Versatile cooler rack

Cooler racks are used on glass doors of coolers to display beverage bottles and other merchandise to consumers and also to provide additional shelf space within the cooler. Typical cooler racks are made to attach to the cooler door in one orientation, and this limits how these cooler racks can be used. For example, the typical cooler rack may be restricted for use with certain merchandise, on certain coolers doors, or on certain places of the cooler doors depending on available space.

A versatile merchandise rack 10 illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2 has parallel frames 20a-b, a merchandising plaque 30, a support arm 40, and side arms 50. Most of the rack 10 is composed of a metal wire that has been welded together and coated with enamel or the like, although other materials can be used for the structure and/or the coating. For example, the structure of the rack 10 can be formed from plastic and may not be coated.

The parallel frames 20a-b are substantially the same. For example, one of the frames 20 shown in the isolated plan view of FIG. 3 has edge wires 22a-b interconnected by a plurality of interconnecting wires 24. These interconnecting wires 24 define item slots 26 in the frame 20 for holding beverage bottles or other items.

As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, the lower frame 20b has the merchandising plaque 30 connected at about the edge\'s mid point. The upper frame 20a has three suction cups 60 connected along one edge, and the lower fame 20b has two suction cups 60 connected along one edge. Ends of the suction cups 60 fit into looped ends 25 at some of the dividing cross members 24 to connect the suction cups 60 to the rack 10. Although use of suction cups 60 is preferred for attaching the cooler rack 10 to the glass door of a cooler, other temporary attachment devices and even fasteners can be used instead of or in conjunction with suctions cups 60 to attach the rack 10 to various types of surfaces.

The frames 20a-b are positioned parallel to one another, and the support arm 40 runs parallel to the frames 20a-b. The support arm 40 supports the bottom portion of the bottles or items in the rack 10, while the frames 20a-b support mid-portions of the bottles or items in the rack 10. The side arms 50a-b connect inside both ends of each frame 20a-b using first hinged connections 52a-b and connect to the support arm 40 using second hinged connections 52c. To form the first hinged connections 52a-b, for example, the side arms 50a-b have tubes (54 and 56 in FIG. 4) welded thereon, and these tubes receive curved ends of the frame\'s edge wires (22a-b in FIG. 3). To form the second hinged connections 52c, the side arms\' distal ends each have an eyelet (58 in FIG. 4) that movably connects with a central rivet to one of the forked ends (48 in FIG. 5) of the support arm 40.

As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, the various hinged connections 52a-c allow the entire structure of the frames 20a-b, support arm 40, and side arms 50a-b to shift or tilt while the frames 20a-b and the support arm 40 remain substantially parallel to one another. This ability to tilt or shift allows the versatile rack 10 to be used in either a horizontal position (shown in FIG. 6A) or in opposite vertical positions (shown in FIGS. 6B-6C) to support multiple bottles or other items on a cooler door. The tilting or shift can be about 30-degrees or so in either direction, although other degrees of tilting are also possible depending on the implementation, size and shape of items to be supported, etc.