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Jeff Kinney’s best-selling Wimpy Kid is about to get another honor reserved for only the greatest of kids entertainment legends — this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will include a Greg Heffley balloon. This honor is reserved for only the greatest icons of cartooning, including Bart Simpson, Garfield, Snoopy, and of course Spider-Man.

“I’m incredibly excited that Diary of a Wimpy Kid has been chosen to be a part of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade,” said Jeff Kinney. “When I think of all of the iconic characters that have flown in years past, I feel humbled and honored that my character will be a part of the Parade’s history.”


With 37 million copies of his first six books already sold, the next Wimpy Kid book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth goes on sale on November 9th and a second Wimpy Kid movie is due in March, 2011.

To celebrate the dawn of the Wimpy balloon, publisher Abrams has just started a contest for one winner and three friends to come to New York for the parade.

While debating whether Diary of a Wimpy Kid constitutes being a comic book character or not — the books are mostly prose but include comics interstitials, and creator Kinney considers himself a cartoonist — we say just embrace success and enjoy the sight of the helium giant floating down Broadway.

1 COMMENT

  1. Hmmm… how will the balloon handlers be dressed?

    And will AMNH be even more crowded Wednesday night?

    Felix, technically, is a cartoon character, although he was the first licensed balloon. Is Superman the first comics character to appear in the Macy’s parade (1939)? Snoopy holds the record… six different versions!

  2. when i was the creative director for the muppets i was asked to help with the big bird balloon. i wasn’t actually a handler for the big bird balloon. you’ll recall that BB juggles a couple of balls in front of him. i carried big bird’s balls up broadway.

  3. It’s just an illustrated kids novel. Like there are millions. Just because some illustrations have speech bubbles, does not make it a comic.
    It’s even presented as a book and placed in the book section of bookstores. Ergo…

    (by which I demean nothing of Kinney’s success and that looks a real cool balloon.)