- It’s less than 100 days until the 100th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
- They’ve announced the parade will have 100 “inflatable elements” in honor of the milestone.
- Balloons will feature favorite characters going back to the beginning of the parade’s history.
It’s 100 days until the 100th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and I’m in Macy’s Parade Warehouse. I’ve just been introduced to Billie Brightpaw, who stands towering over the group of visitors, looking cute in her red hat and matching scarf, despite the August heat. Billie is a bear—also one of the new balloons that will be featured in this year’s parade. When the crowd saw the inflated balloon for the first time, there were audible gasps.
Billie is hardly going to be alone, flying high above the streets of New York City on Thanksgiving Day. Macy’s has just announced that, in honor of its milestone year, the 2026 parade will feature a lineup of 100 inflatable elements. These include the giant, high-flying balloons that parade fans know so well, in addition to smaller elements like balloon characters and what’s called a “trycaloon,” which is an inflatable attached to a tandem tricycle. For Macy’s, the number of inflatable elements this year is record-breaking.
In another nod to parade history, many of these balloons will be new versions of classic characters. There’s the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” Mickey, for example, which is the mouse’s 21st parade iteration in 92 years. Underdog will also be making a reappearance, having been absent from the parade since 1984. Felix the Cat, who debuted in 1927, will also be there, while Bullwinkle J. Moose, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Popeye, Olive Oyl, and Swee’Pea will appear together on a “Macy’s All-Star Float.”
One other balloon that will be making an appearance in the parade—though not as well known as the others, though its story is infamous—is the Blue Hippopotamus. Apparently, for the first few years of the parade, when the festivities were over, they would just...release the balloons into the air. Anybody who found one could return it to Macy’s for a prize—a gift card of a substantial amount, considering the time period. The prize was certainly motivating: After the 1931 parade, almost every balloon was returned. The only one that never made it back was the Blue Hippopotamus.
“With radio and radiogram the store is searching for the hippo, which is a large balloon,” The New York Times reported in an article, titled “Flying ‘Blue Hippo’ Is Hunted at Sea,” from December 1931. “Descriptions of the cruising beast have been broadcast, the reward for its return has been multiplied by four, and radiograms have been sent to the captains of all transatlantic liners now at sea.” Still, it was never recovered.
This was in stark contrast to George the tiger, who, according to that same article, “was salvaged by the crew of the Greenpoint ferry boat Wyoming,” and was able to be reused the next year.
It’s also vastly different from what happened to the dragon balloon: “Clarence Chamberlin picked out the dragon's eye with a strut of his monoplane on Thanksgiving Day afternoon and the remaining 171 feet dropped to the waters of Jamaica Bay. Paul V. Foran of 455 Beach 141st Street, Beach Haven, and two small boys, John Clark and Gerard Lagarsee, salvaged it in a rowboat, but a crowd on shore tore it to pieces when they brought it in.” Yikes! Maybe it’s better that Blue Hippopotamus escaped unscathed.
In the meantime, you can spot some hippo-related merch in Macy’s 100 Parade Shop, where you can spy it on character tote bags, canvas tote bags, and patches. Billie Brightpaw, too, is on a number of items, including plushes, bag charms, ornaments, and notebooks—and it’s a good thing, because when families get a look at her, fewer than 100 days from now, they’re going to want a Billie to take home for themselves.
