6 Wikipedia Facts That Prove This Isn't The Most Boring Product On Earth

Yawn, amirite? As useful as a good air mattress can be, no other products are so good at “putting us to sleep” (LOLOLOL) when we have to write about them. This basic Serta model, which sits right smack in the middle of the category’s price range with standard features like an external AC pump and flocked top, is a particularly unremarkable specimen.

But it turns out this air mattress - and air mattresses in general - have some stories to tell, too. We were prepared to make up a list of fake air mattress facts, but it was actually easier to find these real ones on Wikipedia:

1: Despite being known as one of the leading mattress makers, Serta was originally founded in 1931 by a cooperative of 13 different manufacturers, purely as a marketing brand. It was ultimately taken over by the largest of these licensees and turned into a more typical company.

2: In Australia, bushwalkers use air mattresses for “liloing”, riding air mattresses down creeks and rivers.

3: Like a million other things from bondage pants to plumbing pipe, the body of this air mattress is primarily made from the ubiquitous plastic PVC. But when it was first invented, PVC was too brittle to be used in manufacturing. It was only after the Goodrich company blended it with various additives that it became the PVC we all use today.

4: This early depiction of an air mattress appears in an insane military manual written in 1405. Bellifortis by Konrad Keyser is packed with crude illustrations of the kind of badass war machines that maladjusted kids used to draw in their spiral notebooks. It also features imaginative torture devices, the first known depiction of a chastity belt, lots of astrological mumbo-jumbo, and this picture of Alexander the Great holding a rocket. Fucking awesome, right?:

5: The once-inescapable Serta “counting sheep” commercials were produced by the animators of Wallace & Gromit, Aardman Animations.

6: The United States has the longest “Queen-sized beds” in the world, one inch longer than in Europe and two inches longer than in Asia. USA! USA!

See, this Serta Queen Air Mattress isn’t just another dull unit we have to move. It’s a doorway to a world of history, discovery, adventure, and rockets! (But what the hell are we going to say about them next time…?)