Come on...this is so awesome! Super proud of our friend Kaws for getting this massive honor. He joins the legendary ranks of Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and more...by being chosen to create an art-inspired giant balloon for this year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! Above is a photo of the Companion balloon on a test run, via the Wall Street Journal ! Truthfully, Kaws could have made any one of his iconic figures into a balloon....the Michelin Man, the Spongebob...but the fact that a corpse-like shy fearful mickey-mouse-dressed figure with cauliflower ears will be floating down central park west in front of thousands of giddy tourists...is so subversive! I love it. And now all I hope for is that Kaws makes like Murakami did in 2010 ....and joins the parade in a crazy outfit. (probably won't happen...but imagine?!) Check out photos of Murakami's Kaikai and Kiki balloons, his flower-pot outfit...as well as other Thanksgiving Day Parade art balloons from Tom Otterness, and Jeff Koons... After the jump "Companion has been a recurring character for me," says Donnelly. In the past decade, it has been both a toy and a monumental sculpture. A 16-foot steel version went up in Hong Kong's Harbour City in 2010 and, later, outside of New York's Standard hotel. Painted gray, white and brown, the figure poses in a seated position, hunched slightly and covering its eyes. "I was thinking, God, if I had to sit there all day and have a million people pass me and stare,