This article originally appeared on VICE Germany
It’s World Contraception Day, and of all the many appropriate ways to celebrate, using some condoms today is probably the best. Condoms do not only offer safe sex; they can also be blown up as balloons, so they’re clearly the most festive form of contraception. And if you think about it – really think about it – what is more festive than flavoured condoms?
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There’s a retro feel/taste to flavoured condoms: they’re the kind you bought in the very early days of your sexual awakening, when you figured choosing flavoured condoms over normal ones meant you were a fully formed, experienced and adventurous sexual being. And you were hoping that that strawberry flavour would drown out the taste of cock you were a bit nervous and awkward about. But once you were 17 or 18 and sex started being actually fun, you soon forgot about them.
That might be a waste, though. Could smelling and tasting those flavoured condoms again reawaken that wild and unbridled excitement you felt at 15 at just the idea of ‘sex’? To find out if it could work for us now, we decided to taste-test a few flavoured condoms – blindfolded, with some relaxing tunes in the background. Though condoms are usually served at penis temperature, we tasted them at room temperature on phallic fruits and vegetables – which likely distorted our findings somewhat but was more appropriate in an office setting.
The Product: Green Mint (Fun Factory)
Taste Test: The dominant flavour is synthetic, not unlike licking a plastic picnic table. It leaves a very subtle minty aftertaste. As subtle as if we’d licked over the part of the picnic table, where someone stuck a chewing gum many months ago.
The Verdict: The condom may be a disappointment in terms of taste, but it makes up for it with plenty of fragrance. It reminded us of Mojitos. If you add boiling water to the condom, the resulting brew actually tastes like peppermint tea. We would highly recommend that you bring the condom to a boil before use – or to get steamy in the sauna before use. 8/10
The Product: Marshmallow (ESP Enjoyable Safe Pleasure)
Taste Test: Strong, fruity sweetness relentless enough to resemble candy floss.
The Verdict: The pronounced floral, fragrant sweetness of this condom takes you by surprise. However, it lacks spice and character, which makes the flavour quite homogenous. It’s could be best likened to that of children’s lip gloss. 7/10
The Product: Banana (Fun Factory)
Taste Test: It tastes like banana, for sure.
The Verdict: Thanks to the intense aroma, our noses are able to correctly identify this condom from a distance. We’d prefer a little more sophistication; this perfume is about as subtle as loo spray. The condom mimics the banana taste quite convincingly but it’s more banana flavoured jellybean, less fresh produce. A sexual adventure involving this condom would probably be like going down on a penis-sized marshmallow in an over-perfumed toilet. 7/10
The Product: Raspberry (Secura Condoms)
Taste Test: Weak, nondescript flavour. It can be best likened to a piece of gum that has been chewed for a few days straight.
The Verdict: The flavour is a blend of rubber tyres and kids’ chewing gum. The test object’s colour is pale, which matches its weak taste. It leaves a rather mineral aftertaste and even after tampering the condom with our hands, these didn’t really smell like anything but dirty VICE writer hands. 3/10
The Product: Peach/Orange (Secura Condoms)
Taste Test: This condom smells like the inside a hookah lounge, and it tastes like those fizzy vitamin C tablets my grandma used to force on me.
The Verdict: At last, a condom to satisfy the gourmet palate! This flavour would be excellent for gummy bears too. Or cough sweets. Sadly, it vanished within half a minute. Ninety seconds in, we could no longer detect any flavour at all. The brevity of the gustatory experience lends credibility to our theory that these products are mainly aimed at teenagers, who are known to ejaculate within that timeframe. 8/10
The Product: Dark Chocolate (Fun Factory)
Taste Test: The flavour evokes vanilla air freshener in some teenage stoner’s Vauxhall. The taste is rather unrefined, but it’s the intensity of the aroma that made us feel like we are chewing air freshener.
The Verdict: The cocoa flavour just did not meet our standards. Even with the visual aid of the condom’s colour, which is obviously meant to evoke chocolate, the brain refuses to imagine one is sucking on a chocolate bar. Perhaps this is a prudent safety measure against overly enthusiastic chocolate lovers with a pronounced bite reflex. The unfortunate result, however, was a taste akin to licking vanilla concentrate from a rubber hose. 4/10
The Product: Green Apple (Secura Condoms)
Taste Test: Neutral flavour, aroma reminiscent of fish and Hubba Bubba gum.
The Verdict: The supposedly fruity flavour remained undetectable despite repeated sucking attempts. The rubber-like base flavour dominates and overwhelms not only the apple flavour, but everything else. The aromatic blend of fish and Hubba Bubba is unconvincing. We will not be recommending the manufacturer of this test object for a Michelin star. 2/10
