The Mystery of the 700,000 Missing Condoms
Has anyone seen 700,000 ultrathin Japanese condoms? Malaysian police are looking for them. The condoms, manufactured by the Sagami Rubber Corporation, were loaded onto a container in Malaysia last week, but never arrived in Japan (the container did arrive, empty, with its locks changed). Rest assured, no expense is being spared:
"We take the matter of the missing condoms very seriously... we are investigating the matter," a Malaysian police spokesman told AFP.
The condoms are worth some $1.5 million if sold at Japanese retail prices; they are, the AFP dutifully reports, 14 percent thinner than "conventional" condoms (if Sagami is to be believed). The freight company that shipped the condoms feels confident that it can "find out where and when [the locks] were tampered with or changed," which is reassuring, if you are worried.
Unfortunately, no one seems prepared to speculate as to who, or what, is behind the disappearance. A dashing cartel of international condom thieves? Some kind of monster that eats condoms exclusively? Is there a thriving condom black market? Or, perhaps, they escaped on their own, and have established a tiny, ultrathin, communitarian condom society on a remote South Pacific island?
