One IKEA Offers Instructions On How To Turn Those Blue Bags Into Pet Raincoats & Picnic Blankets

While you might be an expert at reusing that blue plastic shopping bag from IKEA by filling it with junk and hiding it in your closet/under your bed, there’s a lot more you can do with it — like turning it into a doggy raincoat or a handy picnic blanket.

Although IKEA has offered a few helpful suggestions for reusing the Frakta bag in the United Arab Emirates in the past, including the aforementioned blanket, a recent promotion in Dubai took it a step further by packaging instructions for anything from a baby bib to an artist’s apron with the bags, reports AdWeek.

“We simply printed a set of lines on the inside of each Frakta bag, turning it from ‘just’ a bag into a product with endless possibilities,” agency Memac Ogilvy & Mather, which came up with the concept, told AdWeek.

These special bags sold out within a week, but more will be available soon, according to the promotional video.

It’s unlikely that IKEA customers can expect to see these special bags in the U.S. as it seems this was a special promotion run by the ad agency, and not a greater plan by IKEA corporate.

When we asked about plans for similar bags in the U.S. and for a copy of the instructions included in the Dubai promotion, a spokeswoman for the company tells Consumerist that “these ‘new innovations’ are completely outside of our IKEA designs. Therefore we have no instructions to share.”

She clarified that the campaign is not run by IKEA, but that the blue bag is “certainly iconic,” and the company “will have new sustainable IKEA bag designs in the near future.”

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