40-Mile Air

A large plastic bag with a unique closure mechanism: put your fingers in the thumbholes, and you can pull on two plastic strips that pull the bag shut.

This Alaskan firm offers "sheep, moose, caribou & bear hunts". I've heard of hunting moose, caribou and bears - but sheep?

At 373 x 282 mm, this bag is large, but you'll need several if you want to transport your kill back to Fairbanks without bloodying the interior decor of the plane.

Freebird

Hard-to-lose yellow bag with a logo that looks like ~) on its edge. Add a couple of dots and it looks like a smiley with a broken nose :~)

Free Bird Airlines

I thought that free birds were undesirable in airports - they tend to get sucked into jet engines?

Like the red worm being sucked into the G of this logo, in fact.

What does a worm and a G have to do with Free Bird anyway?

Frontier Airlines

"A rare, old defunct US carrier back when the US competed in the arena of bag design....vintage, 1970's" says Bruce Kelly.

Frontier Airlines (green sticker)

At least a sticker is better than the unadorned plain white bags you get from most American carriers.

Unclear if this Denver-based firm is a resurrected version of the Frontier Airlines above.

Frontier Airlines (green binbag)

I think I preferred the sticker: at least you knew which airline you were on. This sturdy bag is made out of the same thick polythene they use to collect garden waste in.

Frontier Airlines (green paper)

Still the lean, mean green flying machine... but now in paper rather than plastic. And still nothing to tell you what airline you're on.

Thanks to David Shomper. (2006)

Frontier (patent 7,041,042)

If you bother to look up this US patent (the number is printed on the bottom of the bag), you'll find it's for a "Method for making a seamless plastic motion discomfort receptacle". One assumes that buried in the small print of the patent document is a ban on Frontier putting its own logo on bags produced with this method.

Thanks to David Shomper (2007)