Men are going nuts over Lululemon's 'anti-ball crushing' pants

The Canadian sportswear brand famous for making yoga pants the de facto uniform of women on university campuses everywhere appears to have shifted its focus from butts to balls.

Thats right, Lululemon has entered the menswear business and itsattracting a lot of mens business withpants designed for mens business.

Below is a photo ofthe Vancouver-based companys new "anti-ball crushing" (or ABC) pants, whichwere engineered to give "the family jewels room to breathe,"according to a product description.

Lululemon CEO Laurent Potdevin told investors during a call Thursday that this innovative garment was a driving force behind the 16 per cent same-store sales increase the company experienced last quarter.

After suffering an eight per cent profit dropahead of Decembers holiday shopping season, this no doubt comes as good news to shareholders.

It may also comeas good news to men who've not yet heard of the ABC pants and want to experiencea "wide panelled gusset" and "four-way stretch Warpstreme fabric" themselves.

While the Internet Archive shows that customers have been able to purchase the $128 trousers from Lululemons website for at least eight months, few online appear to have heard about the anatomy-friendly pants (as Bloomberg calls them) until reports from the investors call came out this week.

Many were joking about the pants on Twitter Friday afternoon, but dozens of reviews on the products webpage show that some men do take their er bike-seat comfort very seriously.

'Hug me in the right places'

"I would buy more of these pants except then people at work would think I only owned 5 pairs of one kind of pants in different colours," wrote a customer from Toronto earlier this month. "They are fantastic! Buy one size bigger than normal. If that bugs your ego you can sew in a new label size ..."

"Things will never be the same," wrote another customer from Houston, Texas. "These pants hug me in the right places."

Lululemons intensified push into the menswear market, which saw the companys first brick-and-mortar store dedicated to mens clothing open in November, follows a couple of turbulent years in the world of theirwomenswear.

In July of 2013, Lululemon was hit with a class action lawsuit alleging that its Luon yoga pants were too sheer (if not entirely see-through),following a recall that saw its shares drop 3 per cent in one day.

Later that year, company founder Chip Wilson ignited controversy by saying thatLululemonyoga pants "just dont work" on some womens bodies. Many accused Wilson, who established the business in 1998, of fat-shaming larger customers, slammingLululemon online and threatening to boycott the store.

A poorly-received charitablepartnership with the Dalai Lama, shopping bag messages that appeared to discourage customers from wearing sunscreen, and Wilsons plans to build an enormous dock on his waterfront B.C. property despite complaints from neighbours further damaged the companys public image.

Wilson stepped down from Lululemons board of directors in February, saying in a statement that he believed the company to be "back on track" in terms of product, brand and culture.

If the popularity of the anti-ball crushing pants are any indication, he may have been right.