IKEA Investigates Bowl That Lit Man's Grapes on Fire

Is it possible to try a metal serving bowl in a court of law? How about the court of public opinion?

You may be asking yourself these questions after hearing the heartbreaking plight of Richard Walter, an unsuspecting Swedish man who was recently forced to cope with his Blanda Blank serving bowl from IKEA ended up setting a whole bunch of grapes on fire.

We can only begin to fathom how many of you are beginning to get a case of the vapors upon reading this. Then again, if you happen to be an arsonist looking to spice things up a bit, you may want to head out to IKEA right now and buy yourself a bowl or two.

The saga started this weekend, when Sweden was enjoying some relatively warm weather. Walter was eating grapes outside when he began to smell smoke. He told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that he thought he must be smelling his neighbor's barbecue, but he looked down and—lo and behold—his grapes were on fire.

"I saw it was burning in the grape bowl. How is that possible, I thought. Then I saw there was one intense point where the sun hit the twigs, and that's where it started," Walter said.

If you have any survivalist skills, you may know that you can start a fire with a concave mirror—and the IKEA Blanda Blank serving bowl seems to create a similar effect. The strong sunlight reflected off the IKEA Blanda Blank bowl's surface, concentrating it enough to ignite the stem of the bunch of grapes Walter was munching on.

To show just how hot the Blanda Blank's surface could get, Walter posted a video in which he burns a scrap of paper using no matches—just the bowl itself. IKEA is said to be investigating the problem.

MUNCHIES has reached out to IKEA for comment, but has yet to hear back.

And you thought the worst thing about IKEA was the incredibly abstract instructions.