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Hi, Sam.
Welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan.
Hey, how are you there?
Hey, Sam.
How are you?
I'm doing really good.
How are you doing?
Doing great.
First of all, loving the hair, Sam.
Thank you.
Yeah, I know.
I felt inspired.
I love.
I'm not egotistical enough to say it's the Conan swoop, because you know I didn't invent it.
I think Bob's big boy invented it, but looks very cool.
So I'm loving that.
Tell us a little bit about yourself, Sam.
So my name is Sam and I live in Chicago and you know been a big fan of yours since, you know, forever.
Thank you.
Actually, with my first paychecks, I actually bought a TV.
It was like back in like 2003, a little tiny LCD TV that I could watch Conan like your guys' show in my room right before I went to bed.
So I wouldn't keep everyone else in the house up.
Yeah.
Wow.
So you have excellent comedy taste and you're considerate.
That's a great combination.
Yeah, I try.
I try to be.
And my brother, whose whose name is also Matt, also loves has always loved you, too.
He's about as tall as you, too.
Oh, wow.
OK.
I would have been as tall as you if I had if I had if I had a Y chromosome.
But I am a trans guy.
Okay, okay.
Which means that I started life as a girl, and when I was 33, I transitioned to being a guy.
Okay.
Yeah.
And tell us, so how old are you now?
How long ago did you transition?
So I transitioned when I was 33 years old.
I started, and I'm going to be 39 next month.
You look fantastic, by the way.
Thank you.
You look like you're like 22 years old.
Yeah.
I know.
Well, that's kind of like one of the perks of, like you know, transitioning a little bit later is, you know you look.
You always look a little bit younger, like when you're transitioning from female to male.
But like for me, like for some people, like in their early 20s, like that's not so great.
But like when you're in your 30s, you know, I'll take it.
I'll look younger.
I was going to say, I was thinking I want to transition from a man my age to a man who's much younger.
Yeah.
Someone figure it out.
Don't we all, though?
Yeah.
I got to figure that one out, too.
If I could figure out how to transition my joints and all of my problems.
Oh, they're going to figure it all out.
Have you watched The Substance?
Yeah, we'll figure it out.
They're working on it.
Demi Moore is working very hard on this.
Yeah, it worked out great for her, too.
Yeah, it looked like it did to me.
So, Sam, what's your gig?
What's your job?
What do you do?
So pretty much I run my own business.
I actually make adult toys.
Okay.
And I've actually been in the industry since 2008.
But when I started transitioning, which I think was like 2019, I kind of noticed that there wasn't toys on the market that were super compatible with trans anatomy and the changes that your body goes through when you do that.
Oh, that would be true.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So I was like, hey, I've got these skills from working in the industry.
Can I translate that into something that works good for you know, for a variety of different body types?
So and that's what I've been doing pretty much since then.
It's mostly just been me, my designer who lives in Denmark.
And then, just recently, one of my partners started helping me make toys, like just, you know, to keep up on orders.
Now, I'm curious.
So you were in the adult toy business before you transitioned.
Is that right?
Yes.
I see.
Okay.
And then realize that, hey, wait a minute.
There's a market here that's not being taken care of.
Yeah, exactly.
And it was like, I mean, there was definitely stuff out there.
And I swear I probably bought like one of everything just to see.
And then it's taken.
You know it's taken a while, but like we've like, one of our toys took like four years to finally design.
So it would be compatible.
And then another thing we completely came up with that nobody else has done is we came up with what's called a grindable thing, which is halfway between a sleeve and a grind pad, which is something that some people use, like cis women will generally use to grind up against.
So we kind of invented something that was halfway between that, me and my designer.
And then when it's ready for market, how do you get the word out?
So one of the things like so our toys are cryptid themed.
So they're they're basically like fantasy toys themed.
So that was like what my old business did.
So I kind of just kept going with that.
But minor cryptid base.
So meaning like all of my toys are like monsters and stuff like that.
Yeah.
So they're based on like monsters and, you know, folklore.
We have like a Mothman.
We have Minotaur.
You know, we've got the Jersey Devil.
You know, we're trying to come up with more stuff.
What's the Mothman one like?
I think you have a customer here.
I'm going to show you.
Yeah.
So this is our Mothman.
Oh, wait a minute.
Yeah.
So this is our medium.
No, it's not.
That's a medium?
Yeah.
What are you guys talking about?
What's the big deal?
And two sizes bigger.
But yeah.
And then these are all made of platinum pure medical grade silicone.
So these are not like the toys that you just buy, like you know online, that are just made of unknown materials, you know right.
You want to make sure you're using medical grade safe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So yeah we, you know that, and then we, and then we make these.
We can, I like.
One of the cool things that I can do is I can fade the silicone to like.
This is this is you start with one, it's one bucket, and you fade all the way down to a different color.
So it's, it's fun.
I mean, like, I have a background in art too.
So that's, that helps.
It is beautiful.
Art and comedy.
So, I mean, you have to have a sense of humor to do this.
Oh, you do comedy as well?
Yeah.
Yeah, so all throughout high school, I did improv and theater and all of that.
And then when I got out of high school, I was like, man, I really miss this.
So I ended up starting a.
We go to furry conventions, which is another way that we market, because there's a big market for mythology.
And explain for anyone who's listening, who doesn't know, including me, exactly what is the furry world is.
So the furry fandom is just, like, a group of people that enjoy anthropomorphic animals.
So we're talking stuff like you know, as you know, like Bugs Bunny, all the way up to like Zootopia.
Sure.
Things like that.
People just enjoy that.
And for the most part, it's, you know, it's very just, like, family friendly.
But there is a, like, a not safe for work kind of side of the fandom.
There's a not safe for work uh echelon of every of every fandom yeah, including probably team coco.
Yeah yeah, this work is not.
I did.
I did hear those uh, those.
Uh, someone was reading those fan, i think it was sona.
Had the fan fictions that uh yes yeah no no, there's that echelon of uh, in in every world.
You can't go if you're a geologist.
There's a not safe for work fandom Oh yeah, 100.
And the same goes for the cryptozoology stuff and that's why there's a whole monster lover community, things like that.
So you do comedy?
Because you have all these different worlds that you're exploring or that you're part of, and you said that you're also in the comedy world, but in the furry world as well.
So do those cross over?
Do you do comedy...
At furry conventions?
Yeah.
So I really missed doing improv specifically.
So one year I asked a convention if I could host like an improv panel and we just called it Who's Lion?
So it was like an animal pun on whose line is it anyway?
Yeah.
I don't know why, but I think that's a very marketable idea.
Who's lying?
It's really funny.
I like that.
And we ended up our first show had like 60 people.
And like what we ended up doing was we just kind of let the audience come up and participate.
Like I would, you know, work and play the games.
I was just basically like running like, hey, we're playing this game now.
And, you know, we've had like up to.
500 people at one show.
I mean, obviously not everybody can participate at that point when there's like that many people.
But we do try to get as many people up as possible to play in these games so we can just share.
And everyone's dressed as animals.
Not everybody, uh.
So i would say like 10 of a furry convention actually like actually has like costumes, um.
But then these are just people who are, you know, we're coming to hang out and we have like a common interest and uh they, you know, they want to come up on stage and, you know, have a good time.
And some of them are in suit.
Um, like i've done it in suit.
Like when we do a charity version of who's lying, i'll generally be in my fursuit and what's, what's your fursuit?
So my fursuit's an African wild dog.
I've had like a bunch of different fursuits throughout the years, but my current one is an African wild dog.
So you're on stage doing comedy dressed as an African wild dog.
Yes.
Okay.
There's so many.
I mean, my mind is expanding in so many amazing ways.
I'm still on that Mothman schlong.
Yeah, the Moshman schlong.
Yeah.
You just had that ready to go.
That was right off camera.
Yeah.
What else?
Oh, I have a ton right off camera.
Let's do a parade.
Come on.
Let's do a parade.
So first of all, remember I talked about like the grindable.
Whoa.
So this is like our invention.
We actually have the provisional patent on these.
We have two of them.
Oh, we have the serpent interface.
That must have been a fun day at the patent office.
I can just picture a really nerdy guy.
And tell me what you have.
I have these.
Me.
Well, thankfully, my business lawyer is a patent lawyer.
And he's just like, he's so cool about it.
He's like, whatever.
And then, you know, another thing that we did was we actually ended up scaling it up.
Oh, wow.
So cis men could use it as like a masturbatory.
Wait, is that just friction based or is it electronic?
It's all silicone.
I've never seen you this involved in the engineering of anything.
You use it like you would a fleshlight.
Oh, a fleshlight.
And it's all textured on the inside and everything.
It's like a tube that you stick your dick into.
It's a flashlight that you fuck.
Yeah, you fuck a flashlight.
But it's like inside is not like a...
That's what a paper towel tube is for.
My wife's always like, where's the tube?
Why is a paper towel just everywhere?
It lasts a little bit longer than that, though.
Oh, I can make them last.
You just got to shellac them first and bake them in the sun.
Oh, God.
My wife, why are all these towels just all over the place?
Oh, God.
Sorry, dear.
I was fashioning a fleshlight.
Oh, my God.
Wow, my marriage is over now.
He's gonna see me walking alone down the highway with a suitcase.
And a paper towel too.
No, no, no, you open the suitcase and 15 paper towel holders fall out.
Oh my God, this thing is broken.
This thing is broken.
So, all right, I'm picturing you doing improv or stand up on stage dressed as an African wild dog.
That must be a little challenging, because it's hard enough to do improv, but when you're dressed as a furry animal, that's gotta be really challenging.
Yeah.
I mean, like we have microphones on stage.
So one of the funny things about it is that, like when you do have like a fursuit and you are on stage, and especially like, even if it's like a smaller crowd, like we still have to get the microphones on the on the fursuiters.
Yeah.
You know, normally I have no problem projecting, but even in suit, like I have issues with it.
Um, so, uh, you have to like put the microphone like all the way in the fursuit mouth.
So it's up against your mouth in the head.
So it kind of just like, looks like you're, uh, well, deep throating a microphone, uh, when you're doing that.
Um, but, uh, well, I'd hate for something untoward to happen.
Yeah.
So, but yeah, no, we always have like a really good time.
I love how delicate you were about, oh, and it's, I don't know how else to say this.
You just showed us nine different products.
It would get me arrested in any airport.
I just saw a purple spiked clam that was a sex toy.
A clam.
Well, I mean, like, I go through the airports all the time with these in my carry-on.
Right.
Because I want to have.
I want to make sure that they don't get lost, because we've had like, because we go to conventions to sell, and I've had like packages get lost.
Like there's in Boston.
Specifically, there are two boxes of my toys that just never showed up to a convention in Boston that we were at.
So those are just somewhere.
Yeah.
No, they got delivered to the hotel and someone signed for them, but nobody could find them.
Right.
So I don't know where they are.
So now we put air tags in all of our boxes.
They probably think there are staplers or something.
Exotic staplers.
Katinka, Katinka, Katinka.
Hey, I got this new paperweight.
You mean the Mothman?
I have a paperweight and look, I have a stapler that looks like...
As you would call it, a clam.
Yes.
A clam.
Listen, you've expanded my mind in wonderful ways.
And this is an impressive business that you've got going here.
Thank you.
It means a lot.
Do you have a factory?
Where's the actual production done?
So it's done right here at my house.
My entire basement is finished and like it's a finished basement that we've like completely uh, set up to do all the uh, we have um, we have seven 3d printers wow um, we have um, we have a couple of vacuum chambers uh, you know, because we have to take all the air out of the silicone before we pour it um, so there's no bubbles in the toy, um and um yeah, we just do everything here uh, like just locally, you know, and i get all my and there's no, like there's no.
I mean i'm thinking there's chemicals then in your basement.
You would hate there for there to be.
There's never could be an explosion or anything, because you don't want these things raining down in the neighborhood.
It's not flammable, look out, put up your umbrellas like a meth lab.
We do have a complain and i'm just picturing them coming down like missiles, All the dildos just raining from the sky.
Yeah.
But no, there's the- Someone looks up and goes, oh no!
We have an exhaust fan.
Out of control.
This is an out of control interview.
I blame you, Sam.
This is your fault.
You know, you took a very serious, sober podcast.
Oh, yeah.
Very serious.
We're very dramatic.
Did Sam have a question for me?
Yeah.
So one of the things that I always wondered is do you ever wish that they still made the Otako podcast?
At Taco Bell.
Oh, that's right.
I think I did a remote once.
Did I do a remote once?
Yeah, you did a remote.
It's one of my favorites.
And I went with... Who did I go with?
Hayes.
I went with Chris Hayes.
That was a fun remote.
Yeah, it was.
I have to say, and we are not sponsored by Taco Bell or anything, but man, that was delicious.
What was in it?
Do you remember?
I'm trying to remember.
It was delicious.
There was...
It was like corned beef hash, potatoes, and then I believe you dumped a Guinness on it.
Yes.
Well, you can't go wrong dumping a Guinness on anything.
But yes, I remember Taco Bell, they asked me to design something, and so I went all Irish on them.
And I think I had one bite and then had a massive heart attack.
Yeah, I'm shocked it's not like in every Taco Bell.
I guess Taco Bell decided not to go wide with it.
But if you're ever at the Dublin Taco Bell, it's their biggest seller.
But yeah, like ever since then, anytime I can get potatoes and tacos, like there's like a couple of places.
I mean like Taco Bell does do that, but like there's like other places that like sell mashed potatoes and tacos and stuff like that.
I always have to get it because I always think about it.
Well, they ripped me off, man.
They ripped me off.
You've got to make sure no one's ripping you off too.
Hey, that's a good question.
Cause I'm sure it sounds like you're onto a market.
There might be people out there that are like, hey, wait a minute.
I'm glad you got the patents.
That's the important thing, especially on the moth.
Yeah, for the for that one.
Yeah, especially.
Yeah, it's still yeah, it's still provisional patents.
So it's you know, rest assured, that's sitting on some government office somewhere waiting to get approved.
So it's right on their desk.
Yeah, it's right there.
Yeah.
It was very cool talking to you.
You're very funny and best of luck with your business.
And we're very lucky to have you as a fan.
Yeah, I'm lucky to have you guys to listen to, because you guys are always on when I'm working on stuff.
So I always save the podcast for when I have, like, you know, long days to get through orders.
That's very cool.
We inspire the dildos.
We do.
Yeah.
You do.
There's a little bit of us in that thing.
Yes, in every single toy.
And then my one partner wanted me to show you this.
Oh!
He made a Team Coco colored... Look at that!
Aww!
Aww!
This is a biomech.
Actually, that's exactly what mine looks like.
Well, I'm sorry, but I was in an industrial accident when I was nine.
I was in a pumpkin patch that exploded.
All right, Sam, we're going to take off, but thank you so much.
Take care.
Yeah, it was nice meeting you all.
Really cool meeting you, Sam.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Conan O'Brien needs a fan.
With Conan O'Brien, Sona Movsesian, and Matt Gourley.
Produced by me, Matt Gourley.
Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Nick Liao.
Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino.
Take it away, Jimmy.
Supervising producer, Aaron Blair.
Associate talent producer, Jennifer Samples.
Associate producers, Sean Doherty and Lisa Byrne.
Engineering by Eduardo Perez.
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