Plus-Sized Condoms Causing Slippage Epidemic?

Not content to let Trojan Magnums hog the large-sized condom market, Lifestyles is touting a new, bigger condom. Its name, Kyng, will haunt spelling sticklers. Will its use also haunt the sexual partners of its customers?

It’s not really clear from Lifestyles’ press release today about Kyng, along with the chillingly named Thyn, whether this is simply a rebranded version of King Size XL Condoms, or whether Lifestyles is really upping the stakes. But why should Magnum have all the fun with catchy names? After all, they grew their market share in less than ten years from 4.6 percent to 18.8 percent — it’s a good business strategy that Lifestyles would be wise to follow.

But is all this growth in the use of large-sized condoms attributable to some men finally finding condoms that fit them, or because all the pop-culture celebration of Magnums as a badge of masculinity has convinced even less-endowed guys that they need to buy extra-large? The answer is hard to measure. (Sorry.) If indeed a major portion of large-sized condom users don’t actually need them, but are just trying to score some points at Walgreen’s, the consequences could be dire. A commenter offered that condom-size mismatches were plaguing one campus:

We stopped carrying magnums at my school’s student health center (and instead carry a differently branded larger condom for those who need it) because “magnum” holds such cache…
we would always run out of them, and they’d inevitably turn up in some poor freshman girl’s vaginal canal.
(i’m not kidding—there was a rash of ‘lost condoms’ last year among the freshmen).

We checked in with Planned Parenthood, who confirmed that condom size — too large or too small — is a serious factor in its effectiveness. “If a condom is too big it can slip off, and that can decrease its effectiveness, and conversely if it’s too tight, it’s likely to break,” their rep told us. “It is true that sizing is important.”

But beyond the anecdotal, it’s difficult to know how many condom misfires take place because of inadequate sizing in either direction, since even someone reporting to a health center that there was a problem with a condom wouldn’t necessarily know or volunteer why there was breakage or slippage, nor would it be recorded. The Planned Parenthood rep said their medical experts “aren’t aware of any increase in patients having problems with improperly fitting condoms.”