Company floats ads in 'clouds' shaped like corporate logos

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A special-effects entrepreneur from Alabama has come up with a way to fill the sky with foamy clouds as big as 4 feet across and shaped like corporate logos Flogos, as he calls them.

Francisco Guerra, who's also a former magician, developed a machine that produces tiny bubbles filled with air and a little helium, forms the foam into shapes and pumps them into the sky.

The Walt Disney Co. will use one of the machines next month to send clouds shaped like Mickey Mouse heads into the air at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., Guerra said.

"It's a shock factor when you look up and there's a logo over your head," said Guerra, whose company, Snowmasters Inc., makes machines that churn out fake snow and foam for Hollywood movies and special events.

He developed Flogos at his small factory in northern Alabama a perfect place for research and development, he said, partly because there aren't many people around to ask questions about the foam shapes that float above the building on test days.

A Flogo machine works a little like a Play-Doh Fun Factory, the $5 toy kids use to squeeze colorful putty into stars, circles and other shapes.

A boxlike contraption produces a specially formulated white foam in a big round tub and forces it upward through a stencil. Once the foam is several inches thick, a metal cutter slices it and a faux cloud floats into the sky.

"You want some wind because you want them to travel," Guerra said. "If there's no wind they just spiral upward slowly. We've got a ghost (stencil), and on a calm day it looks like everyone is going to heaven."

Guerra's company is working on a version that will spit out 6-foot clouds.

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