Turn Me On

Say hello to your new little friend, NYC. After some fierce and hard competition, the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has selected the design for its new condom wrapper. It’s a power button symbol, but it also blatantly looks like… well…

In case you’re unfamiliar, the NYC condom is part of a health initiative that began in 2007, a.k.a a year when I certainly wasn’t getting laid — senior year of college, you understand. Distributed freely — as in “no charge” as in “grab a handful of these bitches and stuff them in your friend’s shirt before he can argue” — the NYC condom can be found in many health offices and various bars around the five boroughs. And with the official slogan of “Get Some,” you can tell that the health department is not messing around, although they certainly want you to.

Before their latest redesign, NYC condoms were more cute than sexy. With letters in circles of colors to evoke the feel of Manhattan’s favorite form of mass transit, the subway — well, at least it’s my favorite form of mass transit as I don’t believe in the bus — there was almost a preschool sensibility to the look. But this new package? No bones about it, the power symbol is ripe for puns, visual metaphors, and it evokes the feel of the Red-Light District.

As for the 2007 and 2008 versions, you can see them below. Yes, they’re mine. No, you can’t have them. While the 2008 version on the right is still widely available, to the point that a girlfriend of mine and I stuffed a friend’s pockets with them so that he would look like a sex fiend this weekend, the 2007 is extremely difficult to find and took knowing someone who knew someone who knew someone who has had sex with everyone, to get.