How a Super-Conservative Company Accidentally Created the World’s Top Sex Toy

It is one of the most celebrated scenes from the hit ’90s comedy Sex and the City. Samantha Jones is in an electronics store, and approaches a gawky young salesman. Producing a gigantic electric object with a bulbous head that looks like an old-fashioned microphone, with HITACHI written down the side of it, she declares: “I’d like to return this.” The salesman asks: “Is there something wrong with it?”