The Buckets by Greg Cravens for November 27, 2015

Yes, they used to let them go and whoever brought one (or a part of one) in got a prize. My dad told me about it. There used to be a lot less balloons in those days (remember it was a local NYC parade then). One of them did something, I forget what, in NJ and that was why they stopped.

In the “old days” Macy’s paid for the balloons and everything in the parade. At sometime, I think I noticed it around the 1980’s, they started having other companies “sponsor” floats and balloons – in other words the balloons are paid advertisements as are many of the floats these days for other companies such as the “Hello Kitty” balloon being paid for by Sanrio which holds the trademark on Hello Kitty.