Dildos, vibrators, cock rings, whatever you can imagine. Mike Blacksmith makes sex toys for Tantus Inc. We talk how sex toys get made, the best sex toys for you and customer requests. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Least Attractive Qualities.
Interview with Sex Toy Designer and Tantus Inc. CEO Mike Blacksmith
Nick VinZant 0:12
Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. Myname is Nick VinZant coming up in this episode, sex toys and unattractive qualities,
Mike Blacksmith 0:22
it's not what you think, you know, everyone thinks that I sell my soul to the devil and I'm gonna make millions of dollars. Well, the reality is, is it's manufacturing, we design a toy to hit anatomical targets and to create a sensation. Our toys are some of our toys are pretty damn ugly. But when you turn the lights off, and you use the toy for what it's intended, or close your eyes, or get blindfolded and tied up and use the toy for what it's intended for, we'll take the Pepsi challenge against anyone person wrote in and said, How about this toy, it's called the H bomb about this toy. frickin beautiful love the toy. It's just amazing. But I bought it for my wife, and she saw it and was scared. I want to thank you so much for joining us.
Nick VinZant 1:14
If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it. It really helps us out. So do you ever see something and find yourself wondering who designed this? And how did they make it? Our first guest is an expert in the design and manufacturing process. The difference is he designs and manufactures sex toys. This is the CEO and lead sex toy designer of tantas. Incorporated, Mike blacksmith. How did you get into this sex toy sexual health industry
Mike Blacksmith 1:51
my undergraduate is in is in art. I've been a fine artist since the day I can remember drawing and sculpting and these sorts of things that really had no bearing on how I got into it. But it is how I kind of stayed in it, I guess. It's a really actual funny story that I was high tech guy. I've been a senior manager for some really prominent high tech companies that are still around. And I had kind of retired in 2000. And you know, I hit that.com boom did really well and kind of retired in the mid 2000s. And a friend of mine called me up and said, hey, there's this company having problems with their internet? Would you be so kind as and they're networking, would you be so kind as to it's a small company, would you be so kind as to go down and try to help him out. So I went down to tantas, early 2000s and fix their computer system forum, I got chatting with the owner of the company, which I later married, we really hit it off. And I you know, I had been in manufacturing for a long time as a as a senior as a senior manager up to Vice President level. And so I ended up taking the job. And I've been here for 16 years as as the CEO of tannous. My art background led into also me being an graphic designer slash I was doing industrial design as well. Let me tackle the job of creating new parts. When you went into it.
Nick VinZant 3:26
Was there any kind of reservation? Because obviously people on the outside world might be like, do you want to work at a sex toy industry? Like Did you ever have those kind of not not? Not that there's any kind of value judgments that should be directed at it? But did you ever feel that.
Mike Blacksmith 3:45
It wasn't something that I said oh my god, I'm gonna jump into the the sex toy industry or the sack the adult industry and be pigeon holed for moral standards or moral compass. But it was plainly clear, right, right from the get go that that people or other businesses judged you on morality and these sorts of things, and that I've always been kind of a fighter. So that actually, that actually kind of perked me up a little bit and said, you know, you know, fine, you don't want to, you don't want to have my bank account. Us Bank, you don't want to have my bank account? Well, EFF you, I'll find a bank that wants my bank that wants my money. Some have been surprising. And the other way where it's been a company that you went, there's no way that XYZ will ever be a business partner of ours and they've been one of the best business partners. So going through it to a benefit dinner or something like that. And you're sitting tied up and someone comes up to you, Hey, I'm, you know, this person with global finance and blah, blah, blah. They're like, what do you do and I go CEO of a manufacturing company, and you just hope it stops there. Right? And then what do you manufacture and we we manage facture silicone parts. Oh, and then you hope it stops there and then that the next dig in what kind of silicone parts and then you say, dildos and vibrators, and usually, specially business people that are fascinated by the process, it seems like it's really profitable. And you say, It's not what you think, you know, everyone thinks that I sell my soul to the devil, and I'm gonna make millions of dollars. Well, the reality is, is it's manufacturing, it is literally the same except when you walk in the back of my building, the shape of the things in the back of my building are different than the shape of the things in the back of other buildings.
Nick VinZant 5:36
For you guys, like what kind of sex toys Do you guys make?
Mike Blacksmith 5:39
We started with a no plugs, and insertable still does, and vibrators and our vibrators are a lot different than than the traditional what you think of as a vibrator like a rabbit or these things, we believe that the toys should be able to be hygienically clean, because if you play with a toy, your hand, excuse me, your hands or whatever is carrying DNA around, right. And once you're done, you always hear the word foreplay, but you never hear the word after play, right. So you don't think about the cleanup and these sorts of things. You think about rose petals on the floor, or chains from the ceiling or these things, and you really think about that for a day. But when you're done, you're done. So when you got to clean a toy, you should be able to remove the vibrator and hygienically clean your toy. And then we migrated into cock rings and, and slings. They were all made out of metal at the time back in the early 2000s. And there were some safety issues with that where you could bio biological male could be fully in gorged and that constrictive ring or the teardrop would, would potentially and from time to time not let not let those vestibules ever drain. So now you had to put this on when you were soft, and then you got hard. And then you stayed hard, and you couldn't get the ring off. And so you'd have to go into the hospital and get the ring off. So we were the first company to make these out of silicone, which meant that if you had an issue where you call it was called locked up, you are fully in gorged and you didn't come down and couldn't get the ring off. You had to go to the doctor with a big giant purple penis and have someone cut this thing off. So making it out of silicone let you take a little pair of scissors, cut it and remove it. And then we've gone into we've gone into other other toys as well. Some really high end BDSM toys, some paddles, some rope, some rope rigging devices for like a Japanese rope shabari and that nipple clamps these sorts of things that we make that are really, really high end, we kind of pretty broadly diverse, but we started with essentially insertable dildos vibes and butt plugs.
Nick VinZant 8:02
How do you design it as a sex toy? like where do you? Where do you start?
Mike Blacksmith 8:08
Well, the business guy me starts in the business side. And then the passionate artist starts in other side, but usually medicine I or our salesperson, myself and Matt a swell say, hey, it'd be really fun to make my new vibrator. Brad is number one and XL toy category is really moving. And so we'll say hey, we should make an toy in the XL line. We already have a toy that hits the prostate, we already have a toy that really stretches but we don't have one that stretches and hits the prostate. Let's design something that way. So we really take out and try to try to hit sensations, right? Okay, so we're making a new dildo we have we have these toys that are kind of large, we don't have anything that's really small and non phallic. And that someone can leave in their drawer or do this or people that aren't into seeing a bio penis right. And and and, and let's design something that way that hits a target that works is like a G spot toy. But is non phallic and is actually maybe a little bit longer because we don't have anything that hits that works for people that are more full figure right both male and female. We design a toy to hit anatomical targets and to create a sensation. So I probably our toys I always say this that will take the Pepsi challenge with anyone but our toys are some of our toys are pretty damn ugly. But when you turn the lights off, and you use the toy for what it's intended or close your eyes or get blindfolded and tied up and use the toy for what it's intended for. We'll take the Pepsi challenge against anyone. we design our toy we design our toys to work in the body, not work on the retail shelf. Like
Nick VinZant 10:05
when you do that when you design things to work in atomically, do you have to have somebody go in? And like take measurements?
Mike Blacksmith 10:11
Oh, no. So well, we have a lot of experience of making toys, right of doing this for over 20 years. But we do have a bevy of people that we know that say, let's go back to that g spotting toy. Right? Yeah, we have a bevy of people that we can say, Hey, we know these people, they're very, they're their sex toy reviewers, they're bloggers, they're in the, they're in the adult industry, or they're just been customers of ours for a long time. And so we'll prototype a toy, right, we'll go through the whole process of manufacturing, essentially, well sculpt the toy, whether it's digitally, whether we still sculpt toys out of clay, we sculpt them digitally in CAD, we sculpt them in 3d modeling software that's used in the animation world, so they can get really skin texture and look really real, we can do it all sorts of ways. And then we'll prototype the toy will, will tool the toy. So we'll turn it into molten tooling. And then we'll make the version of the toy. And we'll send it to 10 to 20 people that we believe that, you know, their their their personal human form factor is larger than average, they left G spot play and they hate. They hate they don't they're not big into phallic toys. And we'll send those out, we'll send those out. And we'll get feedback in a week or two. And they'll say, hey, work for me too long. work for me too short work for me to smaller diameter, not enough curve. And so then we'll make the changes, right in the in the sculpture and the design, and we'll retool it, and we'll send it back out to those people. Here are your changes? What do you think? Oh, yeah, that that if it was just a little shorter, and if we get a consensus, right? We're trying to make it we could make a toy perfect for one person, we get this consensus. So it works with a variety of body types, a variety thing, but it hits its intended purpose. Then we go to final tooling, and we bring the toy to market.
Nick VinZant 12:17
And then would you make that let's say you come out with a new a new toy, would you then make it in different sizes? Like small, medium, large?
Mike Blacksmith 12:24
No, we don't. We do that on a few toys. There's a toy we have called the Amsterdam. This is a brand new, a new toy just launched off this but there's a toy called the Amsterdam and it's based on the traffic bollards in the city of Amsterdam. right the the big steel poles and, and, and we brought this toy out and it's a huge toy. It's like three, three and a half inches in diameter. We had a lot of feedback the toy has been around for god man, eight, nine years, we had a lot of feedback of Hey, we'd like this toy smaller, smaller, smaller. We never did it we but finally I think about four weeks ago, we made up four or five weeks ago, we launched a small version called the Amsterdam Junior that's based on the traffic bollard. And then we have some progressive things but we've we've specifically designed those for people who want to try animal triangle we have a progressive set of toys that say you start here and you go here you can go as big as you want. But you can stop here but this is kind of a you know a thing to kind of get you into get used to it. So for some toys, but they're designed specifically for a progressive set.
Nick VinZant 13:36
That makes sense, right? You don't want to start with the big guns.
Mike Blacksmith 13:40
Some people some people to some people go straight for it right out of the gate. Yeah, we we have this toy that's about four inches and four inches in diameter the toys it's literally I mean it's this big around and we had a customer service email person wrote in and said how about this toy? It's called the H bomb about this toy. frickin beautiful love the toy it's just amazing. But I bought it for my wife and she saw it and was scared Is there any way I can return it right like never talk to his partner right and buys this toy that is literally that like the king of what we make it thing is huge. It's probably four. Four pounds of silicone.
Nick VinZant 14:32
Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions?
Mike Blacksmith 14:36
Sure.
Nick VinZant 14:37
Harder toy to design toy for a man toy for a woman.
Mike Blacksmith 14:43
toy for a woman. How come you matter pet matter pegs? I mean straight up this is this is true, right? It goes back to the must have baby. Right What once a man's brain is turned on. They're just they suck. They're just pigs and in a good way. Right? I mean If you play with men, you understand that that that male heat is freaking awesome. But but they don't care women. In the 60s men were the largest in the 60s 70s 80s 90s, early 2000s men were the largest demographic of purchasing adult toys, and they're still probably 50% whether they're purchasing it for their partner or, or not, men are men are a lot easier to satisfy because once once that gets going in the human brain, it's they're just on and ready. Women have become they are savvy shoppers, women are the people that know about theodolites cadmium bad things in their sex toys. So and they're and they're pretty specific of what they want for the human body for their body. And you know, women care much more about color guy doesn't give a shit. Right? Yeah, right. I mean, women want the women know what they want. And they're much more savvy and much more knowledgeable about their purchases. So definitely designing a toy for a woman even getting feedback from our viewers, because you could send a toy to a bunch of guys into what do you think is fucking great? Right versus at you send it to women, you're like, hey, the curve could be a little deeper, the toy could be a little longer could be a little less in diameter, right? Because men buy toys for women. They think that all women want these big huge twice because I can't satisfy her. She needs a bigger dig. And that's not the case at all.
Nick VinZant 16:35
Best Selling sex toy for men best selling tech sex toy for women.
Mike Blacksmith 16:42
I'm gonna answer this as a I'm gonna answer this as an industry broad. Not just my company. The best selling sex toy for women, I believe has always been the rabbit. And I think you know, you saw that from the TV show. But the rabbit is probably the number one selling sex toy for women. Not necessarily that works the best. There's some great rabbits out there but they're very far and few between. and best selling sex toy for a man man would probably be in my for me, it's definitely the COC are small cock rings are super soft COC rings, you can put those on when your art and then plugs as well.
Nick VinZant 17:28
Most interesting request you have gotten from a customer.
Mike Blacksmith 17:33
It's not hard for me, I'm not thinking how to answer this. Ah, without being insulting or because I have no, I have no no intent to be insulting. My what I mean, I've had some really outlandish, crazy requests. And I you know, I don't even I don't count those. But on general terms we've had, we have this multiple times a week. And it comes from men. And the request is, so again, I said we make these toys that are four inches, three inches, actually, we have one that's seven inches at the base. The requests and I always find these very interesting and fascinating. Maybe your listeners or viewers will comment below why they think this is. But we all get a lot of people saying hey, I just bought I'll use the H bomb, because that's the name I already brought up. And I'm sure that someone's going to go to Tennessee calm and look at the H bomb. I bought the H bomb and is four inches in diameter. If you made that toy at three and 15 sixteenths instead of four inches, and you brought the length down by 16 inch toy if you brought the length down to 15 and seven eighths and the second ring down the toy instead of being instead of being two and a half. You made that at two and seven eights. That'd be awesome. Right in my mind, I got what is your acid caliper?Right. I mean, like, I don't understand that. And it's a it's like a 16th of an inch. And I don't know, you know, for me personally, I don't know if it's because someone doesn't want to admit that they really like playing with this toy. And they use the clinical side of it to say I really don't like playing with the toy, but I'm only doing this for science. right or that that's just the way their brain works. But this is the most common request that I find very interesting. You know, if you made this toy to an eight, if you made it two and a quarter, it would be a much better toy. And there's no way that that a Muscle Band vaginally Anneli Going to be loosened up right? When you just, it's just like stretching, right? It's just like stretching before a workout or stretching before athletic maneuver, your muscles are going to be able to calibrate an eighth of an inch. It's just not, it's just not humanly possible. And he gets they get actually, some of them are really specific, like you're talking 100 of an inch. Instead of making it four inches, if you made it four point, or a 10th of an inch, I'm sorry, if you made instead of making four inch, if you made it 4.1, I think you'd hit your sweet spot, and you'd sell twice as many. And that's their, that's what we get, we get, you know, you'd sell twice as many. And I have no problem answering back and listening and sometimes taking their feedback and saying, Hey, you know, these people are right, if we made this toy just a little bit bigger, it would probably play better, but not when you're talking about, you know, 10th or, you know, a 10th of a 10th of an inch.
Nick VinZant 20:51
What do you think is the future of the sex toy industry? Can it change that much are we I mean, we only have so many places to put things right.
Mike Blacksmith 21:00
I you know that that obviously virtual virtual reality VR sex could take off, I don't know. I hope it moves more towards healthier, consistently progressive, as you know, we were the company that that changed an industry we Henry Ford, this sucker. And I hope it can, I hope that more and more toys move to move to healthier material and healthier pigmentation. So it's two components, it's the material and the pigment. And I also hope that you know, some of these little companies that are moving forward, I hope that more of the bigger companies start making toys. And that's going to right as the as the consumer gets more aware, they'll do more research. And makes toys that hit anatomical targets, you know, phones, working remote toys, working remotely, that's been around forever, we had a toy big thing that we that we had, we were one of the first people to ever do is called the audio and it would, you could put the vibrator in the toy and put this it looked like a page or go on your hip. And if someone talked to you every time their boy said it if you went to a club and you were dancing at the bass beats so that's been around for a long time, I think we were one of the first people to do that we no longer have that it just it didn't sell enough for a small business like us to keep producing it at at our at the cost we were making it I think it's just gonna go healthier as the consumer as the consumer gets more and more knowledgeable and more and more okay with their with their body and with their ability to talk to their partner and say, Hey, you know, or talk to you be honest with themselves and say, hey, I want to try this.
Nick VinZant 22:49
Oh, this I missed this one most popular color.
Mike Blacksmith 22:52
Purple.
Nick VinZant 22:53
How come?
Mike Blacksmith 22:54
You know why? Right? That's easy. Boom, hit me with another one of those. That was boy, yeah, purple. My farm purple is the number one selling color give you a great story on this. So we had this, we were young in our infancy, we had this. So this chain of stores in San Francisco woman found a chain of stores and the buyer for this chain of stores her favorite color was green. And she would buy all this one, this one toy in green. And we'd look at our spreadsheets and say my god green, great color. That's the worst color. So worst color in the industry is green. And we just thought based on numbers, right, the green was the best color and it was something that we really paid attention to. And so we ended up making all of our toys in green because it was such a great color. Because if you looked at the spreadsheet, oh my god green salt. But we had one buyer that bought for a whole bunch of stores. And so we made a bunch of green products that took us years to sell. But purple by far across the board for female toys is the number one selling color and red and black for men. A dark red and black for male toys. Purple for female toys. Now I'm not saying that other colors don't sell but the variants of purple. Literally 10 to one for female toys is purple.
Nick VinZant 24:18
what's the what's the worst?
Mike Blacksmith 24:21
Green? Yeah, or like green? Green or dull brown or? Yeah, these sorts of things, but green is by far the worst. I mean, you think about it you're you're having sex with a zombie, I guess.
Nick VinZant 24:32
Yeah, that would be kind of weird. I guess.
Mike Blacksmith 24:34
Now we do have a couple toys a green a very neon bright green that but I'm talking like hunter green, you know? Like Yeah,
Nick VinZant 24:45
What do you think? I mean, does that have any relation to the shades of people or do you think that's just, that's just an easy no
Mike Blacksmith 24:54
actually. So we make binary slash trans slash community. With all the modern slashes, we make a prosthetic device called a packer. And it's for people who want to put a bio walk around with a bio male organ in their pants to feel more true to their soul, which they have every right to do. And so we make this we make this so we make it in three skin tones. But one of our number one sellers of that is actually in a purple, just because it's like, Look, I want to feel it. But I don't necessarily need to exactly rapid replicate a skin tone. It kind of just says, This is fucking me. I'm sorry, this is me. I'm sporting Purple Man as my they're called Packers. I'm, I'm, I'm sporting purple. I'm packing purple. I don't need to pack some stupid skin town. I got purple in my pants. And I think that's really fun, man. I think it's really cool. I think actually skin tones. They're down there. I don't think people are necessarily as into, you know, it's what, again, that's a male question. You know, if you're a female interviewer, you'd be asking me a lot different questions. But a male buys a toy thinking that it's something that, you know, my partner is missing. And it needs to be real, and it needs to be larger than me or needs to look real. That's what my wife is missing. But if you literally pulled women on, which has been done by us, but if you were to go out and pull women on what they like, it's going to be a lot smaller than you think it's going to be smoother than you think it's going to so not represent a penis. It's going to be if you think about a male body, the ugliest most aggressive thing on a male body is an erect penis. frickin women don't want to see that. They don't want to see the heart on chasing them there. Something central something that's going to make me feel good. It's not necessarily it's aggressive, hard, giant penis. That's frickin trying to chase me down the alley and attack me you know,
Nick VinZant 27:03
the male penis does look ridiculous.
Mike Blacksmith 27:06
Hitachi magic wand number one another top selling toys. Just a large plug in vibrator, right. Good friends of ours. So the people that bring it into the United States there. It's just an amazing toy. Right deep, heavy vibrator. So we were asked to make a attachment that goes it's an external toy, right? So you play on the outside of the body not not really an internal playing toy, we were asked to make a head that you put on the top of this just looks like you know, just a massager. Just Right, yeah, we were asked to make a head that went around the top and then had a little bright came out like this. And you could use it as an insertable toy. Well, we had a lot of experience with G spot insertable toys. So we make this toy. When you we send it out to reviewers. When you put the toy in, if you let if you let turn the Hitachi off. And the toys now inserted the things up against up against the legs and clitoris and all that and up against kohtaro legs. And you put the toe and as soon as soon as the button was all the way up soon it was up your orgasm. It literally and it sucked because everyone hated it. Because there was no build up. There was no anything right? It would be it would be like a man waking up and before your mind even came on. You're already already assuming for the day. You're like, oh, god that sucked. Right? I mean it was so you can actually you can actually make things too well, it goes back to the designing part. Right so you you are actually designing a journey for someone and I think that that's that's what we do.
Nick VinZant 28:52
I want to thank Mike so much for joining us if you want to connect with him. We have linked to him and tantus Incorporated on our social media accounts. We're Profoundly Pointless on Instagram and Twitter. And we have also included their information in the episode description. Okay, now let's go ahead and bring in john Scholl. Okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of Profoundly Pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share. We really appreciate it. It really helps us out. What do you think are some of the most unattractive qualities? It's really hard to be lying. I think lying should have been much higher on the list. But laziness just kind of incorporates all of that to me. I don't understand the fingernails thing that john was talking about. But man, however you get down is however you get down