SEX TOYS AND PRODUCTS

A Day in the Life of a Sex Toy Chemist

by TIM CRAWFORD

Published: DECEMBER 7, 2015 | Updated: APRIL 19, 2020

Doc Johnson’s scientific director, Tim Crawford, gives us an exclusive glimpse into a typical workday.

4:00 A.M. My alarm goes off. Before I even get out of bed, I’m already thinking about sex. That’s nothing out of the ordinary, but as a sex toy chemist, it’s also hugely practical! Part of my job is to think about sex: find ways to enhance it, it, improve it, and empower people to enjoy their sexuality!

5:00 A.M. I get into the office about an hour before the rest of the lab arrives. This gives me a solid window of time to take care of all the paperwork stuff. There’s an old laboratory saying that goes, “If it isn’t documented, it’s just a rumor.”

All of our experiments (as far as creating new products and improving existing products) are documented to the letter. We record each recipe, the procedure, all the physical data, the pH, the viscosity, and specific gravities. These are all things we need to keep meticulous records about.

6:00 A.M. Brainstorm, brush up on the latest industry news, and get organized for what we’re going to work on today. Today, it’s a Cinnamon Bun flavored Body Icing for our CANDiLAND SENSUALS line of deliciously lickable body products. My lab technician, Rolando, made the water-based body icing foundation yesterday; now it’s time to work on the taste.

6:30 A.M. I pick out some flavors from our stock that might work well together, and join Rolando in the lab. Together, we start experimenting with the flavoring, trying to nail down the most authentic, most scrumptious Cinnamon Bun taste possible.

7:00 A.M. As we continue to work on flavoring, we take note of how various flavors are interacting together. Some flavor combinations can make the formula thicker, some can make it thinner, and some flavor combinations can even make the formula fall apart. There’s a lot of chemistry that goes into this.

7:30 A.M. I draft an email to one of our trusted Flavor Houses. While we’ve got the basic flavors down, we’re still missing a certain something. It’s very difficult to fully describe what “Cinnamon Bun” tastes like because it goes beyond the taste and into the texture and the feel and smell. I’m hoping this Flavor House will have some ideas for us; so far, we’re missing an essential part of the Cinnamon Bun experience.

9:00 A.M. I receive a call back from the Flavor House, and they have some fantastic suggestions! With these ideas in mind, Rolando and I work on flavoring for another 30 minutes, and we come up with something we like for the first round.

9:30 A.M. We pour our Cinnamon Bun Body Icing formula into several clear plastic containers and label them for storage. A couple of these containers go into an incubator at 50 degrees centigrade, another two are stored in the fridge, and two more are placed in a cupboard underneath the lab counter, where it’s dark. We place yet another sample in the freezer, to put through a freeze-thaw testing procedure. The product needs to survive that test three times to move forward.

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Storage is complete, and now comes the hard part: we sit, and we wait.

This is done to see if anything changes. Will the formula stay together? Does the flavor last? Will the PH drift? If the product's looking good after a month, that’s when I’ll start showing it to people in marketing, sales and product development.

10:30 A.M. Hungry. Like clockwork, I’m starting to think about lunch. Yet, much like thinking about sex, thinking about food has its own special brand of practicality when you’re a sex toy chemist! I take advantage of my grumbling stomach by jotting down some exotic flavor ideas. My first idea: a white chocolate raspberry truffle-flavored glide.

11:00 A.M. Once I’ve come up with enough ideas to get the white chocolate raspberry truffle glide started, I hand over some notes to my lab technician, Rolando.

11:15 A.M. Rolando gathers ingredients from our stock and makes a water-based glide foundation. When the base is done, he works on getting the color right. Rolando is an artist in his spare time - a painter - so he’s brilliant with color and texture.

11:30 A.M. Lunch time!

12:30 P.M. Back at the lab, Rolando has finished creating a base for the white chocolate raspberry truffle glide, so now we work on flavoring. After coming up with three tasty versions that we like, it’s time to bottle them up, label them, and store them away. Storage follows the same process as before: incubator, fridge and cupboard. We’ll check on these formulas in a few months.

1:00 P.M. It’s time to revisit a formula that’s been in storage for a while. Last month, we made some experimental tweaks to our bestselling GoodHead gel. When updating a classic formula, we try to stay true to the way it looks, smells and feels - but when someone opens a bottle of the improved GoodHead, we want them to say, “This is the best batch of GoodHead I’ve ever used!”

1:30 P.M. In our first round of testing the new and improved GoodHead gel, we will (and there’s really no proper way of saying this) literally give some dildos hand jobs, and time it to see how long the lubrication lasts. Then, we wash, rinse and repeat with the original, pre-upgraded GoodHead gel formula, to see how it compares.

2:00 P.M. For the second round of testing, we apply the updated GoodHead gel formula to a (clean) dildo, and insert it into a masturbator. We then go on to manually penetrate the masturbator and record how long the lubrication lasts. It seems that our tweaks to the GoodHead gel formula were successful, as the new version lasts about 120 seconds longer than the previous version.

An important point to note: by the time we start testing out these formulas, they have already been vetted for safety. Everything made in the lab will always be in accordance with the latest medical/scientific safety standards. Also, nothing leaves the lab without me testing it on myself. If I won’t use it, why would anyone else?

3:00 P.M. It’s time to get things cleaned up before the rest of the lab team heads home. I survey the laboratory to make sure that everything has been meticulously labeled and recorded. We make sure all equipment is ready to go for tomorrow.

3:30 P.M. The rest of the lab team clocks out. I stay behind to work in silence for another half hour or so. I line up all of the day's records on my desk, and pore over everything we’ve accomplished in the past 24 hours.

4:00 P.M. More paperwork, then it’s quittin’ time.

5:00 P.M. Arrive home, grab a refreshing bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper, and browse Tumblr, which is a great resource for spotting upcoming sex trends!

9:00 P.M. I pet the cat (not a euphemism), and then hit the sheets. It’s time to wind down and get my beauty sleep. Tomorrow will be another busy day, full of sex, and chemistry!

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