Sex tech gadgets—from robot dildos to AI-powered dolls—are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with a near-endless range of options available to suit every taste and desire imaginable. Any lightly horny Amazon Prime member can now click a few times and receive a wide variety of colorful vibrators and lubes in every flavor under the sun in less than 24 hours. Design trends are leaning sophisticated, too—some modern devices look more like abstract contemporary sculptures than the more in-your-face vulgar masturbatory aids of earlier eras.
But despite the buzz around teledildonics, virtual-reality romance, and other futuristic pleasure offerings, some of the most enduringly popular products in the sex gadget world aren’t notable for their cutting-edge technology; they’re notable for their simplicity. The Japanese company Tenga, which was founded in 2005 and has acquired an unusually loyal following, offers a wide range of products, including some traditional vibrators, lotions, and a “sperm observation kit” for male fertility planning. It’s akin to the Uniqlo of adult toy companies—focused on affordable basics and fond of flashy celebrity collaborations.
Like Uniqlo, Tenga has, for example, partnered with the Keith Haring Foundation to create Haring-themed merchandise. But its most iconic creation is the “egg”—a line of toys marketed toward men, sold everywhere from Tokyo drugstores and vending machines to online giants like Amazon and Walmart.
These eggs—which are slightly larger than a chicken egg and, to put it bluntly, similar to a disposable version of a Fleshlight in function—have been around since 2008. Tenga sold more than 2.7 million of them in 2024 alone, according to the company. “It’s one of our top-selling products around the world,” says Monica Chang, Tenga’s digital marketing head.
These eggs aren’t exactly eco-friendly; unlike standard-issue sex toys, their shelf life is typically limited to a single use. They’re also not necessarily cheap. Costs vary slightly based on region, but people in the United States are typically paying around $6 per egg. (At least for the real-deal product—knockoffs on sites like Temu and AliExpress go for less than a dollar each.) Quick math suggests that even higher-end traditional sex toys wind up being more economically sensible after a dozen or so uses.
So why do people love these eggs so much? Part of Tenga’s enduring success is that it went after customers who were specifically looking for convenience—and the temporary nature of the product is part of what they find appealing.
While sex toys are not as stigmatized as they once were, they are still something that many people would prefer to purchase and use privately. Someone on a business trip, for example, can pick up a few eggs on arrival, discard them after use, and return home without ever having to worry about an awkward encounter at airport security. “They are great for travel,” says Katy Zvolerin, the director of public relations for the online sex toy hub Adam & Eve, referring to the disposable sleeve category as a whole.
Zvolerin says that the company has seen sales for disposable products rising and that it expects demand to continue to increase. She says one reason for their popularity is that people are sometimes hesitant to pull the trigger on buying an expensive toy. “It makes sense for a lot of people to try a lower-cost, one-off product before investing hundreds of dollars into something that may not work for them,” she says.
Some consumers also may want to avoid the ick factor involved with owning a longer-lasting device of this nature. To clean a reusable version, one must often manually wash it out, flip it inside out, and air-dry it. “Disposable stuff makes sense for this category,” says Hallie Lieberman, a historian who wrote a book on the history of sex toys in 2017.
Lieberman sees Tenga’s approach to marketing and design as crucial to its success. (And part of a storied national lineage: “The Japanese have always been artificial-vagina innovators,” she says, noting that there is documentation of “a tortoise shell lined with velvet” filled with a “slimy” material in 17th-century Japanese erotic literature.) The eggs often come bundled in cartons that look like something one might find in a grocery store; once opened, they each resemble a stretchy sleeve and come in a variety of textures, but nothing about the packaging or details gives away their intimate purpose.
Unlike the Fleshlight, which is flamboyantly anatomical in design—some versions are even molded to resemble the crotches of individual porn stars—the eggs are downright discreet. “It looks like a fun tech product, even though it’s not that techy. And it seems almost asexual,” Lieberman says. She thinks the eggs look like what Apple might release if it ever got into the sex toy market.
Tenga says all of these choices are deliberate: Approachable aesthetics have always been a key part of the company’s appeal. “For many people, the eggs were the first time they saw a sex toy that didn’t look like a sex toy,” says Andreas Nishio, a longtime Tenga employee.
“Many people still have in their heart a feeling that sex toys are shameful or dirty. But this is a cute little egg. It’s much easier for them to pick up.”
Tenga now considers itself as a lifestyle company more than anything else, with a focus on wellness. In Japan, its merchandise offerings include an entire specialty line of streetwear, and its flagship Tokyo store is in the upscale Ginza shopping district rather than neighborhoods typically associated with sex shops and maid cafés such as Akihabara.
At this particular moment, the nonthreatening and ambiguous appearance of Tenga’s eggs might make them even more appealing in countries like the United States that are rapidly becoming more conservative. In Texas, for example, there’s currently an effort to introduce legislation that would make it illegal to sell sex toys in drugstores.
It’s part of a wider push to ban or suppress sexual expression. “If you have a masturbation sleeve that looks like an egg and that could plausibly be sold as, say, a stress-relief ball,” says Lieberman, “in an increasingly anti-sex American society, that would allow this product to exist in more places.”