Calling all professional or would-be designers interested in sex tech.

British pleasure products retailer Lovehoney has launched “Future Sex 2030,” a global competition seeking out innovative designs for sex toys that consumers could be using in ten years’ time. 

Entries will be judged by a panel of experts, including sex tech researcher and podcaster Bryony Cole and the design team at Lovehoney. 

The reward is a $5,000 prize available in three categories for designers, students, and the general public, with the winning design potentially becoming a manufactured product to be sold on Lovehoney’s website. 

And the winner was…

While there’s no guarantee that the chosen design will make it to production, the 2009 winner of the company’s competition did succeed in making his design a reality. 

Trevor Murphy explained in an interview with the Sun that he came up with the concept for his winning design while falling asleep one night. 

The Sqweel, an oral sex simulator, is essentially a wheel of rotating silicone “tongues,” and has earned Murphy over $600,000 in royalties from sales. Despite it receiving a fair amount of criticism on Twitter for its unusual pinwheel design, the Sqweel continues to remain one of Lovehoney’s top-selling items. 

Other winning designs from previous years that Lovehoney has gone on to produce include Uprize, the world’s first bionic dildo, the GLUVR finger vibrator, and BlowYo, a male stroker. 

For those who might be hesitant to apply because they lack a design background, Lovehoney product director and judge, Bonny Hall, says:

You don't just need to be an engineer or a professional designer to enter – all you need is a great idea and a rough sketch so that our team can make your sex toy a reality.

The competition is currently open and can be entered now by visiting the Lovehoney contest page. The closing date for entries is February 2020.

Image sources: Lovehoney