Baby Yoda invades Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with an astronaut, space Snoopy and Stormtroopers

If Baby Yoda can make it here, he can make it anywhere. 

The adorable green Force-wielder from the Disney Plus "Star Wars" series "The Mandalorian" soared over Broadway in Funko Pop form during the 95th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday (Nov. 25). (You can actually score a Funko Pop version of the Baby Yoda balloon, complete with his toy metal ball, for $30 at Funko.com and find more Black Friday Star Wars deals for your fans at home.) 

But Baby Yoda wasn't the only cosmic character to drop in on the turkey day event. 

Stormtroopers and an augmented reality float (complete with the Millennium Falcon) also made in an appearance along to promote the new VR game "Star Wars: Tales from The Galaxy's Edge" on Oculus Quest, which you can get with a $50 voucher in this Black Friday deal, and a giant Snoopy decked out in a NASA spacesuit floated behind a float of his Peanuts friends, bobbing just like you'd expect in zero gravity. 

"Oh no! Stormtroopers have Seezelslak and a porg captive! And look what's swooping in to this year's Macy's Parade to save them: the Millennium Falcon!" Macy's wrote on Twitter.

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Baby Yoda (his real name is Grogu) followed close behind Olay's "Her Future is STEM-sational" float, which featured a female astronaut holding her helmet alongside a robotic arm, double-helix for DNA and mathematical symbols. The female K-pop band Aespa joined the astronaut for a song during the parade.

The float is part of the skincare company's ongoing #MakeSapaceForWomen campaign, which also included a 2020 Super Bowl commercial starring former NASA astronaut Nicole Stott. 

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"Last year, Olay announced our brand purpose to make space for women in STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] during the Super Bowl, one of advertising's biggest moments, because we wanted that message to reach as many consumers as possible," Chris Heiert, senior vice president of Olay, said in a statement in 2020. "As we continue our mission to face the STEM gap, we saw the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade as another great, large scale opportunity to spread the message that women can face anything, and that we are here to support them in doing so." 

Snoopy floats down the streets of New York City in a NASA spacesuit during the 95th Macy's Thanksgiving Parade on Nov. 25, 2021. (Image credit: NBC)

The spacesuit-clad Snoopy balloon in this year's parade isn't the first Snoopy appearance in the event, but it does come at a time when NASA has teamed up with the Peanuts beagle to launch a one-of-a-kind version of him around the moon on its Artemis 1 mission in February 2022. 

Snoopy is also starring in season 2 of Snoopy in Space on Apple TV Plus, which is streaming now. 

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Tariq Malik
Editor-in-Chief

Tariq is the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001, first as an intern and staff writer, and later as an editor. He covers human spaceflight, exploration and space science, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009 and 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. In October 2022, Tariq received the Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting from the National Space Club Florida Committee. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast with space historian Rod Pyle on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.