Babar is a wildly popular French children's character created by Jean de Brunhoff for the story Histoire de Babar. In the book, his mother is killed by a hunter, but Babar escapes to the city. After some time, he returns to the community of elephants, where he becomes King of the Elephants and marries his cousin Celeste.
History with the Macy's Parade[]
Babar's history with the parade dates all the way back to 1938, when a push-and-pull float version of him appeared in the 1938 Parade. The float featured him riding a horse. The Babar float reappeared in 1940 Parade, but was retired after that years procession.
Babar made his grand return to the parade, in 1991, where he was the only new balloon to debut that year and was the grand finale due to him being the Macy's Holiday Ambassador of that year, and with that, an animatronic version of him stood atop the Macy's Herald Square marquee, and a plush toy was released to Macy's stores. Babar returned as the second to last character balloon in the 1992 Parade. Babar was the most recent balloon to make use of the large sphere balloon which had been used for many years and characters, such as Elsie the Cow, Smile, and the Alvin and the Chipmunks falloon. He was retired after the 1992 Parade making only two parade appearances.
In 1991, walk-around versions of Babar and Celeste rode on Macy's REO Delivery Truck, but not near the balloon. In 2011, Babar, alongside a horde of retired balloon characters, appeared on the Hats Off To Our Heritage float, with a new costume based on his appearance in Babar and the Adventures of Badou.