Let’s establish something straight out: The Moon Pod is not a casual purchase. When it was unleashed from that Valhalla of TEDx conference nerds we know as “Kickstarter,” the idea sounded nice enough but the early prices were unheard-of. The markets calmed down now that the Silicon Valley elites have all got one, so the price is down to a manageable few hundred dollars. That’s an expected price for mid-range major furniture pieces. But the Moon Pod is a beanbag chair.
Every beanbag chair I’ve encountered up to now reminds me of an elementary school art class project. It was supposed to be an ashtray, but it came out lopsided. Oh well, it got graded B, class passed. Then when I go to sit on one, well… Yes, it holds me up. It’s just that it does about as good a job of that as a trash bag full of freshly raked leaves.
Community household Moon Pod
My roommate has gotten a Moon Pod and since he’s gone most of the time on business travel (did I hit the roommate jackpot or what?), that unofficially makes it the community household Moon Pod. After a few days of the house to ourselves, my dog was the first one to take a liking to the Moon Pod. She’s entitled that way.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually not being fair to it at all. This is a space-age engineered beanbag chair made out of materials I probably can’t pronounce, but it is much firmer. It’s also much bigger than a beanbag chair, so you can experiment with sitting, laying back, reclining, lounging, and sprawling. You can lie on it full out. It is the most amazingly comfortable gray blob I have ever become familiar with, which is a sentence I never foresaw typing.
Strengths and weaknesses
From my unofficial testing of this cushy gray lump, I’ve come to the following observations of its strengths and weaknesses:
- No cup-holder. Forget drinking in it unless you plan on holding your beer the entire time.
- It does not appear to stain, or else everything else around here is cleaner than I think it is. It looks like you could stuff it into an oversize washer you’d use for down comforters, though.
- It is so lightweight and pliable, for once it’s something that you can’t stub your toe on.
- It’s eerie how well it goes with idle phone browsing.
It is a mortal challenge to stay awake in this thing. Not only is it comfy, but it feels like memory foam with AI. It deliberately contours to your neckline no matter what position you’re in. Twenty minutes tops, and then you’d better get up if you have anything important to do and don’t want to be lured to slumber by the siren song of the lunar pod.
Relieves stress?
As I understand it, the guy who Kickstarted this says he made it for autistic kids. I don’t know how much it helps with mental illness per se, as there’s no way to measure that, but I can tell you that plopping into the chair helps to relieve my own stress. On the other hand, with the millions of dollars this guy’s raised, I’d almost expect it should fly to the actual moon, but apparently this is what it takes to engineer a bag of matter made from molecules that have their own doctorate degrees.
The dog has moved on to the couch because that’s what she does, she rotates her hangouts every few days because she’s apparently hiding from somebody she owes money to. I know she’ll be back for the Moon Pod, but for now I’m claiming it. I don’t get to sit on a space-age pod every day, not on my budget.