Kenton led light table3/2/2023 ![]() He clarifies, “I didn’t come up with Fucksmith, it was sort of just lying around and didn’t look like it belonged to anyone. The more he chats, the more Funkit Toys takes shape as one big, grand experiment: a mad-scientist’s lab of materials, 3D printing, design renderings - all helmed by this one “Fucksmith,” as his business cards denote. “It feels a lot harder sculpturally to make it look natural, which is why I wanted to try it.” It’s very easy to make a kind of uncanny penis shape and get something wrong enough that it just looks weird. ![]() I’ve seen a lot of amateur modelers try and make one, but they just never quite come out. “It was a fun thing to practice in the modeling program I was messing with because a penis is a very intricate shape. Regarding the distaste for dick-shaped toys: “It’s just not my jam,” Kenton offers. Graduating from wood to silicone in November of 2015, it wasn’t long before Kenton debuted his first products under the Funkit Toys label: Swell and Cashew, the brand’s one and only “dick-shaped toy,” he explained politely enough but nevertheless with a touch of disdain, and its first of several plugs, respectively. With generous disbelief, he explains, “This guy came up to me and asked me how much I sold them for - I just looked at this guy and go, ‘sell?’ That’s when I started the Etsy store.” Monetization came easily enough after an acquaintance approached him wanting to purchase one of the paddles, of which he had several at this point. “Then I had an idea for a better one, and then one that wasted less wood,” and so on and so forth. “I didn’t want to wait for a paddle to come in the mail, so I just made one,” he said. ![]() Modular Sexperiments for a Design-Savvy SoulĮlaborating on Funkit Toy’s origin story, Kenton explains an impatient moment that led to a spark of ingenuity. No master plan, no family business, no long-held dream rather, Kenton explains, “I thought I was going to go into sex education and on my way to becoming a sex educator, I sort of face-planted into sex toys,” adding, “which was better cut out for me anyways. “I would describe it as less of a business decision and more like falling down a flight of stairs.” “I can’t remember ever making a conscious choice that I was going to make sex toys for a living,” he relates. However straightforward or serendipitous that might seem, Kenton doesn’t hesitate to dispel the rosy picture. “I like to joke that none of my marketable skills went to waste when I transitioned into this. “I’d been doing 3D printing and digital design for a long time and eventually I just sort of realized that I could quit my day job, so I did," he said. Synthesizing pretty much the entirety of Kenton’s resume-worthy skills, his now job as lead designer of Funkit Toys utilizes expertise in graphic design, sculpting, color theory, anatomy and materials safety, to name a few. Having begun his venture into the world of pleasure products approximately five years ago, Kenton relates the story he’s told many times before: Funkit Toys was founded in April 2016 - he’d been working with silicone since approximately six months prior and had been making wooden paddles for a year before that. It’s a deadpan yet completely relatable answer, laced with a touch of comedic irony when one imagines the nightmare of a pair of cats loose in a dildo factory. “My lease ran out and the place I moved into had cats, which is not ideal for working with silicone,” Kenton says. ![]() In a long-distance chat from Washington D.C., Kenton explains that he only just recently moved from his work-home studio to a shared facility. ![]() “May take a moment,” he interjects, “this place is very large.” That’s the goal - make more ways to have fun. Kenton, the founder, lead designer and, well, entirety of indie sex toy company Funkit Toys maneuvers away from the rumbling buzz. “Hang on, let me move out of the warehouse and go somewhere quieter - someone is running a table saw.” ![]()
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