Ultra thin lubricated condoms - male condom discontinued by Playboy - review by Jul!a

The overview: From the people who brought you the sexy magazine that you read "just for the articles," you can now protect yourself while still showing your love for Playboy. Their first big foray into condoms has yielded an admirable result; not being the best condoms on the market, but also being a far cry from the worst.

The packaging: Mine came in a small box with the Playboy bunny on it. The front has some safety information, and the back repeats that. Inside the box is a pamphlet that gives you directions in 5 different languages and even some statistics on various birth controls and their general effectiveness. You also of course get three condoms inside. The condoms come in a simple black wrapper with Playboy bunny on the front and important safety information on the back.

The boring specs: The "average" condom is about 7.5" long, 2" wide at the base and along the shaft and in the head, and .0027" thick. Online dimensions show this one as 7.48" long, 2.04" wide at the base and along the shaft, and also .0027" thick. Out of my own stash I end up with 7.5" long (minus the reservoir tip which adds an extra 1/2") and just under 2" across. My husband is about 5" long and about 5" around and these weren't noticeably too big, although if you routinely need Magnums or something similar, these may be too small for you.

The potentially interesting design features: This particular condom is supposed to be extra thin; allowing for a "second skin" kind of feeling. It does feel thinner between the fingers than an "average" condom.

The exciting "what it was like" part: I'd call these pretty adequate condoms. They weren't so thin that it felt like there was nothing at all, but neither of us were distracted by it being there. My husband noticed it more than I did though. What I did notice was the latex smell. It almost smelled a little sweeter than most other latexes, but still definitely smelled like latex. It wasn't as strong as some others though, and didn't really seem to linger on either of us. The lube isn't bad, but isn't great either.

The important safety stuff: Ok, real quick let's talk about things you should and shouldn't do with condoms. Do add more lube if you feel like you're drying out. Lack of lube can cause increase friction and cause the condom to break. Don't use anything oil based to lube up with. Water and silicone based lubes are fine, but oil based lubes can degrade the latex. Do keep your condoms in a cool, dry location. Don't keep them in your glove box, in the wallet you sit on all day, and at the bottom of your purse are not good places for condoms. In the purse it could get punctured, and being in all that heat can also degrade the material which is again, not good.

I'm always up for trying new things, and my husband never objects when a new review involves him in some way, so we were both looking forward to seeing what Playboy had to offer from a condom. All in all, we were neither overwhelmingly impressed nor were we overwhelmingly disappointed. It's a good functional condom if you don't need super big condoms, and it's a lot less "in your face" than a lot of "average" condoms.