Klarna has revealed the most popular beauty, fashion, footwear and gaming items via a new campaign which shows stories of how these items made it into shopping carts through retro-inspired AR games on Instagram.

There is one game for each trend where players blink their eyes to move their shopping cart and collect coins with the three highest scores in each environment winning. Retailers involved in the game include Beautopia, Kogan.com, Cotton On Body and JD Sports.

Each game is inspired by the trend itself and is designed in a retro 8-bit world, mixed with contemporary design elements. Shoppers can play to win $3,450 worth of trending products by playing the game – Top of the Carts.

In fashion, loungewear purchases in the app increased by 100% between March and April and after the premiere of the Paris Hilton documentary, ‘This is Paris’, there was a 59% increase in wish-listed velour sets.

For gamers, searches for puzzles increased by 134% between October and November with the PlayStation 5 the most wish-listed console of the year and surpassing all other products across every category.

Sneakerheads’ most wish-listed sneaker of the year was Nike Air Force 1s, followed by Nike Air Jordan 1s, thanks to the Michael Jordan docuseries, ‘The Last Dance’.

Among beauty lovers, eyeliner searches went up 322% after the Queen’s Gambit premiered in October, while face masks and serums were the most clicked beauty products in the Klarna app.

Pop culture phenomena have the ability to create trends that spread worldwide, and the effects of these trends are clear, according to Klarna chief marketing officer, David Sandström.

“For example, in connection to Netflix’s hit series The Queen’s Gambit, we saw that eyeliner searches more than quadrupled,” he said.

Klarna Australia head of marketing, Andrea Darling said the company wanted to go beyond just talking about shopping trends and instead celebrate them and encourage customers to immerse themselves.

“Klarna is all about innovation and surprising with everything we do. This is a fun way for consumers to engage with some fantastic brands while they are experiencing Klarna’s universe,” she said.

Wish lists have proven to be hugely popular for Klarna with over 100,000 wish lists created since the feature became available in Australia in 2020.

The Top of the Carts campaign was co-created by the Klarna in-house team and agency House of Radon.