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For the past 99 years at Macy’s annual Thanksgiving Day Parade, spectators have craned their necks to watch giant balloons and larger-than-life floats pass through the streets of New York City. But a word to the wise this year: Don’t forget to look down. You might just catch a glimpse of the tiniest float in the parade’s history.
The float—which is 49 times smaller than the average display—comes courtesy of Goldfish, which is returning to the parade for the first time in more than a decade. The float’s design features a wintery snowscape covered with frolicking Goldfish crackers towed by an equally tiny Ram truck. According to Brendan Kennedy, director of creative production at Macy’s Studios, the float measures less than 8 inches tall and 14 inches long. Throughout the parade, it will be circling Herald Square, just outside Macy’s department store.
Kennedy, who stepped into his role at the helm of the parade in April 2024, says he’s been spending quite a bit of time digging through the event’s history for its upcoming centennial anniversary. In all that research, he’s never come across another float quite like this one.
“I don’t think this has ever come close to happening,” Kennedy says.
Inside Goldfish’s return to the parade
Every year, Kennedy says the team at Macy’s is working around 18 months ahead of time to prepare for the next Thanksgiving parade: ensuring the event will have enough street space, selecting brand partners, and ironing out the production schedule. The floats themselves take anywhere from three to six months to fully plan and design. When Goldfish reached out to Macy’s with the idea to build what the company is calling “the Littlest Float” in early September, Kennedy says the team was “already in the home stretch” of building this year’s six new floats.
Despite the quick turnaround, he knew they had to make it happen. “I got a call from our partnership team, and they said ‘Goldfish has this idea, what do you think?’” Kennedy says. “I was like, ‘Absolutely. I’m in.’”
Designing a new float always starts with nailing down a solid story, Kennedy says. In this case, the Goldfish and Macy’s teams pulled inspiration from “Snow Day,” a Goldfish ad originally released in 2015 that shows a crew of three hat-wearing Goldfish crackers sledding, playing hockey, building snowmen, and warming up by the fire. The float’s mock-up included a team of Goldfish enjoying wintery activities in a snowy landscape, topped off by a Goldfish-shaped mound of snow.
The last time Goldfish was in the parade was back in 2012, when the brand debuted a somewhat meta float of Goldfish crackers putting on their own parade. “After more than a decade, returning with the Littlest Float allowed us to show up in a way that feels both true to the brand and meaningful to fans,” says Mike Fanelli, the brand’s senior director of marketing.
Bringing the tiniest Thanksgiving float ever to life
Bringing the design to life was an entirely new challenge for the Macy’s team. Typically, Kennedy explains, they’re contending with the massive scale of the floats, which need to be simultaneously spectacular but also street-safe and foldable in order to pack up for transport. Designing a tiny float invited its own host of unique considerations: namely, how to make the wintery scene durable at such a small size.
Kennedy’s team addressed that concern by building a custom base, which is hidden by a lining of orange fringe around the float. It’s an aluminum structure, made in the shape of a Goldfish cracker, that was hand-cut in-house. Kennedy describes it as “essentially a thick skateboard.” Most important for the float’s longevity, its wheels are omnidirectional, meaning it won’t easily be tripped up on uneven surfaces.
“[The wheels] kind of look like a Ping-Pong ball inside of a metal scoop,” Kennedy says. “They’re used in robotics a lot of the time. We found that these worked best because of their omnidirectional ability. A traditional float bed just has to roll straight and then turn, and it’s just these big old tires. But for this, it could basically go in any direction at any point.”
On top of the aluminum base, the part of the Littlest Float that’s actually visible is a 3D-printed landscape that’s been sanded down and hand-painted to achieve a detailed look up close. As a finishing touch, the whole contraption is pulled by a tiny Ram truck with workable blinkers and side mirrors, manufactured by a company called Primal RC that makes an officially licensed miniature of the vehicle. Kennedy says this element was important for continuity, since Ram is a sponsor of the parade, and its trucks will be pulling all the standard-size floats.
To get the right shot of the diminutive float, the Macy’s team worked with NBC, the parade’s broadcast partner, to set up a dedicated steady rig camera that sits just 6 inches off the ground. On the day of the event, a team of actors—purposefully selected to be above-average height in order to play up the conceit—will follow the Littlest Float around the square and keep an eye on it.
“I think it’s really fun and silly, and it’s such a good way of showing how the Macy’s Studios team can come together and reinvent what it means to parade,” Kennedy says. “It’s clowns, and performances, and magic—to make everybody look up, see some balloons, forget about their day or week or year, and just have some fun. We really just like coming up with new ways to do that for all the folks on the street and at home.”
This article originally appeared in Inc.’s sister publication, Fast Company.
Fast Company is the world’s leading business media brand, with an editorial focus on innovation in technology, leadership, world changing ideas, creativity, and design. Written for and about the most progressive business leaders, Fast Company inspires readers to think expansively, lead with purpose, embrace change, and shape the future of business.
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