Keeping animations between layouts

I have a shop where you click on an item and it sets the animation of a sprite. The only issue is that the sprite isn't keeping that animation when I then go back to the game layout. Any ideas on how I can fix this? I know it is updating the animation, but it wont save between layouts. Let me know if you need more info.

Create a global variable "Sprite_animation", when you select your item, set variable to sprite animation name, then on start of layout, set animation to variable