Loom bands: Bids for dress made from colourful rubber pass £170,000 on eBay

The loom band craze is reaching new heights as eBay bids for a dress made out of the colourful bands reach £153,900.

Made to fit girls aged between four and six, the dress appears to have been painstakingly weaved from hundreds of the rubber loops by hand.

There have been 126 bids so far for the garment and there are still more than four days left for the price to go up.

The eBay listing, by user helenwright72, gives little information about the creation of the dress, describing it simply as a “multi coloured dress made from loom bands”.

The item’s location is listed as the seaside town of Prestatyn, in Denbighshire, Wales.

For the uninitiated, loom bands are a playground craze that have swept several countries since their invention in 2011.

The small bands, available in multiple colours, can be weaved together with a plastic Rainbow Loom to create jewellery, toys or apparently, clothing.

The Duchess of Cambridge brought the toys to the grown-ups’ attention by wearing a loom band bracelet on her trip to New Zealand and David Beckham and Harry Styles have also picked up on the trend.

US television presenter Jimmy Kimmel dipped into the craze in February, wearing a two-piece suit and tie entirely made of loom bands.

Their astronomical popularity was unexpected in an age when children of all ages are accustomed to playing with tablets and games consoles.

The toy was invented by Cheong Choon Ng, a Malaysian-born former seatbelt developer from Michigan, who noticed his daughters weaving elastic bands into bracelets.

The girls were impressed with his first loom made from a wooden board and pins and he soon developed a plastic version that sold out of within hours of being stocked in a local toyshop.