The Wonderful World of Helium Balloons

Dave Bird, Wed 21 May 1997 and Wed 04 Jun 1997

From: Dave Bird---St Hippo of Augustine <dave@xemu.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: the wonderful world of helium balloons.
Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 01:04:03 +0100
Message-ID: <cmVDXhCzvjgzEwlD@xemu.demon.co.uk>

To: alt.religion.scientology
Re: the wonderful world of helium balloons.

We tried 'em out in Poole and they went excellently. Here are some hints and tips; NB UK£ x 1.6 = US$.

BALLOONS for 12" maximum inflated size are about 3" of body plus 2" of neck when uninflated, weigh about 10g so 100 of them = 1kg, i.e. 2lbs. For promo ... blue print is nicer than black, and use white balloons (honest: we had half red and you couldn't see the print on those from any distance). The ones for gas are soft latex - making or undoing a loose knot is easy without cutting into your fingers - and they don't burst with a hard bang like plastic ones. That letterpress printing plate for something simple ... 'XEMU Loves You' in a large font and his face ... wants to be full 2" high, to get the art round the whole curve of the balloon, even if they charge you extra for the big plate or extra ink. Normally the plate is £36 first time and then each 200 printed balloons is £36.

GAS: Balloon gas is helium/air mixture. The cylinder to inflate 100 balloons is 4'6" by 6" and weighs about 50 lbs. It costs £60, and leave cheque for £100 deposit against safe return. One man can carry it if he is carrying no other luggage, but feels the strain after 100 yards. Trains may object to conveying it, so it is best put in a very large holdall with blanket or whatever over the protruding end - or far better to get it in a car. In the UK, pubs, bars, etc. don't like gas cylinders indoors: they feed the CO2 that pumps their beer from cylinders in a lockup outside (which is where you can ask them to put yours if you have to leave it), and this means inflating probably happens in their walled carpark if you rendezvous at one.

INFLATING. You screw in an adaptor just hand tight, carefully because it is easy to damage the thread. Turn the gas on: push the rubber tube over and gas comes out. When finished, turn the gas off - push the tube over to bleed out any gas in it, then you can unscrew the valve. Don't haul the cylinder around with the valve on. Place balloon just standing over the conical tip, not dragged down. Push over for a few gentle squirts of gas. Inflate to about 9 or 10" of a 12" max inflated size balloon and not hard or down the neck (which wastes gas so you would run out, and also makes them likely to burst in hot sun or when flown). Watch each one carefully as otherwise a holed balloon may sit there leaking gas and never fill. Tie neck loosely, and put onto about 5ft of thin plastic ribbon. We had these all done in advance, complete with a loop for the wrist and a little 1" x 3" label with a punched hole saying a few words about XEMU. The only snag was they, er, snagged together and were hard to untangle at times.

How did they go? Blooming marvelously. "Learn the secrets of Scientology, learn about XEMU the space alien, get your leaflets here, free Xemu balloons for the kids." Hopefully lots of people will be talking about who XEMU was. Certainly it enturbulated the clams, once they had seen what was printed on these white and red balloons, to be reminded each time they saw white and red balloons bobbing up and down the High Street. I only heard a couple of ours go boom (which obviously, like a leaflet being torn up, you don't want; you want it to wander round all afternoon spreading your message). One was a kid biting the neck to suck helium and do a Mickey Mouse voice, which the instructions on the cylinder said you shouldn't do - but we mostly all did by the end of the afternoon :-) - so we just gave up and handed him an unknotted one to do it from. We brought about 30 down with us inflated at the rendezvous pub, then a car we had on site moved the cylinder down to the picket [wouldn't advise this in a harsh confrontation or with people hassling you] found themselves a quiet corner off to one side where they inflated loads for the others to give out.

This was three hours in the pedestrianised High St of a busy seaside town. We gave out 100 no sweat, and could have managed 150-200. The cylinder for 200, though, is the 6ft jobbie you see wheeled round hospitals on a stacker.

They cost money; think of yourself handing out free dollar bills even without the cost of the plate - and most local councils don't allow casual selling on their streets - but you gets what you pays for. In a happy, seaside atmosphere they are the dog's bollocks: they really get your message out! This was combined with a costumed Xemu and a mix of leaflets including RX (Roland's Xemu, all about Xemu) and DX (Dave's Xemu, moves rapidly on to stuff about Duke & Lisa).

HTH if anyone is thinking of trying some themselves.

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From: Dave Bird---St Hippo of Augustine <dave@xemu.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Re: the wonderful world of helium balloons.
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 21:18:20 +0100
Message-ID: <yp$40$BM2clzEwZp@xemu.demon.co.uk>

In article <cmVDXhCzvjgzEwlD@xemu.demon.co.uk>, Dave Bird---St Hippo of Augustine <dave@xemu.demon.co.uk> writes:

To: alt.religion.scientology
Re: the wonderful world of helium balloons.

Slight addendum about helium balloons. NB 1 inch =^= 2.5 cms

The balloons we got are about 1.5" of neck then 3" high, they are 3" wide when flat or 6"circumference(2" diam) when round; inflated FULL is fourfold viz 12" high and 8" diam. You actually blow them to 10" and still springy, which is half the gas and allows room for expansion in flight or hot weather.

The printing is made by blowing them FULL against a 7" wide x 5" high landscape-wise printing plate, which will thus be 1.75" wide x 1.25" high on the uninflated balloon. I made the mistake of having a tall thin portraitwise artwork with rather weedy print and drawing-strokes ... use really fat letters and drawing strokes to take maximum advantage of the ink versus space in your printing area. Preferred colours: standard blue on white & yellow ones, for colourful artwork which is readable against the background.

I have comprehensively rediddled the artwork to get best advantage next print run. P.S. latex balloons have a few months' shelf life if kept somewhere which is cool and not too dry, away from sun or radiators (they are meant for balloon flights where they will end up burst or deflated around the countryside, so they biodegrade--but not that fast). Not something I'd thought about, but helium is a small molecule and escapes between the fibres even of good latex fairly fast: they have enough buoyancy to fly their own weight for about 24hours then go down, although kids can always reinflate them ordinarily with air afterwards.

                                            |~/           |~/
~~|;'^';-._.-;'^';-._.-;'^';-._.-;'^';-._.-;||';-._.-;'^';||_.-;'^'0-|~~
P |      Woof Woof, Glug Glug               ||____________||      0  | P
O |   Who Drowned the Judge's Dog?          | . . . . . . . '----. 0 | O
O |         answers on                  *---|_______________  @__o0  | O
L |__<a href="news:alt.religion.scientology">_______________|/_______| L
  and<a href="http://www.xemu.demon.co.uk/clam/lynx/q0.html">