Cue the "bow chika wow wow" music we are about to travel back in time to a place where the motion of the ocean was all you needed to be a hip and swinging groovy cat. The ocean, in this case, was encapsulated in a giant rubber inner tube and placed in a wooden frame so it would hold a rectangular shape. I am speaking of the late 70's and early 80's symbol of sexuality the waterbed. 

During the waterbed's heyday, almost one in five mattresses sold was a waterbed. They were the sloshy sexy way that the cool couples settled down to sleep and do other married things behind closed doors. Then, like the dinosaurs, the waterbed, the waterbed stores on every other corner, the crazy waterbed commercials, and the sexy storylines on 80's TV disappeared.

You could argue that memory foam killed the waterbed. That and the fact that waterbeds were a pain in the butt to own and maintain. There was also the fear of ruptures that lead to many apartment complexes and rental properties banning the big billowy bladders of sleep too.

That was then and this is now. Get ready, the waterbed could be on the way back.

Oddly enough the man behind the big resurgence of going night-night on a device that looks like a giant breast implant is the man who is the original inventor of the waterbed, to begin with. Charlie Hall is that man. He came up with the idea for the waterbed as part of his master's thesis. Go figure huh?

Charlie and his business partners have a new product called Afloat. It's supposed to offer all the sloshy good fun of sleeping on water without all the hassles of the old-fashioned waterbeds. They've even redesigned the Afloat frame so it doesn't look like a wooden coffin waiting for the dead to drop in.

The new Afloat bed will set you back about $2,000, maybe a little less actually for a queen size. It's still kind of hard to move around but there have been improvements in temperature, assembly, maintenance, and overall ease of use.

 

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