Since launching the company in 1996, its San Diego-born founder, Peter Payne, has become a sort of cultural ambassador to geeks in the West. Wired News caught up with Payne during a recent trip back to the United States, and asked him what it's like to crack pop-culture code for a living
WN: You started off selling J-pop CDs. How did you get from there to selling Poop Aid Toilet Paper and Cup o' Vagina sex toys?
Payne: At first, about 25 percent of our sales were music; the rest was mostly Japanese adult magazines or comics. We added hentai -- sexually explicit anime -- which now accounts for about half of our sales. We don't just sell adult material. We also sell toys, calendars, food items, all kinds of strange cute things.
Another big seller is a kind of electronic game called "dating-sim," which now represents nearly a quarter of all software sold in Japan. It works like this: There are eight girls in the game, and if you win, you get to have sex with one of them.
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