By Marcy Magiera
The balloon lineup for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade reads like a who’s who of $100 million-plus entertainment/character licensing properties. Among the returning character properties that will fly high above Manhattan come Thursday are Hello Kitty (an estimated $1 billion in U.S./Canada retail sales of licensed merchandise in 2014), Pikachu from the Pokemon franchise ($125 million), SpongeBob Square Pants (over $200 million), Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon (over $150 million), Adventure Time with Finn & Jake (over $100 million) , Snoopy & Woodstock from Peanuts (almost $400 million), Eruptor from Skylanders (almost $300 million), Thomas the Tank Engine (over $350 million), and the Red Mighty Morphin Power Ranger ($200 million for the Power Rangers franchise).
The balloon lineup also includes two entertainment properties in their parade debut: Red from Angry Birds and Scrat from Ice Age. While the Angry Birds and Ice Age properties have not been as high-flying recently as some of the other balloon properties—Angry Birds is a $300 million property but saw a more than 40% dip in retail sales in 2014 according to TLL estimates, and Ice Age is not currently among our estimates of $100 million-plus properties—they are considered to be on the rise for 2016, when The Angry Birds Movie and new Ice Age installment Ice Age: Collision Course will land in theaters.
Exposure in the 89 year-old parade might certainly give a lift to featured properties. The event is seen by 3.5 million spectators in the streets of New York and another 50 million who watch it on television, according to Macy’s. NBC will broadcast the parade nationally on Thanksgiving Day from 9 a.m. to noon in all time zones.
Below the balloons, the Macy’s parade will also showcase additional $100 million-plus properties will in a more down-to-earth manner: Sesame Street and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will theme two of the parade floats.