It amazes me that it has taken 24 years to see a Star Wars float in the Macy's parade. The commercialization of this event to a strong hold in the 80s as we began to commercial floats like Ronald McDonald, the Rugrats,Sonic Hedgehog and other corporate icons commercialized the parade route. And arguably none as popular as Star Wars. They got a little closer to the genre when we saw Spiderman for a couple of years after they retired Superman. I miss them both but we never got to see the Deathstar ( would have been an easy construction job for a balloon) or some X-Wings coming down 5th ave. So I am happy to see Grogu this year! FINALLY! He is not who I would have picked to represent the Franchise but I'll take it!! Not like I have choice. I am even more amazed that we never got the USS Enterprise cruising thru the streets. Again, much more popular than some of these "D- level" icon balloons in the last 20 years. I know this is a star wars platform but both franchises deserved parade prominence before Rugrats balloons saw the light of day. I am glad Star Wars finally made it and now I want Trek to follow suit. So much so that one of my bucket item retirement items is to start a fan driven fund raiser to pay for the construction of the Enterprise balloon and get it into the parade. I am pretty sure if corporations can pay for Sonic to be in the parade, fan raised funds can do the same. But now that Grogu is in, will we see him? Maybe for about 10 seconds tops. When you watch, count the seconds. Do not count the time that you can see it over the shoulder of the NBC hosts talking about how great the parade is. And it is up to you if you want to count the fleeting shots that they show of the balloons as they go to commercial and put the Macys logo over it. Since the turn of century calling this event a Thanksgiving Parade is a joke, a farce for anyone who is not actually at the parade. Let's call a spade, a spade. The proper name for the broadcast we see should be: "Macy's Thankgiving Day Broadway Play Showcase and oh yeah, there is a parade too". Times sure have changed.
TheFunko-inspired Grogu balloon appears at BalloonFest, ahead of its appearance in the2021 Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.
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