Bainbridge Island resident and waterbed inventor Charles Hall talks about the redesigned waterbed concept that has no waves and gives better support, at his home on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018. It’s a rethink of his original design from 50 years ago that removes all its negative aspects and keeps its positives, he said. Today he's taking another go at the waterbed, hoping it's on the verge of a comeback. I feel like a lot of us spawned in a waterbed.” 
 
 And so those younger types, “Maybe they want to visit the spawning ground.” 
 
 That first waterbed was called “The Pleasure Pit” because, as the oft-repeated sales pitch went in that groovy era, “Two things are better on a waterbed, and one of them is sleeping.” 
 
 Working with a good friend of his from the waterbed days — Keith Koening, president of City Furniture, with 16 stores in South Florida — he is about to test-market Waterbed 2018. Gone is the wooden frame that made the older beds so hard to get out of, exchanged for a foam collar that surrounds the water bladder. The idea was that it would offer better support and a temperature system that would approximate the body’s skin temperature to help a person relax and get better sleep, he said. If history is to repeat, once again it’ll be that male customer who’ll plunk down the cash. For example, there are whirlpool baths taken by athletes — “letting your muscles relax, that soothing sensation associated with floating,” says Charlie. Fifty years ago, Hall’s original concept began as a chair filled with a viscous cooking starch. “Your body is 90-some-percent water anyway, what you’re doing in an environment before you’re born is water.” 
 
 
 
 While he was touting its practical benefits, the undulating bed took off for other reasons amid the counterculture movement and sexual revolution of the 1970s. The chair weighed about 300 pounds, the starch didn’t flow well and it was difficult to get out of, Hall said, so he abandoned the idea in favor of the bed that would launch his design career. Then when people slept on them, they said, ‘Hey, that’s actually comfortable.’” 
 
 He laments how his product has been portrayed in movies and TV shows, where they’d always seem to be a joke, exploding or springing a leak.
– Waterbeds were all the rage back in the 1970s before all but disappearing the following decade. Now the original inventor plans a big comeback in the new millennium. Fittingly, he sees millennials as the key to that revival, reports the Seattle Times. “I don’t think a millennial has ever seen one,” 71-year-old Charlie Hall tells the newspaper. Hall is betting that a slew of improvements—temperature control, calmer waves, etc.—will once again make the beds a must-have for the younger generation when they hit the market later this year, initally at the City Furniture chain in Florida. King- and queen-sized mattresses will be available, and those looking to indulge can expect to pay about $2,000, reports KREM2. “I think that some people will have a memory of it and want to revisit it just because they remember waterbeds and want to see how different they are,” says Hall. “And then there’ll be a generation, it’ll be a total novelty for them.” Both stories recount the colorful history and risque marketing that helped make the original waterbeds popular 50 years ago. Consider that the first one was called "The Pleasure Pit," and came with a not-too-subtle slogan: “Two things are better on a waterbed, and one of them is sleeping.” Hall does indeed own the patent for the waterbed, and he's had other successful inventions over the years, including a solar-heated shower for campers.