Europeans really enjoy sex toys. Sweden, Denmark and Greenland top the Sex Toy World Rankings, surprisingly trumping stereotypically sexually progressive places such as Germany, Japan, Brazil and France.
UK-based voucher website Vouchercloud examined 18 popular online sex toy search terms, including common words such as “dildos” and “vibrators” and more risqué terms such as “jiggle balls,” “love eggs” and “cock rings.” Researchers translated the terms into numerous languages to rank countries based on their sex toy searches.
Sweden, Denmark, and Greenland had 118, 115, and 108 sex toy searches per 1,000 internet users, respectively. They were followed by the United States (104), UK (96), Netherlands (88), Russia (87), Bulgaria (86), Italy (84) and Australia (82) to round out the top 10.
“Denmark and Sweden weren’t so much of a surprise, given the relaxed approach to life and society they offer up — that and the consistent high performances in happiness ratings.” Ben Harrow, who conducted the research for Vouchercloud, told Bustle. “Greenland we have no answers for. Some of the bigger surprises were in the nations that didn’t rank, including Japan, France and Germany. They let their respective sides down a bit, and caught us off guard considering the sexually adventurous and romantic stereotypes that are associated with their residents.”
Canada came in at number 27 on the list. France sits in 15th place, while Germany sits at number 22, and Japan is 43rd.
The top 30 features 23 European countries, while African and South American countries are noticeably far behind, possibly because they don’t have as much access to purchasing sex toys online, Vouchercloud speculated. Asian countries ranked much lower than anticipated.
As expected, countries with cultures that are not very sexualized (India, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia, for example), were ranked towards the bottom of the list.
Vouchercloud points out that they did not include niche and product-specific searches in their survey. As a result, the total sex-toy searches in each country is likely much higher than their data suggests.
For anyone who’s interested, PinkCherry bills itself as “Canada’s largest sex toys retailer,” although there are a variety of other online outlets that offer lingerie, toys, and other bedroom essentials.
Sex toys help men and women learn about what turns them on and makes them feel good. They can also be used in conjunction with a partner to make things more exciting.
