Richy Roy is Weyburn’s balloon wizard, magician and entertainer. Most recently, he’s made headlines as host of the online game show, Big Time Live.
Now the entertainer extraordinaire is adding one more accomplishment to his growing list.
He’s being featured in the 2021 edition of Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, alongside his brother, Preston Roy, for creating what he says is the world’s largest balloon costume.
“It kind of just blows your mind, it’s pretty incredible,” Roy said.
“This year of COVID-19 has been pretty hard on entertainers everywhere. As a professional entertainer I lost every single one of my shows for the entire year. It was pretty stressful, so to get the news we were featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, really lifted some spirits up.”
Roy and his brother created a giant minion out of 1,300 balloons, as a bucket list goal to feature in the Weyburn parade in 2018.
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“We decided to make the largest costume possible, and in town you have to get under the power lines — it says you can only build it 13.5 feet tall, so that’s exactly what we did,” Roy said.
“We gave ourselves one week and we took all seven days blowing up these balloons with an air compressor, with our mouths, with hand pumps and trying to figure out the structural design.”
The current record for world’s tallest balloon costume, Roy added, is roughly nine feet.
While Roy said they also submitted their creation to Guinness World Records, they didn’t qualify due to some fine details.
“We didn’t measure the height of it on the same day that we created it, which was one of the stipulations,” Roy said.
“They also required we video tape the entire seven days of making the costume just to make sure we weren’t using any false supports or had anything hidden, they just wanted to see that it was us two working on it.”
Regardless, it was such a huge undertaking that Roy said they finished the costume within 20 minutes of the parade start time.
Both Roy and Preston created the costume so they could each fit in one of the legs and used poles to move the arms.
“It was pretty cool,” Roy said. “Kids could see it coming from a long ways away and heard the ‘wows,’ ‘that’s so unbelievable, I can’t believe it,’ and that’s what really sparked the idea that ‘hey we should submit this to Ripley’s Believe It or Not!'”
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! said its team of researchers scour the globe for unusual stories.
“We are always excited to feature fan submissions, especially of this magnitude. We accept submissions all year round. To be included in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, a story, exhibit, or piece of art needs to be incredibly hard to believe, but undeniably true,” Suzanne Smagala, public relations manager, said in an emailed statement.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Mind Blown! goes on sale Sept. 29 at all major retailers.
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