Sex Toy Built Into Panties Creates Buzz

Jan. 9, 2014— -- When Peggy Olsen, "Mad Men's" eager-beaver copywriter, discovered the erotic pleasures of granny pants designed for weight loss -- the "electrosizer"-cum-"rejuvenator" -- she may have been ahead of her time.

The latest sex toy to be showcased at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is a BlueMotion massager that strategically fits into a pair of lacy panties. Designed by a New Hampshire couple who worked in the technology industry, the vibrator's pulse and intensity are controlled by a smartphone app.

Smarty pants, indeed.

"We found so many couples are buried in their cellphones," said Brian Dunham, who co-founded the "pleasure industry" company OhMiBod with his wife, Suki.

"Usage spikes at night when everyone is getting into bed and are literally snuggling up to their iPads instead of their partners," he told ABCNews.com. "No one wants to put their phone down. We want to bridge the intimacy chasm rather than fight it."

The couple has been married for 26 years and has two children, 15 and 12. He worked for Tyco and she for Apple.

OhMiBod first titillated the market in 2006 with its iPod vibrator, the Freestyle, which plays music to the mons pubis.

"One Christmas Brian gave me a vibrator and an iPod for stocking stuffers," said Suki Dunham. "I told him that they were my two favorite gifts ever -- and that we must find a way to put them together."

She said there was a market opportunity to make a sex product that was "appealing or approachable for women."

Their best-selling vibrator is the Club Vibe 2.OH, which has a microphone built into the remote control and streams club music.

"The problem with the industry is that it historically has had the stigma of being attached to pornography, and it was somehow dirty," said her husband. "But more and more people regard this as a health and wellness product, so women can have orgasms and satisfying sex lives."

Don't think for a minute that this $129 sex toy will be relegated to gag gifts and bachelorette parties, according to its inventors.

Scheduled to hit the market in March, it will be sold at high-end stores like Brookstone and in posh sex boutiques like Babe Land in New York City and Good Vibrations in San Francisco.

"At first glance, I found it another gimmicky, gadgety thing," said Mariotta Gary-Smith, a community sex educator from Portland, Ore.

But having met the Dunhams at a national conference of sex educators, Gary-Smith said she believes they are on to something.

"It's different from, say, edible underwear that you give to someone when they get married," she told ABCNews.com.

"Sexuality is a fluid concept, and you don't lose it with age," said Gary-Smith. "It changes and grows, and people find ways to embrace it as a vital part of their lives. This product allows people to discover new ways to share intimacy and passions in a relationship when they are not able to be together, or to share a moment with each other."

And, like Peggy Olsen's renamed "rejuvenator," these vibrating panties might just give advertising hunk Don Draper the chance to echo his assessment of the "electrosizer" to his Madison Avenue colleagues: "It provides the pleasure of a man, without the man."