If You Can Sit, You Can Get Fit: The Hawaii Chair

For this one, we almost don’t need to comment on anything. Isn’t it ridiculous enough as it is? Who in his right mind would want to purchase a chair that moves like an out-of-control Lazy Susan? This by far is lazier and worse than the Flex Belt and Contour! At least with those ab machines you could do other things while wearing them, but you can’t do anything at all on the Hawaii Chair!

The above video, while short, is filled to the brim with bad acting and unconvincing lines. To go through them all would be redundant and painful. For that reason we are not going to spend this post on that video but the video on the website. Trust us, you will want to take a look at the website.

Now the Hawaii Chair claims that it goes 2,800 revolutions per minute and either weighs or could handle 300 pounds—it isn’t clear from the wording. But why does it make that claim aside from the fact that it wants to wow viewers into purchasing this $300 contraption? What does it mean to go 2,800 RPMs? Could you do 2,800 hula-like motions in one minute? Would anyone want to do that and probably suffer an extreme form of whiplash? It’s also interesting that they call the motor for the chair a “Hula Motor,” as if the motor was specifically designed to do the hula and not just spin around.

Now there is a specific demographic targeted in the video on the website: old people. The narrator, who sounds as if he only learned to read English, states: “Old men can use the Hawaii Chair easily to help improve the operation of the digestive [and here he stutters and mispronounces the word “digestive”] and cardiovascular systems.” Of course, while the narrator is talking about old men, the video shows a bunch of old women using the Hawaii Chair. The wording sounds like a translation from another language. An American-based company will never be so direct as to use the word “old” when targeting old people.

Then we get some good old fashioned name-dropping. Dr. Fredericks, who decided that his M.D. or Ph.D. degree warranted the study of the laziest ab machine ever contrived, apparently ran some “scientific experiments” that produced amazing results. He discovered, using the latest scientific technology, mind you, that your heart rate goes up from 65 beats per minute to 136 beats per minute! How does the narrator describe a jump of 71 beats per minute? Like this: “Dr. Fredericks’ scientific experiments prove that before using the Hawaii Chair the average breathing rate is 65 times and after using the Hawaii Chair, for ten minutes only, the breathing rate increases by 136 times!” Notice how “per minute” is elided and how the preposition “by” makes it seem that we would have to multiply 65 by 136 to get the new Hawaii Chair heart rate. (By the way, if we did the math on that, we get 8,840 beats per minute [assuming, of course, they are going by minutes here]—that will kill you, not help your circulation.) Luckily they have an EKG machine from 1985 to help clarify the botched English of our poor narrator. And isn’t it common knowledge that 65 beats per minute is the standard resting heart rate? Why would our doctor need to do scientific experiments to figure that out? Ultimately, this is not proof that the stupid chair even works. An elevated heart rate can be an indication of strenuous exercise, but it also could be a sign of stress, fear, or excitement. If you had to constantly try to balance yourself for ten minutes, don’t you think your heart rate would go up? We’re sorry Dr. Fredericks, but even with all your science, you do not have us convinced that this is something more than a joke.

Our humble narrator then either relates an experience he had or is translating for a woman who most likely speaks better English than he does. We’re guessing that it’s the latter, because the video introduces Karen Nelson from Fountain Valley, CA. She’s probably telling her story competently, but we don’t get to hear that. Thanks, narrator dude.

Lastly, throughout the video we have that stupid song about the Hawaii Chair playing in what is supposed to be the background. Unfortunately, it is as loud as the narrator, and the ensuing cacophony makes you see vertigo, leaving you to seize your skull with clawed hands. This is a far cry from the peacefulness and relaxation that connotes Hawaii and everything Hawaiian.

We cannot convince you enough to avoid this machine. The machine, if not a complete joke, is at least ridiculous in concept and execution. Luckily we have our good friend Ellen DeGeneres to show us just how stupid and impractical the Hawaii Chair is: