Sex Toy Reviews

As I strolled back home from a great comedy show last night, I had a spring in my step. I’d just shared some laughs with pals, the weather was beautiful, and I had a date with a sex doll.

This date was a long time coming. I’ve collaborated with sex doll company Tantaly on a number of reviews before, but I’ve always outsourced the testing, because the brand always wanted to highlight their most popular products: dolls with tits and a pussy. Now, don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate tits and a pussy as much as the next bisexual – but I don’t have the anatomy required to actually fuck that type of doll, which is, of course, the expected usage of a fuck-doll.

In the course of doing those Tantaly reviews, I’ve managed to hook up three penis-possessing people in my life with a free sex doll, in exchange for letting me pick their brain about the experience for my review (or in one case, the person actually wrote the review himself – you should read it, it’s hilarious!). But sex dolls are the type of product that you typically wouldn’t want or need multiples of, especially if you live in a small apartment – so none of my testers were willing to test another doll, and there wasn’t really anyone else who I’d trust enough to give this responsibility to. (It might sound odd to describe sticking your dick in something as a “responsibility,” but my reputation and income would legitimately be on the line if a tester ghosted me after receiving their doll, so I have to be choosy about them!)

All this to say: When Tantaly reached out again recently to ask about another collab, I told them that at this point, I’d only be able to review a doll if I could test it myself… which meant it would have to be a doll with a dick. And guess what? They sent me one. His name is Mark. He’s actually lying in my bed right now as I write this. He’d probably be smoking a post-coital cigarette, if not for the fact that he has no head. Let me tell you about our date night!

Specs ‘n’ stuff

I want to get the technical shit out of the way up top, because frankly it feels weird to write about this doll like it’s just another sex toy, even though it literally is. But damn, it’s eerily humanoid. I mean, I know that’s the point, but I was really thrown by how much my brain wanted to categorize the doll as a person immediately. I full-body cringed from uncanny-valley weirdness when I unboxed Mark and looked at him lying there, so lifeless and subdued – except for his perpetually raging hard-on, which arched up out of his styrofoam coffin like a phoenix rising from the ashes – and yet so lifelike. I kept saying “Excuse me, sir” as I (wo)manhandled him into different positions, the same way I sometimes catch myself saying “Please” and “Thank you” to Siri. (You can take the girl out of Canada, but…)

The Mark doll is lifelike but not exactly life-sized; even accounting for its lack of a head/arms/legs, it’s still proportionately maybe two-thirds the size of your average dude. It’s 23.5″ tall, from its cut-off neck to the bottom of its cut-off thighs. But I would say that the doll’s most impactful measurement is actually its weight, because hoo boy is this thing ever heavy (33.7 lbs). To be fair, I have a chronic illness that impacts muscle strength, and I’m also just an out-of-shape weakling, but weight is a frequent complaint about sex dolls in general, even for people with actual muscle. These dolls do require a certain amount of heft so they can stay anchored in place when you’re fucking them/riding them – and they do that very well! – but I found it challenging to move the doll around at all. In fact, after coming, I was so tired that I barely managed to shove the doll over in bed so I could fall asleep beside him (and yes, it was a bit of a jump-scare waking up next to a headless man the next morning).

The Mark comes with a storage case, which has straps to make it easier to carry around – nice touch! There’s even a zippered pocket on the outside which is very roomy – you could easily fit a Magic Wand Rechargeable, big dildo, and full-size bottle of lube in there, no problem, with room left over for condoms or cock rings or whatever else you’re bringing to the hypothetical sex doll orgy you’re apparently jetsetting to in this scenario.

Except for its metal frame structure, the entire doll is made of TPE (thermoplastic elastomer), which has some big pros and some big cons that I’ll get into below. This doll costs $400 USD or $500 CAD. In addition to its lovely dick, it also has a fuckable ass with a textured interior; the doll comes with a moisture-absorbing stick to help speed up the drying process after you wash his butt out (what a phrase!), but as mentioned, I don’t have a dick with which to penetrate this thing, so I didn’t test out its butt beyond giving it a little slap or two, ’cause, y’know, when in Rome…

Too real, man

I’d never personally unboxed a torso before. I’d seen other people unbox them, in videos and on FaceTime calls, but it’s an odd experience to actually do it yourself. I was laughing, cringing and squealing as I lifted Mark out of the little styrofoam bed he came in – because he looked and felt somehow both very real and not real at all.

Certainly his physique doesn’t resemble many that I’ve seen in the wild, but the texture and appearance of his skin is quite lifelike, if a bit unnaturally cold to the touch. (Just imagine you’re fucking one of the Twilight vampires, it’s fine.) One nice thing about TPE is that it can indeed feel impressively skin-like on the surface – but this TPE formulation feels oddly soft for this particular application. Truly not trying to body-shame here, only to doll-shame, but in my limited experience touching super-muscly bodies like Mark‘s, they are quite a bit firmer than this. It’s especially strange in the chest region; I’m used to being able to leverage some of my weight against someone’s chest as I ride them, but my fist sinks into Mark like memory foam, which was a tad bit unsettling mid-bang.

But overall, it was an interesting experience for me psychologically to get my hands all over this doll, objectifying him, flipping him over, touching his junk, etc. It made me really aware of how inhibited I feel when touching human partners – there’s the constant anxiety, however low-level, that I might do a bad job, hurt them somehow, or look like I don’t know what I’m doing. I didn’t have to worry about any of that with the doll, so I was able to follow my in-the-moment desires without hesitation, tweaking a nipple here, smacking some balls there, running a palm along Mark‘s rubbery six-pack, and just basically being an unabashed perv. This ultra-toned body type isn’t what I’m usually drawn to – if Tantaly ever makes a sex doll with a lanky nerd bod or a cuddly dad bod, I’m so there – but I enjoyed the way it encouraged me to foreground my desires and my “female gaze,” like a Magic Mike movie.

Cock ‘n’ balls

Shout-out to those of you who scrolled down to this section immediately; I see you 😉

As you might imagine, this doll’s dick is spectacular, at least visually. (My wife didn’t think so, though; she took one look at it and immediately said, “What a weird dick! And the rest of him just looks like a woman!” – which I hadn’t really considered, but I guess Mark‘s pecs, nipples, and hourglassy shape have a certain Greek-statue-esque androgyny to them that probably makes this an especially suitable doll for me, a noted bisexual…)

But let’s get down to brass tacks: cock measurements. The insertable length is slightly over 6″, while its widest circumference is 5.75″, which works out to a diameter of about 1.8″. (And yes, I reflexively apologized to him out loud as I held a tape measure to his dick.)

Tantaly has done something similar here to what companies like Vixen Creations and Tantus do with dual-density silicone: this cock has a firm core, with a squishier outer layer on top, to create a realistically boner-like feeling. But in Mark‘s case, the firm core is part of the doll’s metal frame structure, and the outer layer is the same soft TPE that the rest of the doll is made out of.

And therein lies the rub (and tug): TPE is not the right material for this dick (or for any dick, frankly). It should be made out of silicone instead (like that of the Tantaly Mark Pro doll, of which more below). TPE is porous, meaning it clings onto some amount of bacteria no matter how well you wash it. So, while I really enjoyed sucking Mark’s cock for a while (after taking a damp washcloth to it, to wipe away any bitter chemicals remaining from the production process), I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing so anymore after he’d been used a few times, because the thought of the bacteria would gross me out. I likewise wouldn’t be able to sanitize his dick if, for instance, I wanted to use it anally and then vaginally, or wanted to share it with a partner I’m not fluid-bonded with, or wanted to avoid re-infecting myself after a bout of BV. I could put a new condom on it every time, sure, but it’d be annoying to have to do that, especially with such an expensive toy.

There’s another reason I wish Mark’s dick wasn’t made of TPE: it’s too soft! Now, look, this is a body-positive blog, and I certainly don’t mean to boner-shame… but in real life, if someone is having erectile difficulties, we can just switch to activities that don’t require a hard-on. This doll has no such capacity – he has no tongue, no fingers, no purple vibrating strap-on – and so, let’s face it, his dick is what he brings to the table. As such, it surprised me that his cock is so soft and squishy that it’s actually difficult to get it inside me, in a way that reminds me of that old Rodney Dangerfield joke about “shooting pool with a rope.”

I also just… couldn’t feel his dick very strongly as I was riding it, despite its moderate size, A-spotty curve, and firm core. I wanted to feel well-and-truly fucked, but it felt more like my insides were being gently massaged – nice, sure, but not orgasmic. I ended up nudging the doll aside in bed so I could lie down and get myself off “the old-fashioned way,” i.e. with a dildo and vibe. (I have, of course, linked to the actual toys I actually used, because I know I would be curious about that if I was reading this!)

All hope is not lost, however: Tantaly also makes a doll called the Mark Pro, which comes with three differently-sized removable silicone penises (!!!), making it not only more hygienic but also more versatile. The jump in price between the Mark and Mark Pro is $90 USD, which buys you three nice silicone dildos and some peace of mind, at the very least, so I’d say it’s worth it!

Regarding my own doll’s all-TPE genitals, though, one upside is that his balls look and feel very realistic, in a way that I found hot and weirdly transfixing… probably because I have often been wary of hurting partners’ balls if I touch them too zealously, so it was a fun novelty to be able to slap some balls around without fear of causing pain or permanent damage.

Was it good for you?

“Cowgirl” position (i.e. me on top) was the only one that seemed practical for my purposes. Mark is too heavy for me to comfortably place him on top of me in a missionary-style position, I’m not flexible enough for many other positions, and the very idea of backing up onto a doll’s dick in doggie-style is giving me pre-emptive thigh cramps just thinking about it.

Cowgirl isn’t a position I tend to favor in my sex life, because I lack the strength in my knees and hips to really accomplish the up-and-down motion that people with penises tend to prefer. But I’m much more able to sustain a smaller range of motion that, were I to do it with a human, would probably be more for my own pleasure than theirs, rubbing the head of their dick back and forth over my A-spot in short strokes and maybe grinding my clit against their pubic bone at the same time. Naturally, though, with a sex doll I was able to fully prioritize my own pleasure without having to consider what might feel best for someone else, and it was fun to experiment with different ways to ride a cock. (If PETA wants to update the “ways to skin a cat” idiom, I nominate that as a contender.)

Although it was fun to center my own pleasure in the way I rode the insensate Mark, my arousal only really kicked into gear once I started imagining he could feel pleasure, could experience desire and arousal and frenzied lust. I fantasized that the doll awoke into sentience (let’s disregard its horrifying headlessness for the purposes of this scenario) and discovered, to its surprise, that a cute gal (hi) was riding its dick, and that this was intensely pleasurable. I’ve employed similar fantasies in toy-testing sessions before, usually imagining that a dildo I’m testing has become sentient and sensate – but Mark’s humanoid torso added significantly to this fantasy for me. It was like an adult version of Pinocchio’s “I’m a real boy” moment… Peen-occhio? Is that anything?

Ultimately though, I was not able to reach orgasm with Mark, even when I used an ol’ faithful clit vibe while riding him. His dick just didn’t feel hard enough to contribute meaningfully to my pleasure – which annoyed me, because you literally had one job, dude. If Mark was a Ken doll, his job would be dick. But I’m not sure he’s a great fit for the position.

Nonetheless: Man oh man, I had so much fun testing out the Tantaly Mark. It’s definitely the most humanoid product I’ve ever reviewed in my 13+ years in this industry, and it was fascinating to observe how that affected my arousal, my fantasies, and even the way I addressed the doll in my own mind (he/it pronouns, baybee!).

I think a lot of people would really enjoy this doll, especially if they plan on making use of his ass in ways that I could not, so as to get their full money’s worth. As for me, call me shallow, but the dick was all I cared about – and it just wasn’t firm enough to give me the ramming I wanted, plus it’s made of a porous material. [sad trombone]

The Mark Pro is a really cool product, though, because it’s Mark with a dick you can detach and sanitize as needed. I haven’t felt its dick(s) myself, so I don’t know how the firmness compares to the TPE version – but if it was firmer, I think I’d have a much easier time coming all over it. And just think: If I found myself saying “Sorry” and “Excuse me” while just moving him around, I wonder what I’d say to him in the throes of an orgasm…

 

This post was sponsored, meaning I was paid to write a fair and honest review of the product. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.