Garfield is the main character of his self-titled comic strip, created by Jim Davis. An orange-furred cat capable of articulate speech, he lives in a house which he shares with his owner, Jon Arbuckle, and the dog Odie. Garfield is lazy; obsesses overeating (with his favorite food being lasagna), drinking coffee, and taking naps; and has a disdain for Mondays, raisins, and dieting.
Syndicated in over 2,500 newspapers and journals, Garfield's comic series has been lauded by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's most widely syndicated comic strip. Beyond his original strip, he has appeared on television and in CGI animated films.
History with the Macy's Parade[]
Garfield made his Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade debut in the 1983 Parade, as a walk-around character on the America's Comic Stars float with other comic characters that appeared alongside Garfield included Marmaduke, and Snoopy, with his best canine pal, Odie joining the float in the following year.
Garfield (1984-1989,1992-1999)[]
The same year Odie joined the float, Garfield was blown up to larger-than-life proportions as one of Raven Aerostar's first-ever balloons for the Parade. An Aerostar employee, Jim Schmidt, compared the fabrication of the Garfield balloon to one of his favorite past times -- doing a crossword puzzle. "The hardest thing is to visualize what it will look like when it's blown up. I'm working with pieces of material."
Although it took Raven Aerostar nearly six months to accomplish their first balloon for the Parade, Raggedy Ann, the company promised to have the lasagna-loving feline finished in two months. The expected deadline was met and would yield a 398-pound, 61-foot long, 35-foot-wide balloon rendition of Garfield with a smug 20-foot smile spanning across his face.
The fat cat would trek his way to the city that never sleeps as the cat that only ever sleeps in November 1984. The balloon's debut was met with much fanfare, though one of the paws got punctured by a tree. The balloon encountered turbulence again in 1986, when high winds caused two of Garfield's paws to be punctured by trees during the route.
In 1987, the Garfield balloon was given a new sponsor - United Media, who also helped sponsor the fat cat for his appearances in 1988 and 1989.
The first Garfield balloon was temporarily retired after the 1989 Parade, only making an appearance two weeks later at the 1989 Macy's-Egleston Christmas Parade. The balloon eventually returned to the main event in 1992 to celebrate the upcoming 15th anniversary of the Garfield comic's inception in 1993. The balloon continued to make appearances throughout the 1990s, making appearances outside of the Parade at the the 1993 Tap-O-Mania event, the 1995 and 1996 Macy's Balloon-A-Thon events, and was even named the "veteran balloon" in 1997. That same year, Garfield would become a "bobcat", as put by Katie Couric when overnight winds caused the tail to deflate.
In 1998, the Garfield balloon would eventually set out for its roughest march yet. While being carried to the Parade's starting line at 77th Street, a chamber inside of the balloon busted unexpectedly. According to Sid Hamburger, Macy's balloon coordinator, the removal wasn't a result of safety, but the damages made the balloon impossible to fly. The damages sustained were severe enough to cause the balloon to be discretely deflated and removed from the line of march. After the incident, the balloon was quality control tested at the Macy's Parade Studio and marked "Parade Ready" for the 1999 Parade.
The Garfield balloon's grand return in 1999 was later revealed to be its final flight down Broadway, as the balloon had worn out after many years of use. Of note, this version of Garfield is the longest-running balloon made by Raven Aerostar to date, appearing 14 times within its tenancy in the Parade.
The balloon would sit dormant inside Macy's Float Warehouse for several years after its final appearance. By 2005, the balloon was cut up for disposal, with several swatches of the balloon framed and used for decoration and given to Macy's personnel.
Garfield would make a short appearance in the 2001 Parade as a walk-around character, riding aboard the Toon Balloon-Abration float which boasted many other characters, past and present, who have had balloons grace the skies of New York City.
Garfield (2003-2006)[]
Garfield returned to the Parade in 2003 in the form of a brand-new balloon cartoon as a means of celebration for the fat cat's 25th anniversary and to promote the live-action movie adaptation by 20th Century Fox. The balloon featured Garfield, now updated to closer resemble his current comic counterpart, alongside his faithful teddy bear, Pookie. The balloon is said to have enough room to be filled with over 37,000 pans of lasagna and 14,000 cubic feet of helium.
In addition to the balloon being chosen to precede Santa Claus, Garfield was also named the Macy's Holiday Ambassador of 2003, with a special plush being sold at select Macy's stores. To commemorate this, a cold-air version of Garfield wearing a Santa hat and ready "Twas the Night Before Christmas" was sat upon Macy's 34th Street marquee, greeting guests as they walked by. The following year, Cartoon Network and 20th Century Fox held a Garfield Movie sweepstakes as a promotion for the movie, in which the grand prize is a trip to that year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with the balloon shown in the ad, in the same year, the cold-air Garfield balloon was shipped to the Universal Orlando Resort, where he would join other balloons in the now-defunct "Balloonopolis" exhibit. After the exhibit was discontinued in 2008, the Garfield balloon was placed around the theme park's Christmas season until 2016, when the Macy's Holiday Parade was re-branded to Universal's Holiday Parade Featuring Macy's.
Like its predecessor, the second Garfield balloon faced turbulence along the Parade route. In 2004, Garfield's left hand was punctured by a tree along Central Park West. In both 2005 and 2006, the balloon was lowered to the ground as a result of the winds whipping the balloons about. Garfield once again had the honor of preceding Santa Claus as the last character balloon of 2006, and following that parade he was retired making only four appearances, and bringing an end to Garfield's representation in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Trivia[]
- When Raven Aerostar constructed the original Garfield balloon, the company used a plush toy of Garfield as a reference model. This would mark the only time that Raven Aerostar didn't use a fiberglass model to construct a giant balloon.
- The first Garfield balloon required nearly 19,000 cubic feet of helium to plump up for Parade Day, making it the balloon that required the most helium at the time. This record was later broken by Dexter in 1998, who required 21,700 cubic feet of helium.
- The first Garfield balloon makes a cameo in the official trailer of The Garfield Movie.