Pronto Condom Skips A Step, Saves Mood

CAPE TOWN - A South African inventor claims to have found a solution to a common romantic mood spoiler -- putting on a male condom.
Willem van Rensburg is marketing his Pronto condom as an answer to the annoyance of tearing off wrappers and figuring out the right way up, saying his patent can be donned in less than three seconds.
"Using an ordinary condom is a real pain," he says on his product Web site. "By the time the condom is on, the mood is halfway out the window."
The new condom, already available in South Africa, is applied without having to remove it first from the packaging.
Instead, the wrapper is simply snapped open in the middle, and the two sides gripped to roll the condom directly over the penis, pulled off and discarded.
"If you're slow, it'll take you three seconds. You can really do it in one," said Roelf Mulder, Mr. van Rensburg's former partner.
Mr. Mulder, who helped develop the mechanism, explained the wrapper contains tiny soft plastic hooks that unroll the condom from the inside as the wrapper is pulled downward.
The idea for the patent, he said, was born from a number of studies finding the "struggle factor" was largely responsible for men shunning condoms in a country with one of the world's highest AIDS figures.
"Many people complain it spoils the moment," he said.
The new product should also be better than its traditional predecessor at curbing sexually transmitted diseases. Regular condoms were sometimes contaminated while users were attempting to roll it down the wrong way.
"The Pronto condom can only be applied one way," said Mr. Mulder. "The packaging is clearly marked, and there are dents where it must be gripped to roll it down."
The pair won a South African Bureau of Standards design award with the condom in 2002, and Mr. van Rensburg has patented it in several countries.
The condom is now being produced in a factory in Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, but there are no immediate plans to market it worldwide.
The new prophylactic, developed with the help of a private financier, sells for the same price as conventional condoms.
from The National Post