A video of a large balloon of Taiwan’s 7-Eleven mascot flying away has gone viral on Twitter and inspired some hilarious memes.
The balloon was part of the parade, “OPEN Big Balloon! Dream World”, which was held in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, on Saturday Dec. 17.
It featured 17 giant balloons of different famous mascots and cartoon characters.
Unfortunately, due to a recent cold wave that hit Taiwan on Friday Dec. 16, the main star of the show, Taiwan’s 7-Eleven mascot, OPEN-chan, was swept away by the strong wind.
In the video shared on social media, OPEN-chan can be seen performing majestic flips into the sky while flying all over the city.
After several minutes of flight, his corpse was later found torn into pieces in Daliao District, about 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) away.
Friend that lives in Taiwan said they found his corpse 🫡 pic.twitter.com/s9HPgBtfRl
— 🔞Mime fucker extraordinaire🔞 (@mimes_gone_wild) December 18, 2022
Luckily, no one was harmed by OPEN-chan’s “venturous escape” and subsequent downfall.
The balloon had cost NT$300,000 (US$10,000) to create, and the event organizer is now facing fines of up to NT$1.5 million (US$50,000) because it flew and entered airspace that is restricted to registered aircraft, according to local outlet UDN.
A video of the moment then went viral after it was shared on Twitter by Mondo Mascots, an account that shares photos of the various different mascots, mostly in Japan.
Twitter users combined the video with different types of background music, turning it into a meme.
For the musical theatre geeks pic.twitter.com/1N23ZiwWKi
— Dean Bray (@DeanBray1) December 18, 2022
someone has to do it pic.twitter.com/n6QIcFSHW8
— offline vtuber elky (@_Elkyrie) December 18, 2022
— Seearbi (@seearbi) December 18, 2022
I added „Don‘t stop me now“ onto it. ❤️🤣👍 pic.twitter.com/MNOQNe0IZ5
— profjpg 📸 🎮 (@profjpg) December 18, 2022
— nick (@nick_pants) December 18, 2022
“He’s going to heaven eleven now,” one person wrote on Twitter.
he’s going to heaven eleven now
— smamfa (@Foggy_Headlamps) December 18, 2022
The video has since gained more than 4.7 million views on Twitter and more than 33,300 retweets.
