Since the 5S robot store opened in June in Changsa, the shop has been attracting Chinese curious at what sex robots look like. However, most of the store’s visitors for now are the curious who came to look, touch, smell, hold, poke and have a selfie with its humanoids capable of having sex with men.
Among the sex bots visitors will find at the shop in the capital city of Hunan Province is a humanoid in brunette wig and traditional Chinese red dress which acts as receptionist of 5S. The star attraction, though is “Magic Beauty” which sells for $4,270.
The expensive price tag, said the owner of 5S, is because of what the sex doll is capable of doing for Chinese men who do not have wife. The market is big because millions of Chinese men could not find wives due to the gender imbalance in the country caused by the 30-year previous government one-child policy.
“You can kiss and have sex with her. Her legs can be parted and you can feel her tender skin,” the owner said, Motherboard reported.
5S appears to be benefitting from the call in 2014 by Chinese President Xi Jinping for a robot revolution in China that the sex robot shop has five more stores across China. Even ahead of Xi’s call, China overtook Japan in 2013 and became the largest consumer of industrial robots.
But the president wanted China to go beyond the country being the biggest market for robots but for it to capture markets in many places.
However, 5S is not limited to manufacturing sex robots. It also makes waiter robots priced at $2,700 (18,000 yuan) as well as a taller version with more flexible arms and legs priced at $9,740 (65,000 yuan). 5S has sold about 1,000 of the waiter robots, mostly to restaurants that want to cut on manpower cost.
The strategy is effective, at least for one restaurant in Kunshan City, which is near Shanghai, which has cut down its waiters to only six robots. Had the owner hired human waiters, he would have needed 20 of them. The only additional expense of the robots, according to the owner, besides the acquisition cost, is 3 yuan cents daily for electricity.
In the U.S., Eos, an American manufacturer, has come up with a VirtuaDolls which comes with a virtual female genital and a controller that allows the owner to join virtual sex games. One such game is the Girls of Arcadia which are VirtuaDoll ships where male gamers save a damsel in distress.
Those who do not play virtual games could instead set the VirtuaDolls on sim mode and proceed to have virtual sex with a woman. When William Spracklin, founder of Eos, launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise $20,000 seed fund, within five days raised $7,000 within five days, indicating the interest in the virtual sex toy.