Brands have, like many of us, been pretty obsessed with Animal Crossing: New Horizons as the game has become an iconic aspect of quarantine life in 2020.
That’s not to say every marketing tie-in or stunt has been a good fit, or that the integrations even made much sense. (Inclusive new avatar skin options from Gillette? Cool. Branded bathroom wall patterns from Cottonelle? Debatable.)
But Ikea Taiwan definitely found a way to inject itself into Animal Crossing—basically by injecting Animal Crossing into the retailer’s iconic catalog.
The result, posted to the brand’s Facebook page, is a well-crafted collection of nearly one-to-one recreations, with furniture and character designs from the game used to reimagine pages from the catalog.
Not all the recreations are item-for-item. One of my favorites is this spread that replaces a hanging spherical lamp with the back of a character’s bulbous head:
But others are almost mind-bendingly perfect in terms of how many details align with the original:
You. can see more images on the brand’s Facebook post.
The project is reminiscent of another recent detail-rich masterpiece: Ikea’s recreation of living rooms from popular TV shows like The Simpsons, Friends and Stranger Things. That project from Publicis Spain, for the retailer’s United Arab Emirates operation, resulted in a 50% boost in web traffic for the products featured.
