Super Fun!

It's time for the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and also time for the equally fun and colorful annual poster. I love the cut-out style art—it also has a sort of felt-board feel—and as always this annual artwork conveys the excitement of the world's most famous parade. (Click on the poster for a larger view.) Greg, the title character of the bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, makes his debut as a giant balloon, and I say anytime a character from a book joins the lineup of Macy's balloon characters it's a good thing. A writer also joins the pageant's inflatable array this year, believe it or not —it's Virginia, the star of the animated Yes, Virginia Macy's-sponsored CBS special. Virginia is of course the author of the famed 1897 "Is there a Santa Claus?" letter-to-the-editor. So is Virginia the first Macy's balloon to be based on a real person? She may well be... not that I don't think that Spider-Man and Snoopy aren't real—or at least they seem be. (Update: See this post for the only other "real" person to be represented as a Macy's balloon. No, it's not Buzz Lightyear.) Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, tune into NBC for the parade, featuring as it did last year Jimmy Fallon and the Roots. It will be, as Jimmy said a couple of nights ago on his show, "Super fun!"