Do inflatables have just a blower or is there a heating element involved? Some of those monstrosities are rather large and a blower must have a lot of horsepower to keep them puffed up. Expensive?
They have blowers, sometimes really big and powerful ones. I have no idea what they cost to run but given the size of some of them and how many of those suckers some people cram onto one lawn I imagine it adds up.
A lot of people put them on the same timer as their lights so they go off at 10 or 11 pm & don’t come back on until dusk the next night. It’s really interesting flying low over a neighborhood & just seeing all of these colorful splotches on someone’s front lawn.
While not air-tight, as long as the blower has enough HP to put in more air than is being lost thru any seams/openings/fabric the inflatable will stay up. Most have relatively small motors, which only means that it takes a few mins longer to go from off to fully inflated than with a larger blower but that saves electricity in the long run;
Given they’re cold air inflatables that relay on positive pressure I don’t see a need for nor have I ever seen one with a heating element.
Makes me wonder how many kids have psychological damage from seeing Santa lying dead on the lawn. 
There was a house that I used to drive past, on the way to work (and my husband as well, when he worked at that same building a few years later), that always had huge inflatables for every holiday.
In the mornings, they had generally turned off the blowers - so their yard was covered in deflated decorations. My husband commented that it looked like someone had taken a hit out on their decor.
So yeah: an inflatable, pissed-looking elf with a candy-cane rifle pointed at all the others would be a perfect addition there.
I think we have a thread winner here.
Now that I’ve put up the tree and am vacuuming the needles, I’m still plumping for an INDOORS inflatable tree. (The air pump would have to be pretty quiet though.)
I thought my neighbors’ SW display was about as tacky as possible in past years w/ the inflatable ATAT, and the Yoda/Chewie/Darth/stormtrooper/C3PO/R2D2 figures. Yesterday they were joined by an inflatable Millennium Falcon.
I guess they think the humor outweighs the trashy appearance. I wonder if the scale inconsistencies bother them - Yoda is nearly as tall as Darth and Chewie…
But no reason to be content with one trashy theme. They also have an inflatable abomination on their roof - Santa and Rudolph in a helicopter. That is the one that bothers us, as it is quite close to our windows, and emits a high pitched whine. And there are toy soldiers guarding their garage.
Last year I passed one inflatable in the neighborhood which appeared to be Santa holding a tree in a way that made it look like it was coming out of his pants.
Has anyone encountered an inflatable that they consider attractive or tasteful?
Several years past, I heard a sermon in which the minister commented on the poorly inflated Santas he saw, nodding, seemingly trying to shake off a candy cane that is stuck to their mitten. In a nod to classical music he termed them Deflaterclaus.
We live in Florida, “The Land of Tacky,” but I do like the inflatable palm trees you see on occasion – live action Corona beer commercial.
Santa in his outhouse? My BP’s spiking.
There are some that aren’t so bad. Here’s one:
We have something similar – although without the continuous airflow – that we used to put on the balcony. Can’t do that with cats around and a somewhat accident-prone smoker occasionally around plus there’s a slow leak I’ve been having trouble plugging.
Think “reindeer farts.”
Ten hours after my Dad installed a pair of those motorized reindeer (all lights, head bobs up and down/left to right), his first addition to his Xmas display in 40+ years, some neighborhood pissant took a bat to both of them. Dad was eloquent: Fuck this neighborhood. They were not replaced. Tis the season.
There’s a house near us with a Grinch, and a tree (separate items) - and the first time we saw it, the angle of the two made it look like the Grinch was peeing on the tree. Ewww.
A more traditional artificial tree would address the needle-vacuuming problem, though the inflatable sort would be a lot easier to store away. Kinda tough to hang ornaments on that, though.
In my elf-sniper scenario, one would need to put it on a different timer from the rest of them, of course. Start inflating it, THEN deflate all the others.
Not an inflatable, but a plywood Grinch with a chainsaw. They put this next to a big ass pine tree that had fallen in their yard. That was cute.