Who Invented Inflatable Tube Man, and Why?
By: Jean Campbell
Tags: Art, Jerusalem, Advertising, Farming, Olympics

Who Invented Inflatable Tube Man, and Why?

Photo by author.

I was waiting in the car outside the grocery store when I caught of glimpse of him: a red-and-blue inflatable tube man. He was about 25 feet tall, with scraggly blue hair and a semi-smile.

From whence did he come, and to what dark crypt will he return?

Wind guy? Airman? Air ad man? When I typed “inflatable tube man,” google rained gold. Wikipedia had this to say:

“A tube man, also known as a skydancer, air dancer, or wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man, and originally called the Tall Boy, is an inflatable moving advertising product ….”

Skydancer was born as Art

Skydancer sprung from the mind of a clever artist and burst on the scene as a dazzling art installation. His windy fullness mysteriously turned slimmer, less attractive, and cheap — and now, we are living with dancing ads.

Doron Gazit is the man who had the vision. An environmental artist who grew up on a small farm in Israel, he figured out how to put wind into tubes — first horizontally, then vertically — and developed flame-retardant fabrics, fabric-inflating technology, and specialized UV-resistant fabric.

He got an early start in the air, working as a kiddie balloon artist on the streets of Jerusalem.

Gazit got his inspiration from his father and the plastic-covered greenhouses he grew up with. Watching the plastic sway in the breeze one day, he realized the flopping plastic could make wonderful, large-scale art installations.

Inspired by Christo and Andy Goldsworthy, Gazit began with a vision of grand scale, outdoor art. His work was soon recognized when the 1984 Olympic committee asked for tube men to array the Olympic ceremony. He moved to L.A. and began a company called Air Dimensional Design, Inc. to prep.

The early sky-dancers were 60 feet tall, with noodly waves of hair, two arms, and two legs. They didn’t wear costumes, and were one color. (Gazit was quickly invited to Burning Man, where he continues to go annually).

One of the earlier models. Photo courtesy wikipedia.com

100 feet high and Superbowl backdrops

The 1996 Olympic committee invited Gazit to bring more Tall Boys and, ever the creative entrepreneur, he consulted with an engineer to make improvements.

Gazit wanted the wavy men to do more than stand tall and wave, however; he wanted them to dance as “fly guys.” He and his engineer friend developed a mechanism to make the Fly Guys into reality, and so began the tradition of dancing tubes.

Fly guys at the Olympics. Photo courtesy youtube.com

Fly guys began showing up before large crowds: at a Superbowl halftime and Grammy awards show, for example. These tube guys were much like the original, with two arms and two legs and a full head of wavy hair.

They caught on like dry wood in a lightning storm. In the 1990s, everyone wanted a tube man outside the shop — and soon imitators got into the game. One very successful businesswoman, Colleen Carol, began fashioning her own version. This one, hot and in demand, still had arms and legs.

The single-bodied tube man we know today was waiting in the shadows, however.

Invasion of the unibody skydancer mongrels

By the turn of the century, the tube man had changed shape. Now a single, slim frame, he usually stood 30 feet. With arms and ahead, was a watered-down version of the first and second generation of Tall Boy and Fly Guy.

This new windy, wacky tube often wore outfits — perhaps as a cowboy or a superhero. As these lesser tube men began appearing, the original artist, Gazit, was still working on securing commercial rights for his idea.

He’d applied years earlier, and as soon as the patent office stamped “approved” in 2001, Gazit began trying to collect the licensing and other fees due him.

There was one big problem for Gazit, however. His patent only covered his concept, a tube man with arms and legs. The slim-jim, noodly tube man most of us know from our local strip malls and auto dealers has no patent!

Meanwhile, another man called Peter Minshall was taking credit for developing skydancers. Famous and talented in his own right, this carnival designer from Trinidad and Tobago also claimed to have developed and designed skydancers for the ’96 Olympics — unaware that Gazit had developed the concept as well.

But back to the unibody dancers….would Gazit be able to use his patent rights? He tried and often failed. The industry went through a bumpy period. In the end, Gazit credited Minshall with “a vision of humanoid inflatables” but asserted that he, Gazit, developed it for practical use.

Neither man would collect credit or fees, however, for the unibody skydancers now multiplying like bunnies across America. They have no inventor, apparently, and no patent.

It’s all about ads. Photo courtesy amazon.com

From visual art to strip mall eyesores

Today’s skydancers are a pale reflection of their forebearers. They were once beautiful, majestic, and inspiring. But the single tubes are merely fidgety, annoying creatures that create visual clutter.

Like the one at my local grocery store, which is having a second Grand Re-opening. Their multi-colored triangular flags are all fine and good, but Tube Man has got to go.

These tubular sky demons seem to have taken hold, especially, on the lots of car dealerships.

Cities around our nation have banned “skydancers” because of their urban blight. Houston is the most famous, but many more have joined in. Lately, flags have taken over — still using the wind, but less aggressive and distracting.

The future of Tall Boys

While they are waning at strip malls due to city bans, tube men are reining as modern-day scarecrows. A company called Look Our Way is promoting these airy stick figures, calling them Air Dancers or, more specifically, Air Rangers.

What do the Rangers do? They provide security by guarding warehouses and especially farms.

Air Rangers excel at keeping birds away from crops. With wriggly hands and hair, and especially with mean-looking faces, they scare off hungry skydancers looking for a free meal.

The Tall Boy’s narrative began as a single, wavy noodle. Then, he took off high into the air as a celebration of sport and art. Soon, he was diminished as an ad man. Now, his status has risen again, as he guards our food against foragers.

Who knows what the future holds for this squiggly dancer of the sky?