Another Page from the book of 'What Were They Thinking?'
I ran across two very odd products last week. The first is just a rip off, the second could rip off more than your money.
Astroglide has come out with a conception friendly lubricant. I have no problem with the lube itself. I haven't tried it but I've tried other Astroglide products and they're okay. This one seems like it has very similar ingredients to their other water-based lubes. Astroglide claims, however, that this TTC (trying to conceive) lube has a more alkaline ph which does not interfere with sperm survival and motility and that the consistency of the lube enhances the movement of sperm. That could very well be true.
My problem with TTC is that it costs $30 for 8 individually packed applicators. That's $3.75 a pop! It's a pretty expensive proposition to use on the possibility that it will slightly increase your chances of getting pregnant over using a different lubricant.
There's no reason for the pricing and the packaging. Astroglide is just using this idea to produce something that looks like a pseudo-medical type of product so that they can sell it for more. You could easily use this product straight out of a bottle, without the applicators, just like you would any other lube. And all of their other lubes, which contain pretty similar ingredients, cost anywhere from $7 to $15 for twice the amount of lube!
It makes me very angry when companies prey on people's fears and insecurities to make money.
The second very odd product I ran across is a condom called the 'Galactic Cap'. This is a kickstarter program that started about 2 years ago and appears to be in production now. They are selling the product on their own website.
The Galactic Cap is like a condom without the shaft part. It's a little party hat for your penis. It comes with an adhesive strip that you stick to your penis right around the head, just above the coronal ridge. Then the cap sticks onto that adhesive.
You've probably already grasped some of the problems with this concept. It's difficult and cumbersome to apply. One review that I read said that it dislodged and leaked during use. Another reviewer said that her partners had a very difficult time removing the condom and when she checked the company info for help, it said that 46% of people who've tried it so far have had trouble removing it. These things are reason enough to be concerned but that's not what I'm worried about.
In their informational video, the company rep talks a lot about HIV. He says that his inspiration for creating this condom was his friend who contracted HIV from unprotected sex. He wanted to do something to increase condom use and decrease the spread of HIV. He talks about this A LOT. However, close to the end of the video, he sneaks in the fact that this condom has never been approved, not even been tested, for effectiveness in preventing HIV transmission. WTF? He is promoting this as a solution for HIV and yet he has no idea if it actually even works for that.
Even worse, the condom has never been proven to be effective in practical use for pregnancy prevention.
On the website, the words 'FDA approved' are quite prominent but when you look closer, it says that the adhesive that's used to glue the condom to the penis is FDA approved for use on the skin. This is very deceptive marketing.
The final kicker is that this difficult to use, difficult to remove, of questionable, never proven effectiveness condom, costs $25 each! Yes, that's right. Not $25 for a box of 6 or 12. $25 each!
You would think that alone would discourage people and yet this company raised $104,000 through kickstarter.
I cannot understand how they are able to sell this to the public. I cannot understand how they have not yet been slapped with a lawsuit.
There are a lot of complaints about the lack of innovation when it comes to condoms but there is a legitimate reason for that. It takes quite a bit of time and money to develop something that is actually workable and then to be able to legally and ethically make that product available to the public, it takes a lot more time and money to have it tested for safety and effectiveness. But those things are necessary in order to ensure that people are not putting themselves in danger by using things that merely seemed like a good idea.