Pink Floyd originally commissioned a helium filled pig to fly over Battersea Power Station in 1978 to be photographed for the front cover sleeve of their new Album ‘Animals’.

The original pig created quite a stir after it escaped and made front page news for the wrong reasons! Once the technical hitches were ironed out, the pig looked fantastic as it flew over Battersea.

Although this original inflatable pig still existed, it was in a very sorry state. EMI sent it back to us so we could make a replica. We used the original pig to create templates and made a new pig from the original pattern.

The result can be seen here – indistinguishable from the original but made from modern materials. Despite the pig being the size of a London bus, we made it much more user friendly. At least it inflated first time and didn’t fly away as the original pig did! (Mind you we did provide the crew to manage and fly the pig for the client so we could be sure that everything was set up exactly as we wanted.)

Based on our experience of flying giant inflatables, we know the weather conditions are generally at their best at dawn so we had a very early start on the Monday morning. Giant helium filled pigs are not renowned for their flying qualities so we hoped that there would be little or no wind at this time of the morning and we were luckily proved correct.

The iconic Pink Floyd Pig floated majestically above Battersea Power Station for most of the day and provided all the early morning commuters into London with a sight for disbelieving eyes!

Since then, we have flown the pig again above the V&A to promote the Pink Floyd Mortal Remains exhibition. Unsurprisingly, a giant inflatable pig always makes a huge impression!