Coital "model" machine used in condom study

Yq7Bl88Ojha Sn8Dy1Vb4Qi Aaaaaaaaakm Ugpot9Oupks S1600 Coital+Model

The image above is a "coital model" at SSL International's Cambridge Technical Centre. SSL International manufactures Durex condoms. The machine was used in a scientific study published last year by SSL in which they studied why condoms break. From the paper, published in the journal Contraception:

Evidence combined from examining returns, questionnaire responses and the coital model strongly suggests a single predominant mechanism of failure we named "blunt puncture," where the tip of the thrusting male penis progressively stretches one part of the intact condom wall until it ultimately breaks.

CONCLUSIONS: Blunt puncture appears to be the mechanism of breakage responsible for more than 90% of condom breakage not attributable to misuse. Knowledge of the main mechanism of breakage should help develop better user instructions, better test methods and, ultimately, better condoms.

"Male condoms that break in use do so mostly by a "blunt puncture" mechanism." (via NCBIROFL)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Nadreck

So, that’s what was under the hood of Duran Duran’s machine in Barbarella!
Anonymous

I wonder if they would’ve gotten different results if they had more positions. This looks like straight-ahead sex. Condoms have a tendency to break when you shift positions too.
Ernunnos

“…a single predominant mechanism of failure we named ‘blunt puncture,’ where the tip of the thrusting male penis progressively stretches one part of the intact condom wall until it ultimately breaks.”

So what you’re saying is… condoms break when stretched?

These researchers are clearly brilliant. They’ve figured out a way to spend years getting paid to discover the obvious. The stockholders are getting fucked as hard as that machine.
Anonymous

How do you re-use a condom?

Turn it inside out, and shake the F*&k out of it…
cosanostradamus

.
Coital Model?

As Dave Barry would say, great name for a rock band. And the first album could be “Blunt Puncture.”

Or vice versa.

Actually, I used to go out with a coital model from the Valley. And we broke up over blunt punctures. Just a coincidence, prolly.

Normally, I can predict these kinds of things…
.
Daemon

I know a few people who’d be interested in getting their hands on this machine.
TEKNA2007

I’ve had a condom break before. Luckily it wasn’t at a “crucial” moment, but still a bit of a shock.

It’s not hard to miss, because it instantly feels ten times better.
technogeek

Hmm. So I guess this partly explains why the manufacturers tell users to leave a bit of a gap at the tip — more space before it has to start getting stretched out.

Breakage occurs, but that’s figured into the 97%-or-whatever-it-is effectiveness rate claimed for condoms. Everything is compromises.

What I’m wondering is what failure modes the female condom is subject to.
dodi

I’m with you Rajio. My brain went into a skid at “returns.”

Did any of you with breakage think, “Damn, I better return this defecting product.”
Lloyd

Is it single?
David Pescovitz

Yay! As expected, the comments didn’t disappoint. I love you all. : )
JPW

BoinkBoink.net? . . . .
Praline

Durex averages three bust condom returns a week. Imagine the lucky employee who gets to deal with those little bundles of biohazard.

I wonder what motivates people to return their penile mischief. Is it truly all in the name of progress? Or do they think they’re establishing an alibi of some sort for the worst case scenario?
Fang Xianfu

For science!
JPW

And like I’ve always said, a broken condom isn’t inconceivable. . . .
mdh

it’s pneumatic!
Anonymous

In one of his stand-up routines, Bill Maher says condoms are the most reliable device since the toaster, and calls breakage BS. Just an excuse for getting drunk or lazy and using nada. I’ve always assumed he was right on the money…..
Rezpect

Well, duh.
Anonymous

From the shop durex website FAQ

7.3 For reasons of hygiene we cannot accept returns where the packaging has been opened or the Product has been used.

This just gets better and better!

Alex.
Charlie Lesoine

Blunt puncture = Not enough lube
Halloween Jack

This, folks, will be looked back upon as the true beginning of the end: not when Skynet went online, not when some AI managed to hack around the Asimovian Laws firmware, but when some well-meaning fool put two fucking machines together and they realized that they didn’t need us for anything.
WombatSam

One of my concerns about condoms when I first used them was that a trapped pube might tear the latex, and I can’t help noticing that this machine is entirely hairless. Wouldn’t it be better to include all the variables?

I suppose a hairy version would be even harder to explain to the investors.
Crispinus211

Did they give the model a nickname, I wonder?
dmoisan

Doesn’t anyone (Cory?) remember the copulation machine in one of Robert Anton Wilson’s novels? The one whose phallus came from a transgendered woman?

That machine is virtually identical in conception, just as RAW wrote it! (It’s been far, far too long since I’ve reread him but to say that memory comes to the fore is an understatement!)
Anonymous

Blunt Puncture…dibs on using it for a band name.
sabik

“male penis” â€” is there any other kind?
Tdawwg

In related “breaking” news: John Dillinger’s penis has been found.
hokano

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Cji6uDTQc
mrsomuch

do you think it goes up to 11?
Rajio

RETURNS?!
IWood

Like that? Have I got a website for you!
Anonymous

That is a huge effin’ fake wang!
mdh

@ 63 – –
Anonymous

@SABIK

I guess they are taking in consideration hermaphrodite penises LOL
Anonymous

NSFW
Spoiler Warning…
This looks just like a prop in the movie “One Eyed Monster”. They kill the ‘monster’ (Ron Jeremy’s disembodied alien possessed penis) using a device that looks just like this!

http://io9.com/5222230/ron-jeremys-one-eyed-monster-is-controlled-by-aliens
ill lich

Look at that f#cking machine!
acb

There was once a young man named Kleene
who invented a fucking machine
Concave or convex
it fit either sex
and was exceedingly easy to clean.

(Attributed to John Von Neumann)
Anonymous

All that’s missing from the picture are a couple of stern-looking men in lab coats and plastic-framed glasses, taking notes on a clipboard.
Anonymous

This takes me back to an awesome SF story I read many years ago about a disembodied consciousness that was part of a hive mind in a giant computer system on earth after all the humans died out. Somehow the system is insane and keeps trying to do things to make itself happy. One of the things is does is create an enormous multi-story pair of match genitalia, and fuck itself for a while.

Anyone recall this story?

And hey, I keep trying to post this to Facebook but I only get a generic link with no photo. What gives?

Captcha: dealers 11. Maybe this one DOES go to 11!
buddy66

The Ron Jeremy model.
Anonymous

I don’t know much about machines but i know what i like.
Mark Dow

The photo deserves a well positioned squirrel.
dbarak

Believe it or not, the company I work for has a device that would be a perfect part of a machine like that. Despite that, I’m not sending this link to anyone I work with.
Stefan Jones

The Bodily Goop Containment Testing Industry must be a thriving field; a few months ago the NYTimes ran a story about Kimberly Clark’s diaper testing lab, which featured a rack of horrifying headless, armless, footless toddler mannequins whose hips constantly churned away to simulate crawling and walking. And the dummies had dispensers for artificial poo and pee.
dbarak

Quick thought – is the box on the far right supposed to be a vagina or an anus?
johnnyaction

Can’t believe no one has linked to the classic XKCD comic about almost this very thing…

http://xkcd.com/600/
Phikus

I wonder what was the result of the breakages. Did the machine end up creating a bunch of little fuckers?
dbarak

@ #17 posted by Phikus

“I wonder what was the result of the breakages. Did the machine end up creating a bunch of little fuckers?”

Nano-machines…
Brainspore

Reminds me of BrÃ¼no’s exercise machine.
Anonymous

holy crap…look at the size of that thing!
.
.
. i mean…the piston on the left, of course.
dculberson

Are you sure that’s SSL and not SRL?
dbarak

@ #20 posted by dculberson

Well, SSL *is* “Secure SOCKET LAYER.”
Phikus

Dbarak@~16: “is the box on the far right supposed to be a vagina or an anus?”

Depends on how much was spent on making it. Was the owner merely fucked or fucked in the ass on the price?

I hear the next version will be better, with the benefit of the decency of a reacharound(tm).
Anonymous

NSFW?
MrJM

Is that a coital model in your pocket, or are you just testing for blunt puncture?

– MrJM
bjacques

It can also be used to demonstrate Fudd’s Testicular Law of Opposition: If it goes in, it must come out!
das memsen

damn it- where was this research data one month ago, when I could have used it?
knodi

That’s the second biggest fucking machine I’ve ever seen.
Falcon_Seven

Articles like this are why I keep coming back to BB.
Anonymous

I knew the comments on this would be better than the story! This is great.
MadMolecule

#3 anonymous: I’ve had a condom break before. Luckily it wasn’t at a “crucial” moment, but still a bit of a shock.
The Life Of Bryan

Breaking a condom certainly has its downsides, but at the same time, it’s hard not to be proud.
jso

Heard it from a “professional” that condom breakage has never happened to her and is due exclusively due to a lack of lubrication. Given their “discovery” I think she’s exactly right.
Anonymous

Most awkward moment at this company: Hey Joe, what are you doing up there on the counter? OH!!!
Anonymous

< < Did any of you with breakage think, "Damn, I better return this defecting product." >>

No, but writing a complaint letter to the manufacturer will net you a few boxes of replacement.