The Montoya Herald, a weblog about Blueprint, jQuery, design, music and life, publishing on the web since September 2005. Written by Christian Montoya: developer, designer and entrepreneur.

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Review: Sumo Omni

Posted on November 2, 2007.

Toward the end of my seventh grade year, I signed up for a creative writing class. That's what it was called in the coursebook, that's what I had taken in the sixth grade, and that's what I was looking forward to. I don't think I need to defend my reasons for wanting to take a creative writing class; I've always been a writer. Case in point is that I was looking forward to it.

And then I got hit with the bait-and-switch by my school. I never understood how or why it happened, but the class got turned into an SAT writing prep course, which meant no poems, no narrative stories, and no fun. The highlight of my final year of middle school was taken right out from under my feet and replaced with a pile of mud. Sure, SAT Writing Prep was useful and probably contributed to the stellar test scores I got later on in life, which lead to my attending a university that stole 4 good years of my life… wait, I was trying to rationalize the upsides here. Back to the point, this class was lame and I couldn't even complain to anyone because I got punk'd and there was no creative writing class for eighth graders, period.

All of this would have been terrible, really terrible, except there was one bit of consolation: this classroom had bean bag chairs. Whenever we had our school-wide "silent reading" time, I could fight for one of those bean bag chairs and spend the next 20 minutes in utter nerd bliss as I enjoyed the natural ability of the beans inside the bag to mold to my posterior as I followed the antics of The Outsiders or some other novel targeted at five or six years above my age group. That, friends, was the highlight of my eighth grade year, and I swore that someday I would own my own bean bag chair. It was my dream.

Fast-forward nine years and a lot has changed. They've got flying cars and composite windows and talking dogs these days, but my dreams haven't changed. Fortunately, the bean bag didn't go the way of the lava lamp or SEGA's consoles; it's been updated with "new technology." A perfect example: the Sumo Omni. It's a "chair + lounge + loveseat + floor pillow," which makes for 3 things I don't already have (and one thing you can never have enough of). Let me show you the pictures:

BeanBag 2

This thing came in a box big enough to hold a small family of stowaways, but it weighed much less.

BeanBag 3

Set up next to my Ikea chair, in standard bean bag recliner mode.

BeanBag 4

Seen here installed as an Ikea-chair plugin. The Sumo Omni is designed with the OpenChair API, so it's compatible with most standard chairs.

BeanBag 5

With a little finagling, I was able to mold the Omni into the shape of the bean bag chairs of my childhood. This is bliss.

I don't think I need to say much about why I like the Omni, but if you want to know I can entertain you. This thing is amazing. Two people could curl up like LOLcats and sleep comfortably on top of this thing, and it's got tear-resistant nylon to protect the inner beans from real LOLcats too. The proof, however, is in the sitting, and it holds up to a good sit exceptionally well. Yesterday I sat for two whole hours on top of this thing while watching prime-time television with a bottle of wine in my hand, and I completely forgot about how I had spent the whole day wrestling with Apache settings and CGI scripts. Anything that can make me forgot about my problems gets an A in my book.

Now this is the part of my review where I usually outweigh the pros with cons, but I haven't found any yet. If I do find any, you'll see some underlined text beneath this paragraph with a date on it and something about "I found something wrong with this, and it's —." Until then, perfect 10. I like my Omni.

I still wish that class had been about creative writing, though.

Get your own Omni here: SumoLounge, and send me pictures so we can be Omni buddies.

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5 Comments

  1. Kris Gosser on November 2, 2007

    I have the same IKEA chair! Only the cushions on mine are chocolate brown :)

  2. Maggie on November 3, 2007

    Hey Christian, that's pretty neat. It's bling though, but when you think of it as a sort of mattress too, then it can be justifiable. anyway, cool review, thanks!

  3. FoxyLady on November 8, 2007

    I meant to comment earlier.

    Reading this entry made me laugh and cry and yearn for my very own Sumo baggy chair. It looks cute actually.

    And I heard that class was lame. I'm just glad I didn't take it :) Yay for home ec!

  4. rangers11111 on November 15, 2007

    Hey u sent me the link from flickr. Thank you very much, i found your review to be very helpful and now that the omni is comfortably accomadating my cat's napping needs in my living room I see what you mean. I found out the beads are made of that memory- foam stuff. Nice. Thanks again.

  5. Christian Montoya on November 16, 2007

    I'm glad I could be of help. And memory-foam would explain why it keeps its shape so well.

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