IKEA Launches Collection Designed for Families to Play & Learn

September 3, 2025  by Karen Parrish in Business Strategy, Industry   

The latest IKEA Play Report 2024 showed that only 51% of children are happy with the amount of time they have for play, and 54% of parents would like to have more time to play with their children. Featuring a variety of 29 products, SANDLÖPARE is designed to spark exploration, imagination, and role play into the everyday life. Here, stools become zebras, rugs are snakes, and with the quilted mat and storage trunk a child’s bedroom turns into a savannah camp site.

Through the partnership and valuable expertise of Nordens Ark*, the SANDLÖPARE collection also gives a voice to less known and endangered species. Over the next few years, IKEA of Sweden AB will support Nordens Ark by raising awareness for endangered species, while Nordens Ark will continue to share its knowledge and support in developing new products that aim to evoke children’s curiosity about our planet, nature, the animals and how important they are. In addition, several IKEA retailers are launching a donation campaign supporting a local non-profit organization committed to the purpose of preserving, protecting or enhancing the planet's natural environment and animals.

“Together with Nordens Ark, our illustrations came even closer to reality. Before our collaboration, I had never heard of the flat pancake tortoise or the slender-snouted crocodile. Now, children and parents can discover these unique species in the SANDLÖPARE collection with the same curiosity as I did,’’ says Anna Edlundh, product design developer, IKEA of Sweden AB.

The SANDLÖPARE soft toys are all made of 100% recycled materials**, this includes the filling, skins, threads and reinforcements. Testing plays a crucial role in the development of soft toys. They all undergo rigorous testing before reaching the stores. There are pull tests, testing for chemicals and durability as well as multiple rounds in the washing machine, to ensure that each soft toy keeps it shape.

‘’We know what these soft toys go through when they come to a home. There will be biting, chewing, pulling, picking and probably a few rounds of playing in the mud too. As they should! For SANDLÖPARE, the neck of the giraffe was the biggest challenge, because the neck still needs to stand firm after some rounds in the washing machine. At the same time, the neck needs to feel soft, not like you’re holding a baseball bat. It was a puzzle, but we managed and are super happy with the result,’’ says Jorge Omar Santoyo Henaine, Product Design Developer, IKEA of Sweden AB.

Since 1997, all IKEA soft toys have embroidered eyes instead of beads. What started as a safety measure ended up improving the design. The embroidered eyes also give the soft toys a much livelier expression.

Jorge continues: “To an IKEA product developer, that’s like finding gold at the end of the rainbow. For a soft toy animal, everything is in the eyes. The size and placement of a white dot can be the difference between angry, surprised, happy or sad, so we spend a lot of time on getting the perfect expression. Now, our soft toy animals are both safe and sassy.’’

The SANDLÖPARE collection will launch across all IKEA markets in October 2025.

*Founded in 1989, Nordens Ark is a private non-profit foundation focusing on nature conservation, breeding and rearing, as well as research and education. 
**Except for the soft toy velvet monkey and baby that consist of 99.91% recycled materials, and the chimpanzee that consist of 99.84% recycled materials, due to the small touch and close fastening parts on their hands.