Dildos

Dildos as we know them, were believed to have been created in 1966, by Ted Marche.

The 1960s were a volatile time for the world. In the US, students were being shot and killed at anti-war rallies; in Britain, the Rolling Stone's were recording Street Fighting Man; in France, there was rioting in Paris; while in California, Ted Marche was designing things for women to stick in their vaginas and men to stick up their asses.

One night in 1966, middle-aged ventriloquist (that's right, ventriloquist) Marche sat down at the family dinner table and began carving a six inch cock. It was the beginning of something beautiful, sort of creepy and incredibly lucrative; Marche went on to build a million dollar industry out of his invention. By 1976, Marche Manufacturing (Cracked would have went with Ventriloquist Cock, Inc.) had sold nearly five million dildos. None of these though sold in Texas, where they passed a law banning their sale.

The dildo was actually invented in . . . 28,000 BC.

In 2005, a group of archaeologists discovered 13 fragments of siltstone at a site in Germany. Upon unearthing the 14th, they put the pieces together and realized that their great archaeological discovery was a massive dildo.

Like Isaac Newton and gravity, Einstein and relativity and Columbus and America, their names would forever be associated with their discovery: a really, really old cock.

The dildo is 20 centimeters long, three centimeters wide and dates to the Ice Age, where women, judging by the objects size, apparently had a "massive capacity". Professor Nicholas Conard, a member of the team that, ahem, examined the dildo, spoke about their find saying: "In addition to being a symbolic representation of male genitalia... It's highly polished."

While they may have discovered the oldest known sex toy, they didn't discover the only one. It seems that as long as human beings have had holes, we've invented things to put in those holes. Sex toys were commonly used in ancient Greece. Check out the drawings on ancient Greek pottery.

The first dildos were made of stone, tar, wood and other materials that could be shaped as penises and that were firm enough to be used as penetrative sex toys. Chinese women in the 15th century used dildos made of lacquered wood with textured surfaces. With the invention of modern materials, there appeared the possibility of making dildos of different shapes, sizes, colors and textures.

Conventionally, many dildos are shaped like a human penis with varying degrees of detail, others are made to resemble the phallus of male animals. Not all, however, are fashioned to reproduce the male anatomy meticulously, and dildos come in a wide variety of shapes. These may resemble figures, or simply be practical creations which stimulate more easily than conventional designs. In Japan, many dildos are created to resemble animals or cartoon characters, such as Hello Kitty, so that they may be sold as toys, thus avoiding obscenity laws.

Some dildos have textured surfaces to enhance sexual pleasure. Many dildos of high quality, also called top shelf toys, tend to have less of a resemblance to a penis, opting for ergonomic design.