There are two very different products people mean by a mascot balloon, and they differ by roughly a factor of ten in price. Start here before you get a quote from anyone.
Printed, not moulded
A **moulded** mascot balloon is built to the shape of your character: the ears, the beak, the whole silhouette. It is custom tooling, it costs many thousands of dollars, and it takes months.
A **printed** mascot balloon is a standard shape with your mascot printed on it in full colour. Ours is a 13-foot blimp with your artwork on both sides, $1,526, ready in about two weeks.
We make the second kind. If you need a moulded shape we will tell you so and point you at a custom fabricator rather than talking you into something else.
Why printed usually wins anyway
At 120 feet, a moulded silhouette and a printed image read almost identically. Height flattens everything: you see a coloured object with a shape and a message, not the fine outline of a costume.
Where moulded genuinely wins is close up, at ground level, where people can walk around it. That is a parade or a stadium concourse product, not a roadside one.
For a school, a college booster club or a business using a mascot in its branding, printed at 120 feet does the job for a fraction of the cost.
Getting the artwork right
Mascots are usually the hardest artwork to reproduce well, because they are detailed and often outlined in a colour close to the background.
Send the file your uniform supplier or sign company uses. We will come back with a proof and an honest note on how it holds up at thirteen feet. Fine outlines and thin lettering are what disappear.
A bold, simplified version of a mascot almost always reads better in the air than the full-detail original. We will say so if that is the case.
Who buys these
- Schools and colleges — Home game days, fundraisers, open days.
- Booster clubs — Fields with no signage and no permanent address.
- Businesses with a mascot — Dealerships, restaurants, regional chains.
- Youth sports tournaments — Marking a field complex people cannot find.
- Grand openings — A recognisable character reads faster than a logo.
Ask for a quote. Call 1-800-791-1445 or email sales@arizonaballoon.com and tell us the size and whether you want it printed.
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