Love dolls were used centuries ago by sailors on long voyages. But today they’re much more likely to pop up as a gag gift at a bachelor party or appear in a film than sail the seven seas. Learn more about the different types of love dolls and why some people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for one.

Love Dolls

What are Love Dolls?

Love dolls are life-sized sex toys for men and women who crave companionship. Unlike a masturbator or dildo, you can actually hold a love doll in your arms and even dress it up in sexy costumes or lingerie. Most love dolls are shaped like everyday men or women, including popular anime or video game characters. But there are others based on elves or aliens for people with more exotic tastes.

 

Novelty Love Dolls
Made for jokes more than anything, these budget-priced dolls are often used as gag gifts. It’s pretty common to find novelty love dolls hanging out at a college dorm or hitting the clubs with a bachelor or bachelorette. Novelty dolls are usually made from vinyl with a printed face and require you to blow them up like a pool toy. They come in a wide range of sizes (from midgets to giants) and shapes (from animals to reality TV stars). While some novelty love dolls might come with multiple openings or an extra-large penis, they’re not really intended for sexual use. Some even feature seams in awkward places that could be somewhat unpleasant to say the least.

 

Sex Toy Love Dolls
These mid-range dolls are designed primarily for sex. Sex toy love dolls typically feature an inflatable vinyl or rubber torso fitted with a mannequin-style head complete with a wig. The rest of their body (and sometimes their hands and feet as well) is usually made from realistic material – which feels drastically better than the inflatable vinyl used in novelty dolls. Some sex toy love dolls even come with bullet or egg vibrators for additional stimulation and repair kits for emergency operations.

 

Companion Love Dolls
Often costing thousands of dollars, these love dolls are so realistic that you can easily mistake them for real people. Companion love dolls are typically cast entirely from rubber or silicone with a metal skeleton so you can pose them in a variety of positions. Companion love dolls come with a number of customizable options – allowing you to select such diverse features as hair style, skin tone, eye color, breast size and even their make-up.

While they’re still used for sex, companion love dolls also serve as surrogate partners. People with physical or emotional handicaps that make it difficult to maintain a relationship often turn to companion love dolls. It’s common for owners to eat dinner with their love dolls, go out to the movies with them and really make them part of their everyday lives. You can see this for yourself in the feature film Lars and the Real Girl starring Ryan Gosling or the British documentary Guys and Dolls.