NEW YORK—The annual tradition of welcoming old favorites and greeting new additions to the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade had thousands of New Yorkers and visitors filing past the Museum of Natural History on Columbus Avenue Wednesday evening. Fifteen giant figures appeared one after another, each taking about an hour to fill up. From Felix the Cat’s appearance as the first Macy’s parade balloon in 1927, iconic figures have been inflated on the eve of Thanksgiving.
Giant pieces of polyurethane gradually transformed into some of America’s most endearing cartoon characters, as chamber by chamber the balloons filled with helium before the big day. The correct wording used by ballon folks is “inflated,” they do not prefer the term “blown up.”
Debuting in Macy’s 84th annual Thanksgiving parade are Po from “Kung Fu Panda” and Greg of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” As Po’s many “chubby parts” filled up, executive director of the parade Amy Kule described the cartoon character as “big, round and immediately aerodynamic.”
At 42 feet tall, 46 feet long, and 34 feet wide, the giant panda was still not as big as the wimpy kid of Jeff Kinney’s books. Greg gained considerable stature and weight in his balloon likeness, standing 56 feet tall and weighing in at 400 pounds. Ronald McDonald, however, remains the longest balloon in the parade at 76 feet said Kule.
Giant pieces of polyurethane gradually transformed into some of America’s most endearing cartoon characters, as chamber by chamber the balloons filled with helium before the big day. The correct wording used by ballon folks is “inflated,” they do not prefer the term “blown up.”
Debuting in Macy’s 84th annual Thanksgiving parade are Po from “Kung Fu Panda” and Greg of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” As Po’s many “chubby parts” filled up, executive director of the parade Amy Kule described the cartoon character as “big, round and immediately aerodynamic.”
At 42 feet tall, 46 feet long, and 34 feet wide, the giant panda was still not as big as the wimpy kid of Jeff Kinney’s books. Greg gained considerable stature and weight in his balloon likeness, standing 56 feet tall and weighing in at 400 pounds. Ronald McDonald, however, remains the longest balloon in the parade at 76 feet said Kule.
