Not to be confused with the Christmas carol, Silentnight is the largest manufacturer of beds & mattresses in the United Kingdom.
The mascots for the company are a hippo and duck couple, who demonstrate that the products are suitable for all shapes and sizes.
The Silentnight adverts contain examples of:
- 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The 2000s adverts use this technique.
- A Boy, a Girl, and a Baby Family: The Hippo and Duck family has boy Hugo, girl Dee-Dee, and baby Henry.
- Alliterative Name: Dee-Dee the duck, Hugo the hippo, Henry the hippo.
- Anthropomorphic Shift: In the original 1980s advert, a relatively "real" looking hippo (apart from standing on his hind legs and wearing pyjamas) shares a mattress with a perfectly realistic-looking duck, who - despite the voiceover referring to "your partner" - is apparently just there to demonstrate that it (it doesn't even seem appropriate to call it "she" at this point) doesn't roll towards him. By the 2000s, the adverts had switched to cartoons, and become this
example of Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action. - Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The hippos are shown to have a unique peach skin.
- Art Evolution: In the 2010s, the Hippo and Duck characters have switched from hand-drawn to CGI.
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Hippo.
- Black Bead Eyes: Duck and her daughter Dee-Dee are shown with these in the 2000s adverts. However, since 2010, Duck's CGI redesign no longer had black bead eyes.
- Call-Back: In the opening scene in the "My First Bed" advert, you can hear the "Miracoils" advert playing on the television in the background, albeit sounding noticeably different (if you listen closely to both adverts).
- Catching Some Z's: Referenced near the end of the "My First Bed" advert, in which baby Henry was shown arranging three letter Z magnets on his bedframe over where he sleeps.
- Double Take: In the "My First Bed" advert, if you look close enough in the board game sequence, you can see Henry the baby hippo doing this out of joy when he sees how much Dee-Dee (the kid duck) rolled.
- Fade to Black: The "My First Bed" advert uses this for transitions to the next scene.
- Gender Equals Breed: Hippo and Duck's hippo kids are male, while their duck kid is female.
- Hammerspace: One advertfrom the 2010s has the duck trying to wake up her Heavy Sleeper hippo husband by pulling noisy objects out of thin air.
- Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: The hippo and duck. One ad showed them putting their three kids to bed (one of whom were ducks, and the other two were hippos), implying this trope.
- Huggy, Huggy Hippos: Despite his large stature and occasional rambunctious behavior, Hippo is a Gentle Giant deep down. His two sons, Hugo and Henry, also qualify.
- Interspecies Romance: The advertisements started by simply having a hippo and a duck on opposite sides of the mattress to demonstrate how the mattress design prevented the duck sloping towards the hippo, but an Anthropomorphic Shift later, it's pretty clear they're a couple. One ad even features their kids.
- Security Blanket: Henry Hippo has one, him being a baby and all.
- Shifted to CGI: This happened to the Hippo and Duck in the 2010s.
- The Voiceless: Hippo and Duck were voiced in the 2000s adverts, but in the American Idol sponsors in the 2010s, they didn't have voices.
- Hippo: Sleep tight.Duck: Have a silent night.
