When I was a kid, we laughed and laughed at commercials for the Contour Chair Lounge! Now I own one.
From origins in the 1950s until its ignoble end in the 1990s, the Contour Chair Lounge Company of St. Louis, MO produced bulky, weird looking, super comfortable chairs. Late night television was plagued with commercials like the above for the chair. Promising the chair was custom made to fit your body, offering wild discounts and fancy home electronics as perks, celebrity endorser Art Linkletter mercilessly hocked these lazy boys.
The company, sold at some point to the Craftmatic Adjustable Bed folks, came under scrutiny for its shady practices. The chairs were not custom made. The perks were hard to actually receive. Craftmatic said it wanted to focus on adjustable beds, so for over 20 years the ridiculous Contour Chair Lounge was forgotten by pretty much everyone, including me.
Now, my parents and friends have been complaining for about 2 years that I do not have a couch. The only seating I’ve needed, for the “lying around and reading” platform a couch would provide, has been well covered by a Corbusier LC4, in red. That amazing chair is really the most comfortable a sufferer of lower back pain can own. So, when I walked into a local consignment shop last week and saw this behemoth of a double Contour Chair Lounge, I instantly decided I must have it. Heck, it looks like someone just added a bunch of bulk to an LC4!
This model, called a “Senior Comfort” on the tag still stapled to the bottom, comes with manual adjustment for the seated position but electronic heat and “viveration,” a massaging function from before built-in massagers were nice, at all nice, like its a joke. I think it is just perfect and looks fantastic. I gave it the best spot in the house.
Possibly, I’m not the only person out there who thinks these are kinda cool. You can find quite a few on eBay and craigslist, generally at pretty good prices.
In as far as looks, its no Corbusier, but it is as comfortable and I think there is room for my giant dog Nemo and me.
Bonus link: Another crazy Contour Chair Lounge commercial