- Manufacturers, meanwhile, fed the demand with novelty frames, bunk beds, circular love nest beds, and even waterbeds for dogs. They also improved the experience with innovations like “baffles” that cut down on the wave motion many beds created, thereby addressing the one-of-a-kind problem of people getting seasick in their own bedrooms. As waterbed mania swept the nation, specialty outlets like Waterbed Plaza, Waterbed Emporium, and the Waterbed Store opened up shop, and wave after wave of cheesy local television ads followed.
By 1984, waterbeds were a $2 billion business. At the height of their popularity, in 1987, 22 percent of all mattress sales in the U.S. were waterbed mattresses.
I knew waterbeds were a thing at one point in time but I never knew that a waterbed actually used to be a really big thing even late into the 80s. I thought it would have died in the 70s.
Waterbed victim checking in. My mother has insomnia (among other things). At some point in the early '70s she decided she slept better on a waterbed. As such, everybody got waterbeds. I had one from the age of 3 or so. My sister had one from the age of 2. When on vacation, it was necessary to find a motel that had waterbeds. You can only imagine the kind of motel one finds in rural Kansas at 9 at night that has waterbeds. No. None of this was pleasant. And if somehow a waterbed could not be found at 9pm in rural Kansas, mom was a stone-cold bitch for the next three days because she "didn't sleep." Note that she didn't sleep anyway but without the talisman of the waterbed it was somehow worse. Vacations were an endless ordeal of crabbiness in no small part because of her habituation on waterbeds. Something never mentioned in these articles about waterbeds is they leak. Waterbeds were fucking cheap and they were basically a pool float filled with a ton of water. Prior to laser-welding they were held together with vulcanizing glue, and the seams would go. Maybe your parents had an expensive waterbed with double-sealed seams. You didn't. So every 2 months or so you woke up in a literal puddle. And then you have to wake up your parents and say that you're sleeping in a puddle. And then they get mad at you because WHY DO YOU KEEP BREAKING THE WATERBED so before too long you just fucking accept the puddle until morning and end up sleeping on the floor. Something else never mentioned is that if you change the temperature of a waterbed, you get to wait about 8 hours before anything changes. And in order for it to not leech all the heat out of your body it needs to be kept at like 87 or 88 degrees. But if the power goes out it goes to ambient. So if you were comfortable at 9, but the power goes out at 10, you have hypothermia by 2. And that won't change until the next morning. Also, god help you if you kick the extension cord while making your bed in the morning. Surprise! you're going to bed on a 65 degree slab of slushy hell. What's really ironic about waterbeds is they SUCK to have sex on. They slosh. They have their own rhythm. There's no purchase. And girl on top? Yeah her knees are gonna hit the bottom and she's gonna jackknife you. I honestly don't know how the myth that having sex on a waterbed is fun perpetuated for so long. They are BULLSHIT for fucking. Nonetheless I went to college terrified that I'd be incapable of sleeping. See, the dorms flat out say that waterbeds are forbidden. So I went off anticipating a future of exhaustion, insomnia and mental illness because that was my perspective and the first time I crashed out on an actual, honest-to-god non waterbed that wasn't in a hotel I slept like the dead. It was amazing. Fuckin' real mattresses? HOLY SHIT 'didja see those prices? Nobody wants to talk about that. People ran waterbeds because they were cheap and countercultural. Know what killed waterbeds? Now - futons also suck. It is known. But you and your buddies can move from one shitty apartment to another without invoking a garden hose, a drill gun and a 2-hour dismantling procedure. Not only that but your shitty-ass futon doubles as a shitty-ass couch while your shitty-ass waterbed isn't even good for goldfish. Sex on a futon also sucks but not as hard as sex on a waterbed and clearly, "sex on a futon" was a sales strategy too. And there's no covenants in anybody's leases about futons. Waterbeds? Every apartment that isn't on the 1st floor has a rule against waterbeds and most of the apartments on the 1st floor have a rule anyway because they leak and they suck. A queen-sized waterbed mattress weighs more than a VW beetle and while the weight is distributed in such a way that your joists can take it, landlords aint' gonna hear it, hippie, buy a real mattress like a citizen. Waterbeds barely make sense if you own your own home and never move. bunch of 'boomers getting their first place? Sure. Buy a goddamn waterbed. But as soon as GenX had to schlep from one shitty basement apartment to another, they took one look at the waterbed and said fuck this shit in the ass. THAT is what happened to the waterbed - they were a bad idea that tickled the 'boomers because 'boomers are stupid but since they could buy a house for six quarters and a used saltine cracker they never noticed what a bad idea waterbeds are. Fuck waterbeds.
Agreed. Waterbeds really suck. They're kinda gross, really. And yes, sex in a waterbed isn't glamorous. It's clunky, at best. But, they were novel and had the appearance of being futuristic. I haven't seen one in the wild in decades.
I grew up sleeping on waterbeds. Even had one with my first girlfriend after moving out of the family homestead. (A huge California King summabitch, with massive slab headboard, sides, and foot. A California King is just enough bigger than a king sized bed that you need to buy special sheets for it.) They generally sucked. Sloshed like anything when you rolled over. Or your partner came back to bed after going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, sat down on their side of the bed, and almost launched you out the other side. (My partner at the time was 90 lbs soaking wet. She was TINY.) Eventually they came up with chambered designs and inserting a foam pad in the water to keep the sloshing down, and it prevented you from being ejected from the bed every time your partner climbed in... but then it was just a squishy mattress with finicky electronics that would sometimes leave you cold... And there are few things less pleasant than a fitted sheet slipping during the night, and the bare skin of your foot/leg/shoulder/arm touching the uncovered plastic bag of water... it's like touching a dead seal. In the middle of night. In bed. Blech. Borrowing three hoses from neighbors to run water up to your 3rd story window is a sure-fire way to make your downstairs neighbors VERY nervous, too...
Over time, waterbeds evolved to the point where they no longer had water in them. They're now called "memory foam" and they STILL SUCK. PTSD man I eventually ended up leaving the damn thing unplugged and piling blankets on top of it, then sleeping in a sleeping bag, then leaving the windows open so that during the winter my room got down into the 40s. Because if you're going to be camping on a fucking ice floe, camp on a fucking ice floe. The basic idea for waterbeds was "hey this scientifically unproven idea from the era of health enemas and leeches - how 'bout we perpetrate that on the entire goddamn public? It'll really piss off the hippies' parents and they'll buy 'em like hotcakes!"Eventually they came up with chambered designs and inserting a foam pad in the water to keep the sloshing down, and it prevented you from being ejected from the bed every time your partner climbed in... but then it was just a squishy mattress with finicky electronics that would sometimes leave you cold...
it's like touching a dead seal. In the middle of night. In bed.
Looking at some of these comments, waterbeds seem like a bad experience overall. I don't see how these things could have been so popular. I would have probably not enjoyed it at all. The last thing I would want is to wake up all wet during my sleep.