The Lifestyles Singles Assorted Condoms is a large, plastic storage tub that’s filled with 40 individually-wrapped condoms. Each condom comes inside its own little mini cardboard box as well as in the standard condom wrapper. This assortment of condoms includes three Lifestyle condoms varieties: Pleasure Ribbed, Ultra-Lube Plus, and Ultra Sensitive. Pleasure Ribbed was designed for your partner’s pleasure, Ultra-Lube Plus includes extra lubricant, and the Ultra-Sensitive was created with the most minimalistic sensation possible. All of my condoms in my assorted package have an expiration date of September 2017, so they have quite a long ways before they need to be used.
The boxes are really simple to open. They have that “clear, cigarette-type wrapping on them”. Y’know, the one that comes with a simple “pull” that runs around the plastic to open up the box? My boyfriend says to mention that the same type of plastic is found on decks of cards. (I grew up with smoking parents, so I guess my mind went elsewhere). It isn’t hard to open, but if this is for personal use, definitely remove the plastic beforehand. It’s not hard to remove, but finding the “starting” point in the dark is not going to be worth the frustration. From there, the box just pulls apart with a simple pull-tab. The condom is in a standard-type wrapper – except it’s about half the size, so the condom is packaged in more of an “oval” shape versus the usual round shape that most condom packages are found in. This doesn’t make it more difficult to open, but it might look odd at first.
I’m still trying to figure out what the purpose of putting the condoms in boxes is. It makes them harder to carry around because it makes them larger, and they end up getting a lot more “squished” inside the boxes than if they were just “loose”. I suppose, if your partner would be worried that you punctured or harmed the condom, showing a sealed box might make them feel better, but there does have to be a certain point where you go “Huh, maybe I shouldn’t be having sex with a person who I have to ask that of…”, and I think that might be that moment. The boxes are kinda cool, but for personal use, I think most people are going to find that they’ll open the individual boxes and pull out the condoms and just store those. Fighting with the box PLUS the condom in the heat of the moment is more than needs to be done. On the plus-side, if you were giving out condoms at any sort of event or sex party, this type of packaging might make your guests feel more confident because of the box. So I suppose that IS a good use for them.
The Ultra-Lube Plus condoms weren’t our favorites from this set. Unfortunately, they seem to be designed to be tighter than usual – in fact, for my average-sized partner, they were tight enough to leave marks on the penis after use. It’s just so tight that we really won’t be ever using them again after the first two that we’ve tried. The Ultra-Lube Plus claim is pretty good, though – the condom comes with more lubricant on it than a standard condom does. However, the condom does claim that the lubricant “won’t dry out”, and that claim wasn’t quite so accurate. The lubricant dried up just as fast as most condom’s lubrication, so while there definitely was more lubricant to start off with, if you tend to need frequent applications of lube, you’ll probably still need them with this condom as well. All-in-all, this is a condom we won’t be revisiting – mostly because of the tight, fit issue.
The Lifestyles Pleasure Ribbed was an okay choice. As with the Ultra Lube Plus, it seems to have a pretty tight and snug fit that makes it more uncomfortable to wear. Unfortunately, the textured ribbing isn’t particularly pleasurable either, so this one is, all-around, just not a particularly great condom. We’ll pretty much be giving away all of the remaining ones to friends that are interested.
The Lifestyles Ultra Sensitive are the saving grace of this set – and easily the best condom out of this. I’m not sure why, but they seem to have a much larger, much more comfortable fit than the other two. Compared to average condoms, he also reports that they have a more sensitive feel to them. I’m not sure if this is because these condoms seem to be less tight than standard condoms or if it’s the design of the condom itself, but hey – more pleasure is always a good thing! These don’t have a ton of lubricant, so they will require adding your own lubricant if you find that lube tends to dry up on you. They’re awesome enough that I’ll be buying a full box of these!
Overall, I have to wonder what the idea behind the included boxes was. I see it working for some people particularly well, but I’m not sure it works quite as well for individuals as it would for a party-type setting. However, if you want to give three types of Lifestyles a try and are okay with the individual boxes, the Lifestyle Singles Assorted Condoms works just like a little plastic bin of condoms that you can grab whenever you want. Which is pretty awesome. Thanks to Adam & Eve for providing these assorted condoms for my Lifestyles Singles Assorted Condoms review.
