in-home on-line services like monitoring or providing virtual companionship for old/sick people or combined computing power like SETI@home but for other tasks like tracking pollution or deforestation. There are plenty of problems waiting to be solved by the collective brainpower of billions of people currently sitting around at home wondering what TV series to binge-watch next. Use your power for good! Learn about things you always wanted to like chemistry, physics, biology, computing, engineering. At the very least you will come out of this more interesting and knowing more. And maybe you will make a little money on the side. One thing is for certain is that this current event will change some things as we know it substantially and forever so opportunity abounds!

Good luck and stay safe and well.