TV

Please Enjoy Sam Simmons Doing A Mattress Infomercial For The Baffled Viewers Of ‘Today’

Imagine being the poor Today Show viewer just learning about Sam Simmons for the first time.

by Sam Langford  30 April 2019
sam simmons today show

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When it comes to infomercials, regular viewers of breakfast TV might be tempted to say they’ve seen it all. This morning, though, the loyal audience of Today were treated to what is almost certainly the weirdest mattress ad they’ve ever encountered, or will encounter.

For five glorious minutes, this particular ad featured comedian Sam Simmons as a mattress salesman having a mattress-induced breakdown. Things began normally enough: Simmons spruiked his product’s “classic proven technology that works”, and exhorted viewers to think about just how great sleep is, especially when conducted on, say, a mattress.

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After that, though, things started to disintegrate. “You know that feeling where you’re just about to drift to sleep, but you start thinking about trying to go to sleep, and then it ends up in your head just going around in circles like ‘I’m awake, because I’m not sleeping!’ and that constant cycle of going to sleep?!” Simmons asked. Later, he stood next to a cross-section of mattress layers and “patented” springs and described it as a “beautiful bedtime lasagne” designed to “help the dreams come out of your head good”.

By this point, it should have been abundantly clear that this was not a serious infomercial (at least, not a serious infomercial for “Slumber-Tech” — later in the piece Koala Mattresses were finally name-dropped). For viewers who’ve heard of Sam Simmons, the joke was obvious the moment his distinctive moustache appeared on screen.

And yet, for many a Today viewer, there’s probably a good chance they’ve never heard of Simmons. After all, it took the Today Show an entire year to discover the video game sensation Fortnite, and even then they seemed to be under the impression that it was “VIOLENT”.

So imagine, if you will, being the poor Today Show viewer just learning about Sam Simmons for the first time as you watch this infomercial. There are already a handful of viewers posting to Today’s social media to ask, apparently sincerely, “what on earth was that mattress ad?”. Think of them as you watch this masterpiece.