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It’s funny how sex dolls are the poor relations of the sex toy world. It’s perfectly OK - cool, even, when it’s on Sex And The City - for girls to buy battery-powered devices to diddle themselves silly with. It’s OK - just about - for guys to treat themselves to a Palm Pal or a Fleshlight now and again, if only to relieve the monotony of the five-finger shuffle. But sex dolls? You’d have to be a really sad wanker to own one of those, wouldn’t you? Maybe there’s something on show at Venus that will change our minds…

But then again, maybe not.

Not to be confused with pop princesses Girls Aloud, this line up of love dolls was on the stand of NMC, a Chinese sex toy manufacturer. Note the realistic posture adopted by each girl, the welcoming embrace, the even more welcoming mouth and the come-to-bed-but-don’t-forget-to-pump-me-up-first eyes.

Perhaps sex dolls are ridiculed because they look, well, so ridiculous. And perhaps because the idea of anyone labouring away on and getting enjoyment from this plasticky mouthpiece of love is also ridiculous. But then who doesn’t look ridiculous when they’re having sex?

It’s hard to tell exactly what’s in the mouth, but it doesn’t feel as good as a Fleshlight. And you don’t have to inflate a Fleshlight before you can get some enjoyment out of it. But then again, you can look deep into a Fleshlight’s eyes and whisper sweet nothings into the place where its ears should be.

So how can they make the doll-loving experience less ridiculous and more fulfilling? You could, for example, make the dolls more realistic by using more realistic flesh, posable limbs, movable fingers, gripping hands, moist orifices…

Or if you couldn’t be bothered, just settle for printing somebody’s face on the head. It’s quite uncanny, isn’t it?

A proud moment in her modelling career, no doubt. How do you explain to your proud mum that you’ve become the face of a sex doll?

If having sex with a full-size blow-up doll seems just, well, ridiculous, then how about having sex with a soft, plushy headless doll pillow torso thing. With breasts. Maybe being spotted in an episode of The Sopranos can do for the Venus Pinky what being see in Sex And The City did for the rabbit vibrator.

Come to think of it, they’re missed a trick with Venus Pinky. Sherilyn Fenn doesn’t seem to be doing much nowadays, so a quick call to her agent could have brought forth a mutually benefitical licence for the first ever Boxing Helena love doll.

[Update: Sorry Sherilyn, I just checked on IMDB and you've been doing loads, just nothing I've seen. You were great in Twin Peaks, but I guess you're fed up of hearing that by now.]

Fans of anime will be pleased to know that there are plenty of dolls designed with the same kind of over-sized heads and bug-eyed features of their favourite cartoon characters. I guess it would be a bit like having sex with a blow-us Ash from Pokemon.

Sumi Kokimi is typical of many anime-style dolls - cool packaging, kooky styling but bizarre copywriting. “She wants to tie you up and blow you away,” says the blurb on the box, which is only believable to the extent that you might project emotions on to an inaminate object. Speaking of which…

The best way to take the ridicule out of sex with a doll is to make them ultra-expensive and genuinely cool. If I had $5,000 to spare, I would seriously consider buying one of these Japanese Candy Dolls, even if I didn’t want to have sex with it. Which I don’t. Oh, OK, maybe once. Just to see what it was like. Ahem.

Not sure I’d go to the trouble of dressing it up in a Santa costumer or a French maid’s outfit, but whatever turns you on…

As Gadgetizer commented last year, Candy Dolls are the Japanese equivalent to Real Dolls, expensive custom-made love-pieces designed to take the place of a living, breathing companion. In Japan, they’re available to rent but I’m not entirely sure I’d trust somebody else to clean it up and sluice it out before I had a go.

What sets Candy Girl apart is that the maker helps you to buy in to the concept that you’re getting more than a convenient place to blow your beans - Candy Girl, however ridiculously endowed you want her to be, is also a girlfriend and companion.

You can buy a DVD-ROM adventure game which features Candy Girl posing in the park, doing the gardening, being a Fench maid and playing the cello. Or, at least, being posed to do all these things.

They’ve also made an arty Candy Girl picture book…

So, treat yourself to a Candy Girl. Yes, you’ll quite probably look ridiculous when you’re having sex with it (sorry, her), but you’ll be having so much fun you won’t even care.