Parade Balloons Over 75 Years

Macy’s 1939 parade included a Tin Man balloon to promote MGM’s new movie, The Wizard of Oz.

For the movie’s seventy-fifth anniversary (which is actually next year), the movie’s current owner, Time Warner, paid for another balloon. According to Yahoo TV, “Macy's repurposed an older balloon. . . . The designers took a balloon shaped like a — see if you can follow — hot-air balloon and decorated it with images of the beloved L. Frank Baum characters.” The portraits were hand-painted.