New York City’s Thanksgiving Day parade is a cherished tradition with the holiday just like arguing with your relatives about politics and lying to your grandmother about her cooking being good. It draws millions of people to downtown area of America’s biggest city with even bigger character ballons featured in the parade, which delight children who can see their favorites in a massive way. In 1997, it was a different story with a failure that is hilarious for sheer scale of disastrous it was.
The New York Times reported that day on the windy conditions and challenges faced by the huge character balloons.
“At times, the balloons were not gliding but instead were careering as their handlers on the ground struggled to keep control in winds that reached as high as 43 miles an hour. For a while, the balloons seemed to be falling like flies. Barney suffered extensive damage and had to be removed at 51st Street. The Pink Panther succumbed at 42d Street. Quik Bunny and the Cat in the Hat limped away at 36th Street.”
That’s the most annoying yet beloved purple dinosaur in TV history got ripped open, deflated, and stomped out by the NYPD in front of millions of people. Barney the Dinosar’s humongous balloon got ripped open with soaring winds and in the raw uncut video above you can see over the course of a few minutes the friendly dinosaur gets flattened out on the street. You can hear the person filming say “this is going to give kids nightmares.”
Esquire did a detail report about the balloon problems that year during the NYC parade and how one women was injured in a similar accident during the same parade with a different balloon. You can read that here.
