Macy's Sunny the Snowpal Astronaut Balloon Is Just Adorable in the Thanksgiving Day Parade 2018

Macy's is going out of this world for Thanksgiving this year, with a truly adorable astronaut balloon making a debut in the 2018 Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.

Called Sunny the Snowpal, the astronaut snowgirl is the star of Macy's holiday window display, where she travels the cosmos to help Santa fix his sleigh in time for Christmas. Earlier this week, I took a peek at Sunny's adventures while walking by the Macy's storefront on the way to Space.com's headquarters. Check it out below. [Thanksgiving in Space! How Astronauts Celebrate]

Any space-age store display will capture my attention, but what's exciting about Sunny's space adventure are the interactive elements Macy's installed. You can fly Sunny through an asteroid field, for example, and several windows sport buttons to active features in the displays.

So if you're watching the parade this Thanksgiving, don't miss Sunny's cosmic debut. And if you're in New York City this holiday season, Sunny's space adventure is a definite must-see for space fans young and old!

Happy Thanksgiving to all from the Space.com team!

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook.

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Tariq is the award-winning Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001. He covers human spaceflight, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. He's a recipient of the 2022 Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting and the 2025 Space Pioneer Award from the National Space Society. He is an Eagle Scout and Space Camp alum with journalism degrees from the USC and NYU. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.