When Did Parade Balloons Stop Being Creepy? (And How Do We Get the Strangeness Back?)

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Our traditional holiday piece, The Short Brutal Life of A Parade Balloon, focuses on their more mortal aspects   . . .

The Atlantic's Phillip Bump has stumbled across the not unsurprising fact that The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade Balloons Used to Be Extremely Creepy, with everything from flying pigs . . .

image: New York Public Library

. . . to alligators, grumpy Captain Nemo's, and floating disembodied heads . . . 

image: Associated Press

I don't have any balloon images from old Chicago parades, but this photo of a glammed-up Humpty Dumpty on State Street may gave an idea of the idiom of the day . .  .

image courtesy The Chuckman Collection

Today, even in Chicago, balloons tend to veer towards a Disneyfied blandness . . .

.  . . and the most readily recognized brands . . .  

Is it too late to get a little strangeness back into the parade balloon design equation?  I'm cheered by this Instagram image from Bjarke Ingels from this year's Macy's parade . . . 

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