IKEA once put a pin in its dream of inflatable furniture. Now it’s finally blowing up | CNN

For three deflating decades, IKEA’s dream of inflatable furniture fell flat. Now, the Swedish flatpack giant believes its long-elusive obsession is, at long last, blowing up. Launching Thursday, May 14, the “PS 2026 easy chair” is a lean, green, steel-framed seat that weighs less than a microwave and can be assembled via a foot pump. Yet convenience has not come at the price of comfort, insists designer Mikael Axelsson, who set out to better the coziness of conventional foam fillings. “I wanted to do proper furniture, that was the goal,” Axelsson told CNN. “Air is something that is free and available for everyone, so there’s something poetic about that, but we can’t reduce it to the point where it’s not comfortable.” Since the ‘90s, inflatable furniture has been IKEA’s uncomfortable, not to mention costly, white whale. Launched in the summer of 1997 to huge fanfare, the retailer believed it had bet on a winner with its a.i.r (Air is a Resource) series. Money was poured into the development of a chair and sofa made of a fully recyclable polyolefin plastic that could be blown up with a hairdryer, with savings set to come later from massively reduced transport