Awesome Balloons

Balloon sculptor and humanitarian Jeff Wright created this epic Iron Man suit in just under 10 minutes. Oh, did we mention that he wears it at the end? Of course all The Mandarin needs to do is bring a pin and it’s game over.

To raise awareness about testicular cancer, the nonprofit organization Male Cancer Awareness Campaign hopes to raise about $150,000 to build the world’s largest – and only – flying scrotum. It’s an immature stunt for a good cause.

Watch the Airigami team assemble one of their latest creations at the Virginia Museum of Natural History. It’s a 20-foot balloon acrocanthosaurus, accompanied by balloon plants and insects. More photos here.

What happens when you point a custom-made 500 milliwatt Blu-ray laser beam at a line of 100 black balloons? This, my friends, this. It takes the powerful laser just eight seconds to sear through every single one of the balloons.

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a guy with a vacuum cleaner! The title says it all, as this guy blows himself up inside of his inflatable Superman costume. His archenemy must be named Pinhead. Animated .gif here.

Laser beams can be fun (and a little dangerous), as is demonstrated by this setup in which a number of balloons are sequentially targeted by lasers and eventually blown to smithereens.

While it’s not as mysterious as the actual Stonehenge, you can safely bounce off the rocks in this 1:1 interactive sculpture from Jeremy Deller, on display at Glasgow’s Int’l Festival of Visual Arts.

Just a little larger than the flying DeLorean, Gear Factor’s 1:1 scale R/C flying cars are made using lightweight foam and helium to lift them from the ground. Just don’t try and sit in one.

Chefs at Chicago’s famous Alinea restaurant continue to innovate and stupefy at the dinner table, with their latest creation – an edible green apple balloon – filled with helium you can inhale.

Wouldn’t it be nice to just drift with the clouds? Tiago Barros proposes just that with this more laid-back approach to travel that involves wayfaring onboard a huge cloud-shaped balloon.

Stunt driver Terry Grant takes the compact Alfa Romeo MiTo Quadrifoglio for a spin. But instead of hooning along on a dry track, he does donuts on top of 2500 water balloons.

All the benefits of the real deal without the hassles. This inflatable vinyl beard will instantly bestow a chinful of manliness to any man, pet, plant or inanimate object that wears it. Or not.

Thought up by Zero2Infinity, the helium filled Bloon Balloon plans on providing relatively cheap cruises of the upper stratosphere in a specially crafted pod that can be launched from anywhere on the planet.

Artists Larry Moss and Kelly Cheatle have developed the unique art of “airigami”, which they describe as a combination of sculpture, puppetry and origami. Check out their website to see more.

Tokyo’s h220430 designed this ingenious bench, inspired by the 1953 French film The Red Balloon. While it looks like it’s floating in mid air, it’s actually anchored to the ceiling by the light-up balloons.

For the upcoming How Hard Can it Be?, Nat Geo decided to recreate Carl’s flying house from Pixar’s Up, sending a lightweight house attached to 300 balloons 10,000 feet into the sky. More pics here.

Air Swimmers are fish and shark shaped indoor helium filled mylar balloons that you can maneuver in the air with a remote control. They take a single battery and can stay afloat for up to 2 weeks.

We’re loving this Muppet balloon animal collection from the Black Cat Balloon Company; whoever has these friends at their birthday party will no doubt be the coolest kid in school. (Thanks John!)

Got a passion for hot air ballooning and Aqua Teen Hunger Force? The guys at Adult Swim are offering up this awesome Meatwad balloon for you to get tore-up and pass out in the hot sun in.