A toy balloon or party balloon is a small balloon mostly used for decoration, advertising and children's toys. Toy balloons are usually made of rubber or aluminized plastic, and inflated with air or helium. They come in a great variety of sizes and shapes, but are most commonly in diameter. Toy balloons are not considered to include "sky lanterns" (hot-air paper balloons), although these too are or were used as child toys in some parts of the world.
According to The Journal of the American Medical Association, out of 373 children who died in the US between 1972 and 1992 after choking on children's products, nearly a third choked on latex balloons. The Consumer Products Safety Commission found that children had inhaled latex balloons whole (often while trying to inflate them) or choked on fragments of broken balloons. Parents, a monthly magazine about raising children, advised parents to buy Mylar balloons instead of latex balloons.
History
Early balloons were made from pig bladders and animal intestines. The Aztecs created the first balloon sculptures using wildcat intestines, which were then presented to the gods as a sacrifice. There are references to balloons made of whale intestine in Swiss Family Robinson (1813) and in Moby Dick (1851).
The first rubber balloons were made by Professor Michael Faraday in 1824 for use in his experiments with hydrogen at the Royal Institution in London. "The caoutchouc is exceedingly elastic," he wrote in the Quarterly Journal of Science the same year. "Bags made of it...have been expanded by having air forced into them, until the caoutchouc was quite transparent, and when expanded by hydrogen they were so light as to form balloons with considerable ascending power...." Faraday made his balloons by cutting round two sheets of rubber laid together and pressing the edges together. The tacky rubber welded automatically, and the inside of the balloon was rubbed with flour to prevent the opposing surfaces joining together.
Latex rubber toy balloons were introduced by pioneer rubber manufacturer Thomas Hancock the following year in the form of a do-it-yourself kit consisting of a bottle of rubber solution and a condensing syringe. Vulcanized toy balloons, which unlike the earlier kind were unaffected by changes in temperature, were first manufactured by J.G. Ingram of London in 1847 and can be regarded as the prototype of modern toy balloons.
Since the 1890s, paper balloons called kamifūsen have been popular children's toys in Japan.
In the 1920s Neil Tillotson designed and produced a latex balloon with a cat's face and ears from a cardboard form which he cut by hand with a pair of scissors. He managed to make his first sale of these balloons with an order of 15 gross to be delivered for the annual Patriots' Day Parade on April 19, 1931. The first colored balloons were sold at the 1933-34 Chicago World's Fair.
Foil balloons
Inflatable foil balloons are made from plastics, such as biaxially-oriented PET film. Foil balloons are not elastic like rubber balloons, so that detailed and colorful pictures printed on their surfaces are not distorted when the balloon is inflated. Foil balloons are thus named because they sometimes have a metallic coating to make them shiny; however, there have been concerns about metallic balloons causing short circuits when caught in overhead power lines. Because metallic balloons can cause power outages like on overhead catenary train lines, it is recommended that the metallic balloons not only be tied by a string or ribbon with no metal in it, but also securely tied down by a weight to prevent the balloon from floating away and some train operators either issue advisories on how to handle balloons or ban balloons altogether. When no longer required, it is recommended to cut the balloon to release the helium and dispose of in a garbage container.