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The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade – 1985-1986!

Posted by Matt on 11/27/2003. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 84 comments

YEA!!!!!!!!!Fist comment! Happy T Day everyone, and thanks Matt. :)

Chestnuts roasted by Garrison @ 11/27/2003 4:31 AM

Matt, you just made my day. My Turkey Day. Yay.

Chestnuts roasted by NeoGypsy @ 11/27/2003 4:34 AM

You know, I once had a talk-n-play when I was a little boy. Maybe that’s why I never had that many friends….

Chestnuts roasted by Capt.StruggleBunny @ 11/27/2003 4:39 AM

is anybody else having the same problem I can’t DL some of the clips.

Chestnuts roasted by pikachulover @ 11/27/2003 4:53 AM

Doh, forgot to upload them. Well, that would’ve sucked. :) Check it again in about ten mins.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 11/27/2003 4:55 AM

Matt-
I was in the 86 parade. Where did you get your footage? I’d love to see more of it. Please contact me at keithmoon2334@msn.com.

Chestnuts roasted by mosbrooks @ 11/27/2003 4:55 AM

Are you using IE or Netscape, pikachulover? I don’t think Netscape supports windows media player.

Chestnuts roasted by Garrison @ 11/27/2003 4:57 AM

Videos are uploading as we speak — wait about 10-15 mins, then they’ll all be activated.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 11/27/2003 4:59 AM

I think Robotman was/is a comic strip created by someone based at the Daily News and syndicated by their syndictator. So since the Daily News is one of the big yearly sponsors of the parade their crappy comic gets a promotional float.

One question I’ve been meaning to ask — as a cartoonist, I’m usually up on the characters past and present, but what comic strip was "Snake" in the ’84 comic strip float from? Was that supposed to be the snake the ‘Fat Broad’ (Johnny Hart’s name, not mine) is always clubbing in "B.C."?

Chestnuts roasted by Garrison @ 11/27/2003 5:18 AM

Maybe if you’re ever stuck for a random blog video clip, Matt, you could put up the clip of Snoopy you mentioned. A giant balloon Snoopy dropping a giant paper on an unsuspecting crowd sounds like a great blooper. :) Man, I wish I had a VCR that year. I’m surprised the cameraman didn’t cut away immediatly so there would be no visual evidence for a lawsuit ala the Cat in the Hat balloon in ’97.

Was there a different Betty Boop balloon in ’85? The only one I remember is the ’86 Moon one. But then again, I just remember the ’84 Olive Oyl, didn’t know they remade her with Swee’Pea the following year. I thought she just made the one appearence and was retired. I remember all the hoopla about her being the first female balloon character at the time.

Chestnuts roasted by Garrison @ 11/27/2003 5:41 AM

Great great great job Matt. Two things you might want to check — the Bull/Blanche clip isn’t there, and you have the Dolph He-Man clip uploaded twice.

Chestnuts roasted by Garrison @ 11/27/2003 7:32 AM

Congrats, Matt. You’ve finally finished the article!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

:)

Chestnuts roasted by Paul @ 11/27/2003 8:00 AM

I really have only one thing to say: what the hell is WRONG with Dolph? He sounds like he escaped from a Beavis and Butthead skit and might go "huh-uhhuh" after every sentence.

Chestnuts roasted by Roddy @ 11/27/2003 8:27 AM

No. Freaking. Way.

On this year’s Macy parade, during a commercial break, there was an ad for KB Toy’s Black Friday sales. During the ad, for about five seconds, the announcer was…

WEARING HULK HANDS AND SHAKING THEM AT THE CAMERA.

All I’ve got to say is…YES!

Chestnuts roasted by Paul @ 11/27/2003 9:22 AM

Bert Convy hosting anything ever again is impossible, I think. He died a while ago. I think it was right after his game show went off the air.

Chestnuts roasted by Killer Duck @ 11/27/2003 10:03 AM

I can’t imagine why someone would want to wear fur in the rain. That coat must’ve smelled like a couple dozen wet dogs at the end of the day. Useless trivia that keeps popping into my head when reading the parade reviews: all the "balloon handlers" are really Macy’s employees. Well duh but they’re all vollunteers from Macy’s regular staff of schlubs. In fact, except for the celebrities, bands, and some of the dancers, ALL the extras are Macy’s staff members. I remember seeing something where they said everyone from Macy’s helps at the parade. I can’t remember if it’s because they want to or because they want to keep their jobs.

Chestnuts roasted by Killer Duck @ 11/27/2003 10:21 AM

I noticed that both links to download the 85′ and 86′ MOTU float videos are linked to the same video file. Is that on purpose or shouldn’t there be a video for each year of the MOTU float?

Chestnuts roasted by Rybo Flavin @ 11/27/2003 11:03 AM

Nice reference to the 1985 Clue movie on page 6.

Chestnuts roasted by Czar Matthew @ 11/27/2003 11:04 AM

First off…Happy Thanksgiving to Matt, X-Entertainment, and all bloggers! And, to those of you who live outside the States and don’t celebrate (or, in the case of Canada, have already celebrated) Turkey Day, I hope you guys still got as much of a kick out of these parade articles as I did. I was especially happy to read this one because my dad and brother were so desperate to watch "X Men 2" they kicked me off the only TV in my parents’ house that has cable and a DVD player. These may be the only parades I get to see today.

Rain or shine, He-Man in a bad costume or a good one, that "Masters of the Universe" float was AWESOME! They’re detailed and meticuously crafted, with about 18,000 things going on at once….and no weird celebrities to make a spectacle of themselves. That float, and everything occuring on it, was spectacle enough.

I’m surprised I don’t remember this float. I defintely watched at least the ’86 parade. My sisters and I had tons of She-Ra stuff, including the She-Ra and Swiftwing dolls mentioned in the commercial (which I DO remember, and well). We wanted Crystal Castle sooooooo badly, but my parents never had enough money for the playsets.

The appearance of "Barbie and the Rockers," Barbie’s attempt to out-fashionada "Jem and the Holograms," doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is that "Jem" herself didn’t put in an appearance, especially since both "Rockers" and "Jem" were at their peak of popularity in 85-86. The Blockbuster in Wildwood actually has copies of the "Barbie and the Rockers" animated specials. Maybe I’ll try them, just for nostalgic kicks…

And Phyllis Diller. My god, Phyllis Diller. I don’t know if she’d been hitting the spiked eggnog or if she just didn’t want to be there or if it was a combination of the two, but her appearance was unforgettable…in many ways.

Oh, and I thought the Betty Boop balloon was the best of the ones we hadn’t seen. The banana/moon was actually kinda cute. : 0 )

Chestnuts roasted by starwenn @ 11/27/2003 11:07 AM

I had the Matchbox train set and it rocked! It blew away all of those old "suitcase cities" they made in the 80s. No motors in the train but that actually inspired creativity, unlike today’s toys.

Great site!

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 11/27/2003 11:38 AM

Great job on the article! :)

Chestnuts roasted by marril159 @ 11/27/2003 11:58 AM

A few days ago i mentined how "truly truly truly outrageous" the he-man/she-ra float was. And now the article calls the float "truly bizzar". Now thats bizzar! huh? Truly truly truly bizzar

Chestnuts roasted by kennef @ 11/27/2003 12:07 PM

Happy T-Day guys and gals…He-Man float video link has been fixed. :)

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 11/27/2003 12:09 PM

As have the commercial pages.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 11/27/2003 12:17 PM

"Mr Telephone Man" is the only song I know by "New Addition." I loved it.

Can’t wait to get back to work where I can download the videos.

Thanks for not banning my home IPA.

Chestnuts roasted by klatubaradanikto @ 11/27/2003 12:18 PM

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2003 at 4:27 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.