All around the news from gaming websites to physical newspapers (yes we still have those,) people are reporting about the brand new video game inspired floats that are going to be flying in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. In fact, two video game mascots are being featured on the official Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade ad!
Hey guys, look! We are mainstream! … And we have been for like 20 years now….
The first new balloon is a Pikachu float themed around the holidays. Pikachu is wearing a scarf and is carrying a tiny little Pikachu snowman with a Santa hat.
Feel free to go “d’awwwwwww” at the cuteness.
The second balloon is referred to as “ Skylanders ” by a lot of official sources. In the official ad, it appears as if the balloon is of Eruptor, a fire Skylander that has been around since the series’ first game. It’s not clear whether or not the new balloon is Eruptor only, or whether it will feature other Skylanders as well, though my personal bet is on the former. It’s a strange choice that Toys For Bob wouldn’t make a balloon out of Spyro, the poster-dragon of the series.
This isn’t the first time video games have been featured in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The very first video-game attraction ever to be included, was the 1993 arrival of a Sonic: The Hedgehog balloon. This was back when Sonic was legitimately warring with Mario during the Genesis/SNES console wars. Oddly enough, everyone’s favorite Italian plumber never made it into the parade.
We wouldn’t see a new video game entrant into the parade until 2001, and for good reason. Parade balloons and floats are all themed around iconic cartoony characters from TV, comics, advertisements, and more. But video games around this time were becoming more serious and were pushing themselves away from the mascot wars. The 2001 entrant into the parade was Pikachu, at a time when Pokemon was in the minds and Gameboys of an adoring public, marking Nintendo’s first entry into the parade.
Specific video game balloons and floats are actually few and far between in the parade, and very few franchises are actually represented. 2006 brought us a redesigned Pikachu float. This time he was holding a Pokéball. This makes the holiday Pikachu of this year the third version of Pikachu we are seeing, which is a lot for a Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. The only two other balloons that have had more versions were Harold from the 1940’s, who was retired in that very same decade after four different versions were created, and the iconic Peanuts character Snoopy, who has had six versions of his balloon to date! In fact, there is only one other balloon to have had even three versions, and that’s Disney’s own Mickey Mouse.
Pokémon is also the only video game representative in the parade to have its own float. In 2010, Reshiram and Zekrom from Pokémon Black and White participated in the parade in their own Pokémon float. To this day, they are the only non-balloon video game entrant in the parade.
The same year, we saw Sonic’s second balloon, which updated his design from the classic Genesis era Sonic, to the modern day multi-platform Sonic. (Let’s hope he doesn’t get another update for Sonic Boom .)
Which brings us up to date, with Skylanders being the newest entrant to the parade, and only the third video game franchise we have seen in the parade.
What do you think? What video games do you want to see in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade? Let us know in the comments.