Most people never think about airline barf bags until they need one. They're just those little necessities that fall out when you're reaching for the SkyMall magazine.

KYE R. LEE/DMN

Hal Watson Jr. has about 250 airsick bags. Most of them are on display at his lake house.

But for a small but devoted group of collectors, the prospect of flashier bags means something. They're hoping the era of drab bags will end now that US Airways plans to sell ads on them.

Airsickness bags "are just plain and awful," said Hal Watson Jr., a retired engineering professor who has 250 in his collection.

"I like them colorful. It's more interesting."

The bags used to come adorned with logos, illustrations and even crossword puzzles.

At one point, American Airlines' bags doubled as mailers for photo processing.

But these days, domestic carriers don't even put logos on their bags in an effort to hold down costs.

Let's face it, said Steve Silberberg, a collector since the 1970s who's the curator for a Web site called airsicknessbags.com: "It's a bag wasteland out there right now."

The original airsickness bag was developed for Northwest Orient Airlines in 1949 by Gilmore T. Schjeldahl, an inventor who later worked on NASA's Echo I and Echo II satellite balloons.

At the time, air travel was much less comfortable. Passenger cabins weren't pressurized, so aircraft flew below 10,000 feet, where weather systems could make the rides bumpy. Airsickness was a genuine threat.

But the late 1950s ushered in the jet age, allowing aircraft to fly at higher altitudes, where the air is smoother.

Less usage today

These days, people who are prone to motion sickness at 35,000 feet can take medicine to stave off symptoms. Passengers rarely use barf bags — unless they're sick when they get on the plane.

Southwest Airlines flight attendant C.J. Bostic has witnessed plenty of usage during her 35-year career.

"It doesn't happen every day, but I wouldn't fly without them."

In fact, she said, "Sometimes you want a bigger bag when people are really sick."

And if there isn't a bag within reach, one gagging passenger can influence others.

"You're happy for them to have that bag, because if they don't, then the whole row has a problem," Ms. Bostic said.

Tom Mokler, vice president of sales for Avid Airline Products Inc. of Middletown, R.I., estimates that more than a billion bags are sold worldwide each year. Most carriers replace the bags each month.

"It's a huge market," said Mr. Mokler, adding that his company sells more than 50 million airsickness bags to about 40 airlines.

Airsickness bag collecting might have faded by now if it weren't for the overseas carriers. They never stopped dressing up their bags.

Virgin Airways recently added a festive bag for its London to Las Vegas route that says, "We don't want you to chuck in your hands."

'Star Wars' theme

The carrier issued a Star Wars-themed collectors' series last year and sponsored a contest called "Design for Chunks," for which travelers created their own bag motifs. The competition attracted more than 600 entries.

Collectors swap bags online or buy them from online auctions such as eBay.

You can peruse collections at several sites, including sicksack.com, bagophily.com or www.vomitorium.freeserve.co.uk.

At www.rolf-thalmann.de/kt, you'll find barf bag poetry:

If you chunder into the sack

And curses come from front and back

Then you feel pretty miserable

And you're damaging a collectible!

Niek Vermeulen of the Netherlands has the world's largest collection, with 5,034 bags from 1,000 airlines that he has accumulated since the 1970s, according to the upcoming Guinness World Records, due out Aug. 8.

Dallas collector Mr. Watson began saving airsickness bags in the 1970s "because I just thought they were colorful, and I didn't know anyone else collecting them."

He has at least 70 from airlines that are now defunct, including Braniff Airways. The collection, tucked into plastic sleeves in binders, is at his lake house.

'Captive audience'

US Airways is betting that passengers will notice colorful advertising on the airsickness bags.

"It's a captive audience," said spokesman Morgan Durrant, adding that the carrier's marketing department has been inundated with requests since US Airways announced the plan.

"With oil at nearly $80 a barrel, we're just looking for ways to keep our costs low," he said.

Revenue for the ads, along with advertising on seatback trays and sales of food, is expected to generate about $10 million annually.

The airline wouldn't reveal ad rates, but Mr. Durrant said a US Airways marketing team is in discussions with several companies.

The predecessors

US Airways isn't the first airline to think of this.

Mr. Silberberg recalls seeing a bag from a New Zealand carrier that advertised motion sickness medication.

Mr. Silberberg, who lives near Boston and has collected an impressive 1,850 bags, found one from a bank that said: "Are high interest rates making you sick?"

For now, Mr. Silberberg just hopes US Airways sells some ads — preferably to multiple advertisers that change periodically.

"We all like to have as complete a collection as possible," he said. "I hope it won't just be one bag."