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“Our business took a major detour when men started using our
prostate massager for recreational purposes,” said Amy Sung, executive
director of High Island Health, a Houston company named for a translation of
her inventor father Jiro Takashima's Japanese name.
The product in question is called a Pro-State massager on the company's
white and blue-hued medical website, which features a happy-looking, fully
dressed middle-aged couple and promises better health. Massager starter kits
start out at $78.50.
The massager is also called Aneros on the company's red and black-colored
adult novelty website, which features younger naked people and promises
great orgasms. That starter kit goes for $49.95.
British company sued
Sung said once they realized in around 2003 that the product was selling
more as a toy than for medicinal purposes she started advertising it to both
markets, despite her father's initial reluctance. One of their slogans is,
“The sex toy that's good for you.”
Takashima and High Island have sued British company Libertybelle Marketing,
also known as Pleasure2Me, and others claiming infringement of the 1998
patent of the plastic massager designed to massage a man's prostate without
the use of electrical power.
The design was intended to relieve fluid congestion, but it apparently does
more than that for some.
“We started getting calls from men saying things like ... ‘I can last longer
in bed,' and asking if that was normal,” Sung said.
She said she now attends conventions both for medical devices, where their
booth often brings randy comments, and the adult novelty industry, where the
jokes are fewer and the purchasing interest higher.
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