The Worst Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Accidents

This balloon probably could have eaten a little more spinach. In the 1957 parade, a gigantic Popeye balloon was constructed with a particularly poor design that featured an indentation in the top of his hat. That indentation started filling up with rainwater, which caused the balloon to go off-course and veer over the assembled crowd, dumping hundreds of gallons of freezing cold water all over them. The balloon was quickly re-tooled to feature a convex hat.

The parade was luckily bereft of accident for the next few decades, but that peace wasn't to last. As balloons became bigger and more ambitious, there was more opportunity for them to fail. And fail they did. The 1985 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade saw its first casualty when a gigantic Kermit the Frog balloon caught on something and tore its stomach open, making it rapidly deflate all over the crowd. Amazingly, nobody was injured, but Miss Piggy was pissed.

The very next year, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade saw not one, but two balloon fails. First, a Raggedy Ann blimp went careening into a lamppost and snapped in half, sending it crashing into the street, narrowly missing marchers. But even worse, the Man of Steel felt the curse of Macy's as his right hand was ripped clean off by a tree, causing his arm to deflate like you'd just given him a Kryptonite wristwatch.

The very first video game mascot to have his own balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade wasn't Mario, or even Lara Croft... it was Sega's speedy blue hedgehog Sonic. The Sonic balloon debuted in 1993, but decided to prove the anti-gaming crusaders of the era right by going out of control and crashing into a Columbus Circle lamppost, causing it to topple into a police officer. Sonic was taken into custody and didn't return to the sky. Bad news, though... he's out of jail and will fly again for the first time in this year's parade.