February 18, 2007 In recognition of National Condom Week, a Washington retailer of sex products will sail a monster condom balloon the height of a two-story building, tethered on a 120-foot line over its Tukwila store. The condom will fly through the weekend to remind citizens of the importance of condoms and safe sex. The sturdy 20-foot pink condom has a diameter of 6-feet and is filled with 450 cubic feet of helium, a volume that requires the contents of four large welder’s tanks to fill. In a classic case of getting the events out of sequence, National Condom Week is celebrated the week AFTER Valentine’s Day each year. It was started in 1978 by students at the University of California-Berkeley and over three decades has become an important global event in the promotion of condom use as an effective method of decreasing the risk of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, not to mention reducing the risk of pregnancy.
The condom is a promotional effort by Castle Megastore, a 17-store upscale adult retail chain with stores in five states, which stocks more than 100 styles of condoms.