Here's a question: how do you know your company has created something valuable?

A good tell-sign would be when you decide to discotinue it, the entire interweb goes into total meltdown.

That was what happened on social media-sphere recently.

Leave him alone!

Twitter users went into absolute meltdown recently after they found out that IKEA will be discontinuing a stuffed animal toy.

It's not just any stuffed animal, mind you; it's their cult favourite giant blue shark called BLÅHAJ, which gained popularity back in 2019 when people begin posting photos of the cuddly toy doing "human things":


Image credit: IKEA

The whole social media drama started when IKEA UK sent out a tweet on 26 September explaining that the BLÅHAJ was currently unavailable due to "supply issues".

But it was the second part of the tweet that got the attention of social media users, when an IKEA support staff member by the name of Alex mentioned that the cuddly blue shark "may only be available for a short period of time as it is set to be discontinued from April 2022".

The news didn't sit too well with netizens, who uttered their disbelief over the piece of information.

Interestingly, it seemed like Twitter users were genuinely upset to find out that BLÅHAJ will be permanently taken off the shelves:

In fact, even social media users halfway across the world felt the pain of the sudden announcement.

According to a report by Business Insider, Weibo users in China took to the social media platform to mourn the 'death' of BLÅHAJ.

A thread with the title "Ikea toy to cease development" was reportedly viewed over 72 million times on the social media site, even spawning over 10,000 discussion threads.


Image credit: Insider

That's not all: there's also a petition running on Petition.org, urging IKEA to continue selling the BLÅHAJ.

At the time of writing, it has garnered more than 4,300 signatures. If you love the blue shark, you can sign the petition here.

Yeah, we love our BLÅHAJ, alright.

There may be hope yet

Thankfully, there's still a sliver of hope that IKEA may not be discontinuing the BLÅHAJ beyond the UK.

A seperate tweet by IKEA USA mentioned that they have no plans to discontinue the stuffed toy in a respond to a Twitter user:

However, that didn't stop people from panic buying BLÅHAJ, as Business Insider reported that the soft toy has been listed as 'sold out' in IKEA's Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore online stores.

Thankfully for us Malaysians, there's still hope yet.

A quick check revealed that the BLÅHAJ is still available on IKEA Malaysia's website for RM59:


If you have yet to bring this cuddly blue shark home, better do it soon.

Who knows it will be collector's item in the future, kan?

Main image credit: Demilked, IKEA Malaysia