MEN can now buy condoms they can roll on up to two hours before getting erect.
Companies are selling packs of three ‘pre-erection’ Johnny’s for as little as £5 a pop.
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Colombian condom makers designed the bizarre new contraceptive in a bid to make “lovemaking so much easier and more fun”.
“You don’t have to interrupt your intimacy with the mundane task of putting it on — because you already wear it,” one manufacturer, Kamyra Condoms, said in a statement.
The C2 Smart condom stretches over a flaccid penis, covering it loosely, while a ring at the base helps keep it in place.
When the penis gets erect, the condom expands with it to a maximum length of 18cm (seven inches), a similar size as traditional ones sold by the likes of Durex.
They are made from a material three times thinner than latex, called A-10.
Manufacturers insist this latex-free condoms are resistant to pressure, stretching and rubbing.
They also say it is more “comfortable” and feels “like a second skin when the material is warm”.
Kamyra is competing with the makers of a similar preemptive condom called the Uniq Smart, which claims users can slip on their product “before the erection and forget about it.”
Uniq bills its condom as “one of the thinnest in the world at 0.01mm” and up to “8 times thinner than latex.”
Bumper packs of 72 are available on Amazon for around £86.
For comparison, a branded box of 12 condoms in the UK costs around £10 – meaning they are similarly priced.
Do they work?
The firms do not make many claims about how effective condoms are or why they can only be kept on for two hours.
Regular condoms are 98 per cent with perfect use, the NHS says.
As well as ease and enjoyment, the companies claim their Johnny’s overcome condom-related erectile dysfunction.
Research, however, has previously found that thickened condoms instead can “physically preserve and extend the time” of an erection, keeping penetrative sex going for longer.
To test whether the condom was guilty of erection interference, a Colombian university reportedly tracked the arousal levels of 82 males aged 18 to 30.
Half of them wore the special rubbers, while the others went condom-free.
The different groups were made to watch porn and then rate their arousal levels on a scale from one to 25, in line with the International Index of Erectile Function.
Researchers found that there was no “significant difference” in sexual arousal between the groups, suggesting that “pre-erection condoms do not affect the erectile response.”
Male birth control options: what is out there for me?
Men generally have two options: condoms or vasectomies.
The challenge with creating new contraceptives for men is the high rate of sperm production.
Men produce several million sperm per day—about 1,000 per second.
To prevent pregnancy, all of these need to be stopped from reaching an egg.
However, in December, a group of British men became the first in the world to trial a new hormone-free male contraceptive pill.
Unlike the female pill, a male equivalent, YCT-529, is hormone-free and prevents sperm production by blocking access to vitamin A.
It’s hoped that if trials are successful, the daily pill could pave the way for responsibility for contraception to be shared fairly between the sexes.
Previous versions of male birth control have tried to suppress testosterone in a bid to halt sperm production, but this was not completely effective and was linked to complications.