Awesome Balloons

A crew working in Long Beach, California stumbled onto a couple of mylar balloons entwined in the power lines. Before the lines could be shut off, they caused a spectacular short circuit, blowing up a transformer, and knocking out the neighborhood’s power.

The Slow Mo Guys follow up an earlier video in which Dan managed to get everything but his head inside a giant water balloon. This time, he managed to get all the way inside of it before popping it in front of their high speed Phantom Flex 4K camera at 1000 fps.

Balloon artist Mark Verge aka Jungle Jack shows Coolest Thing his masterpiece: a 12ft-tall and 43-ft long balloon T-rex. Mark usually spends around 40 hours and nearly 700 balloons to make the piece, which lasts only about 2 days at a time.

Hanging in the basket of a hot air balloon can be quite a thrill. Hanging 400 feet beneath the basket of a hot air balloon, 6000 feet off the ground like these guys from the Red Bull Skydive team is just insane. Awe-inspiring, but still insane.

For a recent display at Lehi, Utah’s Thanksgiving Point, the talented artists of Balloon Guy Entertainment created this impressive inflatable replica of India’s Taj Mahal, using their balloon animal techniques on a grand scale.

The King of Random is back with another fun, yet dangerous video, as he fills party balloons with extremely flammable, lighter-than-air HHO gas, lights them with a fuse, and sends them airborne. Suffice it to say, this is not FAA approved.

Zorbz water balloons have a sealant stored in a capsule in their neck. Just pinch then stretch the neck when you’ve filled the balloon to pop the capsule and seal the tip. The seal lasts for only about 20 minutes, so let ‘er rip ASAP.

70-year-old daredevil Ivan Trifonov recently flew his hot air balloon down into the Earth and inside Croatia’s Mamet Cave. While it’s not actually the first time that someone has flown a balloon in a cave, it’s still an impressive feat.

Musician Andrew Huang decided to play a rendition of the 1980s new wave hit 99 Red Balloons using nothing but actual red balloons – and a ton of editing. We’re not sure if these are the German or the English lyrics though.

Josh Malone is declaring war on summer. His invention lets you fill 100 small balloons with water in less than a minute. Sadly, Bunch O Balloons’ straws are one time use only, although they are made of recyclable plastic.

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.