The 1998 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is the Greatest Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in the History of Thanksgiving Day Parades
This is a story about redemption.
“Everything turned purple.”
Antonella Laggiano got up early on November 27, 1997 to catch a train into the city to experience the 71st Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in the flesh. She lived in Mamaroneck: a city about an hour upstate from the sights and lights of Times Square and Broadway, which were normally too far, showy, and crowded for a lifelong citizen of New York to enjoy on a holiday.
However, this year Laggiano would happily bear the brunt of the tourist storm for the incredible opportunity to experience the Parade at a unique level of intimacy: this year was the year that she would be a holder on Barney’s float, one of the most famous in the entire Parade.
Although meteorologist Al Roker warned of “gale force” winds, former Republican Presidential Candidate Mayor Rudy Giuliani had heard the potential that historically powerful gusts would blow through NYC, and Macy’s spokesman Tim Ray mentioned to the public that the winds would “die down”, the powers at play in New York City determined that the 71st Annual Parade would go on as planned. A little bit of a breeze never really affected a lot of balloons… right?
The Parade began normally: fourteen marching bands, several of contemporary music hottest acts, an onslaught of cross-advertisements on wheels, and hundreds of thousands Americans cheering with excitement.
However, the Parade is just a few brands hanging out until the floats get inflated and up in the air. This year, unfortunately, Macy’s should have kept the balloons in the bag: there were several hospitalizations, many injuries, and several thousands of dollars in property damage. All caused by the balloons inability to withstand winds that blew well over forty miles per hour.
Laggiano’s float, Barney, got away from her and her troupe of handlers, providing a jurassic world of hurt for those that volunteered through Macy’s to hold the dinosaur for all to see. NYPD officers and several spectators had to brandish knives in an effort to stab Barney so that he might deflate and come in for a landing. “Everything went purple,” Laggiano said of the complete disaster. If you were to just listen to that video, you’d think the Hindenburg crashed one the streets of Times Square.
The worst damage occurred on 72nd, where the Cat in the Hat took a nose dive into a light pole, causing it to burst and hit some spectators so badly that they were sent to the hospital, with one placed in a coma for an entire month.
1997 broke the Parade.
I don’t know what the meetings were like between the Parades in 1997 and 1998, but I can imagine that a lot of things were discussed. Executives must’ve scratched their heads raw wondering what kind of floats the company could commission to draw up excitement again. City planners and organizers probably worked nights and weekends trying to determine what kind of safety measures could be implemented to make the parade run more smoothly. The Macy’s Marketing Team might have sought to hire every brain on Madison Avenue in an effort to sell this parade to a people that had been betrayed by an American cultural staple that could (up until now) do no harm.
When something like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade experiences a tragedy, it’s like the Grand Canyon calling in sick: these things always have existed, always will exist, and you can count on them to be there when you need them. We need the Parade on a day like Thanksgiving, because it celebrates all that we love about the year we have just gotten through and prepares us for the joy and collective spirit of the holidays that are to come. Before the dog show starts and the touchdowns are scored, before the turkey gets eaten and the arguments get heated, the Parade primes the pump for what the day might be.
1998 needed to fill the balloon that all of the country had constructed for it. Where 97 crashed, 98 needed to soar. Where 97 popped, 98 needed to conceal. Where 97 failed, 98 needed to succeed.
The first thing that had to change was safety. The Cat in the Hat disaster could not happen again. Drastic measures needed to be taken.
First off, the volunteers were now subjected to an intensive training session. This is in response to the two-day workshop they held in year’s past, which after the 1997 debacle, obviously was not enough.
Secondly, Macy’s struck up a deal with the city: the floats now would have height restrictions. No float could be over 70 feet high, 78 feet long, and 40 feet wide. You would think that the restrictions would be a charge to float designers to not only protect the people, but improve the float altogether. When regulations influence innovation, everybody wins… right?
Parade staples like the Pink Panther, Woody the Woodpecker, and (enemy number one) The Cat in the Hat had to bow out due to the new rules and regulations.
Think about the integrity it takes to tell some of the most notorious brands in the Parade’s history that they need to shape up or ship out; I’d hate to be on the other side of that phone call with those that represent Mr. Woodpecker, telling them that they’re lovable laughing fowl had to fly away after all of these years. The anger, the betrayal, the frustration…
At the end of the day, The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a square operation that moves quickly, and if your circle is large enough to knock down a pole and critically injure some spectators, you’re not going to fit.
The relationship between the city and Macy’s was being restored. But how would they win back the people that they had burned with their rubber last year? How could they show New York (and the rest of the country) that they wanted to move past the disaster of 1997?
This was probably the biggest hurdle that Macy’s had to jump. I don’t think that people were sitting around in June or July talking about how terrible the Parade was several months ago, but it is possible that a small group of people who were really impacted by the damage never wanted to be a part of the tradition ever again. Also, Macy’s had to imagine that once they began advertising for the Parade in the Fall, people would remember what happened the year before. A lot was working against them.
If you were to look at the Wikipedia page for the 1998 Parade (which, for what it’s worth, might be the most extensive resource surrounding this year’s Parade), you will notice the stacked list of performers that Macy’s grabbed. Chicago, Martina McBride, Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, 98 Degrees, Jo Dee Messina, and the Cast of Sesame Street all gave their talents in 1998. This is like 1998 in a bottle: pop, rock, and children’s music all united to usher the Parade into what it will be for generations to come. These acts knew that they would serve an integral role in giving the Parade a new name: instead of being your mother’s parade, we’re going to show everyone what they want. We are not just going to win our old audience back, we are now the Parade for everyone. I think this is the thesis of the 1998 Parade, and I think it worked.
You can see it in the faces Macy’s put up front. Commentator Willard Scott had certainly outworn his welcome, and in a smart move, Macy’s roped in the newest host of the Today Show: Matt Lauer. People who watch the Parade on NBC are generally the ones that watch the Today Show anyway, so to give some a familiar face to gaze upon might help them forget what Macy’s wanted them to forget.
On the forefront of the Parade’s mind was redemption. Any type of redemption comes with one ounce of sorry and two ounces of change; you never want to go back to what you were redeemed from. Macy’s knew that redemption looked like changing the parade on all fronts, while moving forward into the future.
Macy’s dispensed remedies left and right. Last year’s problems were this year’s improvements. But there was one thing that the conglomerate could not control: the weather.
What if New York gave the Parade its usual trouble of winds, rain, and a bitter cold? What if 1998 looked different than 1997, but felt the exact same?
Unfortunately, video evidence of the 1998 Parade is sparse, but one GoFundMe user is certainly trying to fix that, even if he’s not doing great. Pictures show us that the weather looked pretty split: rain in some photos, sun in the other. The Farmer’s Almanac Archive shows that the weather for November 26, 1998 was rainy, a little windy, but mostly manageable. It could have been that the weather moved from rain to sunshine, much like the Parade itself.
The videos that are available for the 1998 Parade show that it seemed to off without a hitch, even if the weather didn’t fully cooperate. People are lining the streets, excited about what they’re about to see. I can’t find any viewership statistics, but I would imagine that it won the day, like it does every single year. People show up for this thing, even though sometimes this thing gets a little bit out of hand.
CNN gave the Parade a glowing review day-of, saying that it really redeemed the disasters of 1997. It was safer, shinier, and showed America that you could still trust the Parade, after all this time.
If there is one moment that really captures the essence of the 1998 Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, it’d be the opening. America Sings!, the non-profit group that gathered children from around the country for a large song and dance show, sang Believe in the Music. This song celebrates faith in something bigger, unity, and above all, redemption.
1998 is proof that America loves a story about redemption. The injured quarterback that rises to the challenge to win the big game, the down-and-out solider who finds the strength to win the battle, the major parade run by a department store that suffered its worse and most destructive year yet that finds the solution to its problems…
Don’t ever count out the magic of this parade. Don’t ever think that a bad year could keep a good Parade down. This is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. This is a pillar of American culture that’s almost as important as the holiday that it falls on every year. I don’t know that there are a lot of events in our collective psyche that are so inextricably bound to our calendar. Sometimes the Rose Bowl is held on the 2nd, not the 1st.
I mean, yeah, the Ball will always drop on the 31st, and TBS will always play A Christmas Story ad nauseam on December 24th… but the Parade is bigger than those. It’s a geographical triumph. It’s the perfect synthesis of advertising and Americana. It’s the one time we can all get excited about seeing balloons. It’s miraculous that it has lasted this long, and if 1998 shows us anything, it’s that it will never go away.
