Specially shaped and unique hot air balloons

Since the resurgence of hot air ballooning in the late 1960’s, balloon designers and manufacturers have used new techniques and machinery to design increasingly complicated hot air balloons. Special shaped balloons are usually commissioned by companies wanting to advertise a brand, but there are a few people who collect unique balloons as a hobby.

Probably one of the most famous hot air balloon collectors was the late Malcolm Forbes (the original publisher of the Forbes 500 magazine), who had a variety of special shaped hot air balloons. Malcolm Forbes would commission a new balloon when he visited a new country, to honour their culture and diverseness. These ranged from a Sphinx for Egypt, an elephant for India and the Santa Maria to honour Spain.

Because of the complicated nature of custom balloon designs, hot air balloon pilots seem to have a love/hate relationship with them. These balloons are often harder to inflate and pressurise consistently, take more room to land because of their shape and take longer to assemble and pack away. But for the pilot it is a great feeling to fly a custom shaped balloon because it handles a lot differently from a standard balloon.

With the advances in hot air balloon manufacture and the incorporation of computer aided design (CAD), there are bound to be even more specially shaped balloons for many years to come.