Welcome. This is what my wife calls "a bunch of stupid jokes and pictures of paper bags." She's right about the jokes. She's wrong about the bags: some of them are plastic.

What the critics say: "Utterly unnotable" (Wikipedia editor). "Ridiculous collections #4" (Buzzfeed). Other comments: "As complete wastes of time go, it's a very high quality complete waste of time... An entirely dispensable source of inane comments about a truly trivial subject... A monument to the planet's worst corporate design... An unwelcome reminder of some of the more unpleasant moments in our lives."

Donations (unused, please) of bags not represented in the bag gallery are welcomed -- please mail to this address, and I'll credit you on this site! I am happy to trade any extras that I have. Check out the links to other bag sites, find out how you can use your spare bags, and explore the fascinating world of bag manufacturers. 

Highlights: The design features page reveals the secrets of professional baggery, and the logos page analyses the enigma of airline corporate identities. Search for your favourite bag, browse the bag gallery by country and airline, and check out the biggest, best and worst bags!

Grinches spare German Wikipedia - for now

Back in March we reported that the Wikipedia entry on airsickness bags had been emasculated by fastidious editors. One justified hitting the delete key by describing bagsites such as bagophily.com as "utterly unnotable". Bremen-based baggist Wolfgang Franken has pointed out that the entry on "Spuckbeutel" in the German version of Wikipedia has so far been spared the blue-pencilled onslaught. More entertainingly written than its English equivalent (even before the grinches decimated it), the German entry mentions the innovative designs of Hapag-Lloyd Express, as well as Qantas's predilection for bags that double as film mailing envelopes. It even has a short list of collectors' bagsites. Wikipedia's policy is to make all its language versions parallel - so make sure you read the German version while it still exists. English speakers can console themselves with the thought that English and German are the only languages to have a Wikipedia entry on this important subject. A search for sac vomitoire in the French Wikipedia results in a plaintive "Il n'existe aucune page portant ce titre", and invites you to créer la page « sac vomitoire » vous-même. Spanish speakers in search of encyclopedic information on bolsas de mareo are similarly frustrated: "No existe ningún artículo con el título que has escrito". Meanwhile the English Wikipedia site requests readers to supply references to justify its bagtext. Sadly, most of the world's literature on bags is in German - as cited by the German Wikipedia page. Just remember, bagophily.com is not what Wikipedia regards as a "reliable source".

Saturday, May 03, 2008 

Underbagged

What do Latvia, Liberia and Lesotho have in common? Yes, they all start with an L. What else? They're all missing from my barfbag collection.

What's the biggest country not represented? Chad. In terms of population? Burkina Faso. Other prominent absentees (coloured red in the map): Georgia and Rwanda. 

Major underrepresented portions of the globe are a swathe of Africa and chunks of Central Asia and Central America.

Donations from these areas especially welcome!

Centres of megabagdiversity are the USA (though many US bags are distressingly plain), China, the UK, Canada, Germany, Brazil and Indonesia. 

Click here for details.

For new baggists only

New to the world of bag collecting? Want to get a head start on your collection? Then send me an email, and I'll send you a randomly selected free starter pack from my surplus bag stock. There won't be anything rare, and you may end up with some duplicates, but at least you'll be able to show your friends a few more of these lovely cultural artefacts. Make sure you include your mailing address in your email. Offer good as long as stocks last.

This is where old news goes when it's too old to be news.

Site Feed