What Exotic Erotics Tells Us About Furries
Let's talk about the Exotic Erotics situation.
For those of you that don't know, Exotic Erotics is a company that produces silicone furry toys. They've been in the business for 16 years and have been doing conventions for most of that time, plying their wares. They aren't as big as Bad Dragon or anything, but they've always been in contention for that second place spot. It's rare to find people who are into those kinds of toys who don't at least know the company, if not owning a toy or two of theirs.
Something that set Exotic Erotics, which I'll be shortening to EE for the rest of the article, apart from the rest of the bunch was the fact that some of their toys were "life cast". What this means is that the toys were sculpted from the parts of real life animals. Not to get too graphic here, but the TL;DR is that you use a tube to create a negative mold of the shape, and then can use that to reverse engineer the exact perfect shape of the thing you're trying to create. It's a pretty simple, easy, and painless process. And EE would use this process to make toys of different animal bits. This gave them more of a "realistic" feel, compared to other people on the market.
This, in my opinion, is pretty cool. We get into the conversation about whether or not it's ethical to have an animal participate in this kind of thing for then another company to make money off of it, and I do think that's a pretty fair conversation, but we're bookmarking that for later because I don't want this article to be ten hours long. Looking past that, in theory I think this is a pretty neat idea. Especially for furries! I mean, it's not like furries got the idea of what an anthropomorphic dog would look like from thin air. The whole essential base of what furries are is based around the facsimile of animals. Tails, paws, floppy ears, muzzles, fur. And also, genitals. You could say the "goal" of the furry fandom is to create characters that imitate animalism while still retaining the members individualism and "humanity". And in that sense, life casting a toy feels like the closest approximation of that within this realm. Furry by nature is a fantasy. The creature that's on the other side of the toy is up to your imagination. From an anthro to a feral to a full on animal, realistically all of those things should theoretically have the same genitals because the only real difference is how far the sliding scale goes in terms of human traits, and even dog anthros tend to have knots.
So, Exotic Erotics. They were planning on attending the furry convention Midwest Furest, as they've done since 2014. They had their supplies ready to go, tickets booked, dealers booth registered. But then the moral panic started. Some furries on witter started getting mad about the fact that they use life casted toys, and that turned into a bigger and bigger outrage, turning it from a conversation about furries into a conversation about zoophiles. Because of course who would want to use a life cast toy other than a zoophile. They became labeled as animal abusers and the pushback led Midwest Furest to confirm that EE was no longer to sell, citing "Safety Concerns".
There's something that's so depressingly funny to me about this whole situation. On one hand, it sucks for EE to be at the center of a controversy. But on the other hand, you know what doesn't suck? Free advertising. EE ended up selling out pretty much their whole stock over the course of the discourse as other furries flocked to the website in order to get life cast toys of their own. They ended up selling everything they would have sold at MFF plus extra because people decided to try and cause a fuss about them existing. In the end, things kinda just worked out for them.
This is especially funny because you know that life casting process that I described before? Yeah, they actually don't do that anymore. There's no contact with animals even required for the new system, where they just use a high definition camera to get pictures of the shape of the genitals in question and then use software to recreate a 3D model of it. They are going above and beyond the necessary standards to try and be ethical, much more ethical than the never ending rape that gives us all our tasty tasty meat, and yet still it did nothing fan the flames of the furries who decided they were still upset.
This also didn't stop MFF from having zoo parties where all numbers of animal attracted folks came together and partied the night away. In fact, not like I took a headcount or anything but I would guess the parties this year were even bigger than last year, which were bigger than the year before that.
This article is mostly just to try and record that this was a thing that happened, because I do think in the conversation moving forwards this is going to be an important event, and god forbid I complain about how zoos have no recorded history when not using my platform to record it myself. But also, I do think there are two things that we can take away from this that are kinda important.
First of all, I think it shows the clear demographic shift within the furry fandom, but also helps to highlight the underlying reality of it too. If you've been on social media or have been forced to listen to younger furries, there's a trend that's been emerging for a while, but has definitely gotten louder and more visible since Trump's second term, and that's right wing . The "puriteens" as they're so called. A few years ago it would have been the story of the month if some idiot on witter posted a badly drawn picture of their fursona with a halo and wings with text about how they believe that trans people are bad and don't have god's love. But now I feel like I see something like that once a week. There is a real and somewhat sizeable portion of furries that don't support gay marrage, don't support trans rights, are in favor of ICE raids at conventions, and just in general ascribe to a very right wing agenda. And not only do they exist, they're loud. They idolize the playbook of the current American right. Be unapologetic, be bold, and be extremely active on social media.
Now, I'm not saying that the right is all anti-zoo and the left is super zoo positive, but I do think that the left is much more likely to have people in it with the stance of live and let live, where as the right is all about cancel culture and not giving any leeway. I didn't check, but it would not shock me if a lot of the accounts that were the most vocal about being against EE and who actually bothered to send MFF emails were people that tended to the right. Again, not everyone, but the majority.
That's not the only split within the furry fandom though, and I think this is a little bit more nebulous. I think you could try and define it by age, but I don't think that's exactly right. It's more like.. The freaks and the not. That's not exactly right either, but I do think it's somewhat closer? I think back in the older days of furries the culture was much more defined by people being outcasts. Furries were seen as a negative. You were already a bit of a freak for just being part of the subculture. And because of that, for better or worse, I think the fandom was more accepting of people being weird for other reasons too. But there's been a bit of a cultural shift that I've been noticing as the fandom gets more popular and less niche.
If you told a furry in the 90's that one day one of the most famous esports athletes in the world was a furry, they'd probably say "what is esports that sounds dumb" but once you explained it they'd probably say "okay yeah that makes sense." But if you told them that the biggest ouubers in the world were doing furry convention cameos. If comedians and musicians were booking sets at cons. That convention attendances would be in the tens of thousands, rather than in the hundreds. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that being a furry is *cool*, but I would say that nowadays being a furry is definitely *normal*. And when something is normal, the people associated with it no longer have a shared identity as outcasts. But when that happens, it subdivides the group again. The people that are on the outskirts, that did come together to build up the subculture are then pushed out to the side for now being "too" weird. Too different.
I think it's hilariously short sighted to say that the furry fandom would be what it is without zoophiles. That's not to say that some idea of furry wouldn't still exist, but I think it would mirror the lens of a more traditional sub group. Wiccans or Cosplayers or Lego Enthusiasts or any other thing where there's a bunch of people that are all collectively into an idea. It would be a thing, but not like the scale is for furries now. It wouldn't be conventions in every city, every country, with likely tens of millions of people ascribing to the identity.
Because you know what's different about the furry fandom compared to those things? The adult nature of it. I think without the zoophiles, the furry fandom would be a much more normal, PG kind of thing. I mean, just think about it. What does furry have that no other kinds of fandoms do? The sex appeal. Sure, cosplay is a little horny sometimes, and yeah obviously every fandom has its more adult elements, but not even CLOSE to the extent that furries do. Sex in the fandom is something that's seen as a part of the experience. At least, to a lot of the members. If not, that's okay. It's not a requirement, but it is common. And while it's impossible to say exactly why that might be, I think that there's pretty solid evidence that it's because of the paradigm that I've been talking about. When it was a bad thing to be queer, people turned to the furry fandom and happened to connect with other queer people, and that's definitely a part of it. But also the pervasiveness of adult content that exists of these characters that are essentially animals does a lot too.
I get that was a lot of words, so let me be a little more clear here. People started a group that was all about funny animal characters. Those characters immediately get sexualized because of course they do. Then, things grow, until it attracts a queer audience who then come and fill the space, and it grows and grows and grows to where it is today. But, the thing that really sparked with people at the start of all of this is sexy animals.
And so that leaves us in a weird spot nowadays. We've got basically three circles with some overlap here. There are right wing furries that have forced themselves in. We've got the normie furries who joined in because that's just a thing people do nowadaysnd then there's the weirdos, who feel a sense of belonging here because they don't always fit in other places. Two of those three are pretty aligned on the hating zoophiles thing, and the portion of weirdos out there is shrinking. Suddenly, they don't really fit in with furry anymore either, and so they've gone to find other smaller niches where they can try and belong.
And so EE MFF. A longstanding pillar of the furry fandom is beaten out by the people who reject the weirdness because their vision of the fandom is something santized. hat fits who they are, without allowing room for other people.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this. Right now the furry fandom is in a really strange place. It's being pulled in a bunch of different directions, and it could change drastically in the next couple of years. If you're someone who cares about furries at all, now is the time to really speak up and fight for the side that you want to come out on top to culturally dominate the conversation. And if not, then you might want to start putting down roots in other groups, because things are changing.
I hope we can fight for the fandom. I've been a furry for a very long time and I think the weirdness is so important for the cause. If you agree, you have to do your part. Support the weirdos. Financially if you can, or with your time and attention if you cant. People that are pushing the boundaries, or are becoming the attention of the culture war need to know they're supported from the other side to be able to keep fighting the good fight. People need to be emailing MFF telling them how angry they are that EE was removed to equal out or ideally even overpower the voices celebrating this move. If we want to have a place in this fandom, we need to fight for it.
Anyway, I got myself a cool new EE toy to celebrate the holidays, so I'll see you next week, dear readers!
Article written by Tarro (December 2025)
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