Australia's First Female-Owned Sex Doll Company

Whether you love or hate sex dolls, they are indisputably mainstream. 

The pandemic drove home just how lonely a life without someone to hold could be – and just how a bitchless future looms for many. And when it comes to forming relationships with technology, AI, with its sex-bot apps and companions, has broadened the scope for what the regular person considers appropriate.

In 2020, a Kazakh bodybuilder went viral for marrying a sex doll. Yuri Tolcho told VICE at the time his betrothed, Margo, had lived a whole life before he met her at a bar, where she was on shift, that she was the perfect woman, and after an evening of over-zealous fucking on their wedding night, he broke her and was looking to purchase another wife as a temporary replacement.

In many ways, a sex doll is hardly any crazier than a dildo, fleshlight or mechanical vibrating saddle. It’s just… more human. When you consider it with a wide-open mind, the manufacturers’ commitment to reproducing the exquisite human form down to the most minute detail is in fact a testament to humanity. We could be designing giant tentacle sex dolls, alloy android-shaped sex dolls, or, I don’t know, tree-shaped sex dolls. But we aren’t. Because the perfect, most fuckable form of all is the human one. Tear-jerking stuff.

But it is this “human” element where contention lies. Because, while these sex dolls resemble women – fantasy women, dream women, anatomically unfeasible women – they can’t speak or form opinions. And as Melbourne sex doll manufacturer Funtime Dolls’ website jubilantly points out, they will never say “NO”.

The common argument against sex dolls is that they are for perverts who can’t form relationships with women because they can’t handle or do not want their women to be actual people, and that sex dolls encourage misogyny and give men free rein to do what should never be done: fuck something that cannot protest. 

When I met with Mel – “just Mel” – the director of Funtime Dolls, at her Melbourne apartment, she offered the sex-positive argument: Everyone has their fetishes.

“We all have our fetishes. If someone thinks differently of someone for having a sex doll, then that’s their loss,” she told VICE. 

Agalmatophilia is the sexual attraction to inanimate objects. A type of paraphilia, or recurring arousal to objects outside what is considered “normal” – commonly known as fetishes. Human sexuality is a diverse spectrum and, ultimately, why yuck someone’s yum?

I was surprised to learn Mel had gotten into the business of purveying drop-shipped sex dolls on account of her son, who lives with a disability. She’d looked into finding him a “companion doll” during the pandemic and, as someone who had worked in the adult industry over her life, saw a business opportunity.

“I thought it would be neat for him to have a person, with presence,” she said. 

“Not to have sex with. I find a lot of people with disabilities or dementia really appreciate a person with presence.”

When I met two dolls stationed in Mel’s apartment, the biggest surprise was their sheer heft. Human-sized mannequins with steel skeletons and curvaceous silicone tits and asses weigh a lot – who would have guessed? 

The dolls purchasable through Funtime Dolls are completely customisable and the business offers everything from penis attachments to spare heads. 

“Sometimes I’ll send customers a spare head,” Mel told me. 

“Just as something a little extra. Or different wigs, whatever.

“Everyone has a dream girl. Whether it’s a companion, to just sit around the house, to look at, or to sit in a nursing home and talk with the patients – everybody has a vision in their head of what they want.”

AI dolls are here. But the software just isn’t there yet to make them affordable. 

Mel said she’d had a base-model AI doll whose head moved and who could be programmed to speak and respond like Siri or Alexa.

“She ran on two modes,” Mel said. 

“One was family mode, and the other was not-so-family mode. And the problem I had was the software that was running these dolls worked on a main database somewhere else, and it was scrambling everything with everyone else’s dolls.

“And she was coming out with some really nasty things.”

For Mel, the difference between Funtime Dolls and the numerous other stores providing silicon dreamgirls – and dreamboys – was the “female touch”.

“All of the companies I know of in Australia are run by men. And that’s ok, but I know what a man wants, I know how to dress and present a doll. I think my customers appreciate the female touch.”

Mel said while there wasn’t any particular area in Australia the majority of her customers came from, there was a fair bit in regional areas whom she guessed were “lots of farmers”.

She usually sees an increase in orders during winter. 

“When it’s cold, people are lonely, they like company when watching TV or making dinner at home. People get lonely when it’s cold.”

Arielle Richards is the multimedia reporter at VICE Australia, follow her on Instagram and Twitter.