Top Five: Suggestions for Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloons

Tryptophan isn’t the only substance abundant in ridiculously mass quantities on Thanksgiving. Thanks to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, soaring amounts of helium are injected into crowd-pleasing floats.

Each year, five new floats, balloonicle or falloon, are introduced. 2010’s most heralded are:

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (empowering)
Kung Fu Panda (cute, slightly racist)
Kaikai & Kiki by Murakami (international, supports young artists)
Yes, Virginia (historical, perpetuates the belief in Santa Claus)
Kool-Aid Man (troublesome)

But if we were in charge of aerial visuals at this 86-year-old tradition, or any of the many Thanksgiving-themed parades across the country, we’d like to see these five hoisted and tethered:

5. Stewie Griffin The larger-than-life, pint-size menace deserves a nearly-larger-than-a-football-field ushering. How cool would that football-shaped head look looming over Times Square? The inexplicably British-accented baby is coming!

4. Kanye West Big heads aren’t only found on the shoulders of floats–they can also be found on poor-extemporaneous-speaking celebrities. And since the head (no pun intended) of Taylor Swift’s marketing division (seriously) is scheduled to perform at this year’s parade, maybe a float bearing his visage wouldn’t be necessary.

Be sure to check his Twitter to see if he honors his commitment.

3. Matt Lauer holding a softball and/or spatula This could be Macy’s first small step in creating a topical/satirical float. It wouldn’t be completely far-fetched, though. Lauer’s journalistic skills are cartoon-like. The softball represents his coddling-style of interviewing done with Dubya and other blunder-full politicians; while the spatula was used to grill and prod aforementioned Kanye West into eliciting a completely unwarranted apology to Bush junior.

So much spewing of hot air!

2. Conan O’Brien After a year of being deflated, it would be fitting to champion the (once) best host of late-night, network talk shows. By the looks of his newest endeavor, Coco has reason to get big-headed (though the master of self-deprication probably won’t).

Plus, that gorgeous, ginger mane scaled to the size of a Manhattan skyrise would surely delight spectators, young and old.

1. Up house suspended by helium balloons The ultimate concept in modern, mainstream feature-length animation would make the ultimate parade float. Sure it’s not an optimistic, parallelogram-trousered nautical/kitchen sponge. Neither is it a Mike Meyers-voiced curmudgeon-turned-prince/Monkees-butcherer, but this scientific wonder of plausibility has become just as iconic as any of today’s animation staples. Plus, isn’t it kind of already a float?

Main characters in American animation don’t get as creative, poetic and ambitious as this.

Speaking of ambition, the organizers in New York City should just go ahead and actually make a replica of the South America-bound zeppelin. We’re sure the Big Apple doesn’t have a shortage of vacant two-story houses available, and it would only take 112,000 some-odd balloons.