The most punk gesture of 2014 has already taken place. Not onstage at the Brits or in the pages of the New Musical Express, but in Germany, where Ikea revealed a shocking vision for a future of pain and despair, making the infuriatingly obtuse decision to kill off its iconic Expedit series.
There are reports of panic buying, and a Save the Expedit Facebook group has more than 20,000 likes in Germany alone. The uproar will only intensify as stocks dwindle: the Expedit, a blocky shelving unit in combinations of squares that include 5x5, 4x4 and 2x4 (or 4x2 if you're that way inclined), is a modern design classic.
Here in London you'd struggle to find more than six media-based companies whose offices aren't furnished with at least one Expedit, but Expedit fetishism is not reserved for an urban elite, nor confined to offices in which men under 25 brandish beards. Expedits were cheap enough to be popular in living rooms across the planet, even in provincial conurbations where facial hair is still the domain of uncles and roofing specialists.
Expedits were for everyone, even children. Last year, Ikea produced tiny replicas for dollhouses.
YouTube throws up more than 13,000 results for Ikea Expedit: videos show people putting them together, the shelving equivalent of niche erotic slash fiction. And Expedits found unlikely support from vinyl obsessives, because men in their late-30s who really should have digitised all their music by now found that Expedits were perfectly sized to house thousands of 12in discs.
Sad, angry and confused as I am that the Expedit is on its way to the Bargain Corner in the sky, the purist in me wonders whether the range lost its way in recent years. Call me old fashioned, but I think a true Expedit should be big enough to kill a man when toppled, so I have little time for the ludicrous 1x5 model, or the risible 1x1. But part of the Expedit's appeal – its simplicity – dissolved completely in 2012 when Ikea introduced a high-gloss finish to some models. A red Expedit appeared, as did a grey one. This was followed in 2013 by hot pink, teal, and orange.
Back then, in 2013, it seemed like an exciting time to be an Expedit fan, but we should have learned lessons from the economy, where a period of rapid expansion is inevitably – necessarily – followed by catastrophic collapse. When it threw all these new models out there, Ikea was not waving, but drowning. This sudden burst of activity was actually the Expedit in its death throes. I could deploy yet another analogy about Ikea killing the goose that lay the golden half-erected Expedit on the floor and had an argument with its partner about whether to kick the shelves into place or use a mallet as it says in the instructions, but the point is that we saw it all happening and we did nothing.
All storage solutions/room dividers must pass, they say. But omnipresent items such as Expedits come to represent whole chunks of our lives. It might seem crass to compartmentalise your existence according to the lifespan of consumer goods, but how else are you going to gauge your life? Via the happiness of your children? Well, good luck to my children growing up in a world without Expedits. Just last week I told my wife of a daring plan to purchase two Expedits, one for each of my daughters. I must admit that at this point I did consider the coloured, shiny versions, but what proud father would not want to be there to purchase his daughter her first Expedit? This rite of passage is one I may never get to share with my children. They will grow up faintly recalling the 5x5 behemoth that once dominated their room, but their minds will play tricks. They won't think of it as an Expedit. They'll swear it was a Kallax.
Kallax is the name of the item with which Ikea intends to replace the Expedit. Learning from mistakes made by the Queen in the days following Diana's death, Ikea spokeswoman Janice Simonsen has observed the sense of disquiet around the globe, and last week told the Huffington Post: "Our customers may be worried that they won't have the wonderful function and flexibility that they had with Expedit, but this is not the case." That's the problem, Janice. This Kallax thing is not the case. It's not the case I welcomed into my home, it's is a bookcase that has murdered its rival and now expects to waltz into my life.
I must admit I find the Kallax's bravado admirable and slightly arousing, but I will refuse its advances, not least because it sounds like something you buy in Boots to make you poo. Mind you I suppose you could say the same of Expedit.
Poo aside, maybe there's light at the end of a long Swedish tunnel. The passing of time conjures nostalgia, scarcity prompts demand, and in 30 years an Expedit revival range could magically appear, like the G-Plan-inspired range currently available in, er, Ikea. In the meantime I'll boycott the Kallax, and by boycott I mean I'll refuse its advances, as outlined above, for approximately five months, then purchase no fewer than three by the end of the year.
