Picture the scene: it’s 1998 and you have a friend over after school, let’s call her Melissa. You’re talking about boys while listening to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and/or the Spice Girls. Your mom shouts up the stairs that dinner is ready. Melissa gets up from the armchair in your room and screams. The armchair has peeled away from her skin, leaving visible red friction burns on the backs of her legs.
How? Well, this is no ordinary armchair. It’s made of inflatable blue plastic — part of the shockingly popular late 90s interior design trend of inflatable furniture. What was that all about?
You got your inflatable chair for your 16th birthday and it’s the coolest thing you’ve ever owned. The armchair proves that you are a mature, sophisticated young woman of impeccable taste, who even has her own furniture. OK, so Melissa is in pain, but she doesn’t really mind; friction marks from inflatable furniture are the ultimate status symbol for every kind of kooky, totally cool, futuristic 90s chick. You and Melissa have talked about it, and you’re pretty sure that in the 21st century, everything will be inflatable: cars, computers, clothes. You’re totally ready for Y2K: you both have inflatable backpacks too!
A year later, you still sit on the inflatable armchair sometimes, but it’s been covered over with an even more sophisticated faux-fur throw in dusky pink (it keeps sliding off, natch). Two years later, it’s deflated in your parents’ garage, long-neglected behind a box of Sweet Valley High books, a broken lava lamp and your mom’s old Thighmaster. Of course, you’re not taking the chair to college with you, that would be soooo lame and immature!
Most commonly found in three shades — hot pink, aquamarine or Friends apartment purple — but with some variations (if yours had glitter in, we bow down), inflatable furniture was a late 90s teen bedroom must-have that you could pick up from Claire’s or your local Walmart for under $20. The interiors of the era sprinkled space age vibes into 60s shapes, while clinging onto some straightforward 80s tackiness that made every normal home look like a soft play center. And the armchair was merely the entry-level piece. If you had a big enough bedroom, you might have had an inflatable couch or a full suite. You could even get tables. You just couldn’t put a drink on them. Or your feet. Or lean on them to do your homework.
Seriously, is there anything less practical than inflatable furniture?
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In the cold light of day, those friction burns long since healed, and the sound of the ripples as distant a memory as the music of Third Eye Blind, we’re looking back with suspicion. Was inflatable furniture, in fact, a parent-controlled security system? Because if a boy came over and they so much as slightly shifted their body weight in your direction while perched on that stupid couch, the whole house would instantly hear the squeaks and rumbles. And that’s if it hadn’t simply tipped over or deflated the second Jason or Justin or Josh sat on it.
Everything about inflatable furniture was conspicuous: the look, the sound, the feel, the process of assembling it. Sure, your folks acted like getting you that chair was a major inconvenience, huffing and puffing as they tried to find a pump that fitted the nozzle, before admitting defeat and just blowing it up with their tired old lungs (because they were, like, 39! Ancient!), but really, it meant they were aware of your every movement up there.
Best of all, they knew that you and Melissa definitely weren’t going to smoke with one of those in your room. Genius.
