Mardi Gras is renowned for its assortment of parade throws, particularly plastic beads and trinkets tossed from parading float riders to the spectators below. Most Carnival traditions throughout Louisiana and around the world contain a give-and-take component. However, this was not always the case in New Orleans, the state’s historical epicenter of pre-Lenten Carnival celebrations. The culture and history of Mardi Gras throws, especially plastic beads, the most ubiquitous throw of all, reveal relationships Louisianans have with each other and the spaces they inhabit, including the world and natural environment.

Origins

In Europe, Carnival celebrations have traditionally involved a similar give and take between celebrants. In Spain, people throw food items like citrus, eggs, flour, and beans. In Italy, people throw eggs filled with confetti or sand along with fruits and vegetables. Early-nineteenth-century New Orleans Carnival celebrations followed this model. A late-afternoon procession of masked revelers—both pedestrians and carriage-borne—tossed spectators candies, flowers, and other small treats.

An 1837 account in the Picayune describes a crowd of onlookers trailing the masqueraders “shouting and bawling, and apparently highly delighted with the fun, or what is more probably, anxious to fill their pockets with sugar plums, kisses, [and] oranges  […] which were lavishly bestowed upon them by these goodhearted jokers, whoever they were.”

Beginning in 1857 the Mistick Krewe of Comus, alongside the parading organizations that followed in the late nineteenth century (the Twelfth Night Revelers, Krewe of Proteus, Knights of Momus, and Rex), changed the dynamics of New Orleans Mardi Gras by reorganizing the chaotic, public street celebrations into systematized parades that rolled along planned routes with a clear separation between paraders and passive onlookers. The rare throws at this time would be bestowed to select individuals such as family, friends, and paramours. These one-to-one interactions were planned.

In 1871, a year after their founding, the Twelfth Night Revelers featured an individual in their parade masked as Father Christmas, who tossed trinkets to the crowd, though the practice did not immediately catch on.

Carnival’s throw culture advanced slightly in 1890 with the advent of the Jefferson City Buzzards, the first neighborhood-based walking club. The Buzzards, and the many working-class walking clubs that followed in their footsteps, aimed to overturn Mardi Gras’s entrenched elite power structure by marching in neighborhoods far afield from the main downtown parading route. During their parade the Buzzards bestowed paper flowers on spectators for a kiss (the same practice continues today during New Orleans’s St. Patrick’s Day parade).

The Rise of Beads and Commercial Krewes

There are scattered historical references to beads, the throw most associated with New Orleans Mardi Gras, being tossed from parade floats. However, beads were popularized by Rex in 1921, during the krewe’s fiftieth anniversary and the city’s first large-scale Carnival following a run of canceled years due to World War I. Other parading organizations followed Rex’s lead, though the Mistick Krewe of Comus resisted, deeming the practice of tossing throws beneath the organization.

Beads owe much of their popularity to their time of introduction. In the 1920s, New Orleans endeavored to revive what many saw as a languishing Carnival season. In addition to languishing Carnival seasons during World War I, a postwar generation of upwardly mobile businessmen, both locals and transplants, found themselves unable to join the insular world of the old-line krewes.

To revitalize Carnival the New Orleans Convention & Tourism Bureau and local business leaders launched a nationwide tourism campaign. They also encouraged locals to decorate their addresses with the colors of Mardi Gras—purple, green, and gold—and even began holding costume and dance contests. The city also agreed to stretch the parading calendar from one extended weekend to two. New krewes launched to fill the scheduling void. These parading organizations came to be known as commercial krewes, birthed during the further commercialization of Mardi Gras, and included the Krewe of Carrollton, the Krewe of Mid-City, the Mystic Krewe of Druids, and the Krewes of Alla, Babylon, and Hermes.

The commercial krewes, and the crowds that came out to see what these new parading organizations could offer, seized upon the lowly string of beads. These early beads were costume jewelry made of multicolored glass, often from the Bohemia region of the nation once known as Czechoslovakia. Photographs from the 1940s portray crowds with outstretched hands, showing that the custom of asking for beads had by then become entrenched.

Diversification (and Plastification) of Throws

The 1960s brought two innovations to the world of throws. Rex is credited with tossing doubloons in 1960. These coins, usually made from cheap metals like aluminum, sometimes wood, and later plastic, commonly showcase the krewe’s theme and king for the year. Other parading krewes seized upon the idea, and doubloons instantly became a Carnival collectible and symbolic souvenir, which they remain today.

The second 1960s innovation is one of the most consequential in twentieth century Mardi Gras history. The cheapness of plastic manufacturing—about two-thirds of the price of glass—alongside the fact that the Communist Soviet bloc invaded and absorbed Czechoslovakia in 1968, heralded the fall of glass beads. The rise of plastic not only gave way to plastic beads but also to cups, toys, and a variety of throwaway souvenirs adored by both children and adults.

The plastification of Mardi Gras went hand in hand with and was helped along by the advent of the super krewes. By the end of the 1960s, local business leaders again saw diminished tourist dollar returns on the money they and the city spent on the Carnival season. Beginning in 1969 the Krewe of Bacchus sought to supersize the parade experience with larger floats, carrying more riders, who would toss more throws than ever before. Before, floats could hold about eight to ten people. Bacchus made floats that held between twenty-five and thirty people.

The Krewe of Endymion, a small neighborhood parading organization, soon followed Bacchus’s lead and filled their procession with more floats that could hold even more riders. Endymion’s largest float, Pontchartrain Beach, stretches more than three hundred feet in length, holding 250 riders (by comparison, Rex’s total membership hovers under 450).

The era of the super krewe had arrived, a time when Mardi Gras parades felt like an arms race, with krewes outspending, outbuilding, and out-throwing each other. In their early years as a super krewe, Endymion riders spent around $150,000 to $200,000 on throws in total. In the 2020s the krewe’s ridership spent $1-1.5 million on throws. It is estimated that all city Mardi Gras parades, in total, spend upward of $50 million each year. Endymion’s unofficial motto is “Throw Until It Hurts.”

The bead arms race has seen a parallel rise in some paradegoers exposing their body parts for throws. Since the 1970s this flashing phenomenon, or what sociologists call “ritual disrobement,” has expanded from the French Quarter to the parade route. However, this practice is neither required, universal, nor legal.

Signature Throws

Paradegoers are not content with just beads. The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a historically Black parading organization that first marched on Mardi Gras day in 1910, pioneered the signature throw. At some point in their early history, Zulu participants began tossing unadorned coconuts to the crowd. Over time members began painting and bedazzling their coconuts, which became one of the most prized Carnival catches—though these heavy objects are no longer tossed, but instead handed, due to a Zulu safety policy instituted in the 1980s.

More recently many parading organizations have introduced their own signature throws. The all-female Krewe of Muses tosses decorated shoes, Carrollton throws fancified shrimp boots, and the Krewe of Tucks is known for its glittery toilet plungers. Signature throws perhaps best speak to the transactional nature of Mardi Gras, turning spectators into active participants who competitively seek out these prized items.

Economic and Environmental Impacts

As parades and floats have increased in size, so too have the beads they toss. The original plastic bead strands ranged from twenty-four to thirty-three inches long, with the biggest beads clocking in at forty-two inches and costing around two cents per strand. Today the smallest beads are thirty-three inches a strand, while the largest can measure ten feet. The smallest beads cost five cents per strand, while the grandest can set a buyer back anywhere from $1.50 to ten dollars wholesale. Most krewes stipulate that parading members order directly from their throw manufacturer, though many individuals supplement their orders with specialty items purchased from local wholesale businesses that specialize in selling throws.

Today beads are rarely just beads. They light up, can be functional (a notebook to wear around your neck or a drink holder), and most often carry the krewe’s insignia. Many krewes include a bead design commemorating that year’s parade theme.

The great majority of these plastic throws are manufactured in Chinese factories by economically exploited laborers, who, because plastic is a petrochemical product, are often poisoned by carcinogens in the process. Studies have shown that the material composition of Mardi Gras beads can contain concerning levels of toxic chemicals, including lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury.

Apart from specialty throws, which many Mardi Gras fans hoard as keepsakes, most tossed Mardi Gras paraphernalia is disposable. Highly desirable beads often become trash once they hit the ground or once the parade ends. Sanitation crews clean the streets following each parade.

Much of that plastic ends up in landfills, an estimated seven thousand tons of throws-turned-trash each Carnival season. A significant amount of plastic refuse from throws also ends up in the city’s drainage system, causing flooding in an already flood-prone city. In 2018 the city used an industrial truck vacuum to suck up forty-six tons of beads from catch basins along a five-block stretch of St. Charles Avenue.

Until 2003 the city based the economic vitality of the year’s Carnival season on how much trash it picked up in the streets. Today individuals, companies, nonprofits, and parading organizations envision “greening” Mardi Gras. Turning recycled beads into art and costumes has always been popular. Since the 1980s the Arc of Greater New Orleans, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the independence and well-being of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, has encouraged individuals to drop off their beads to be recycled, sorted, and resold to parading krewes. Meanwhile, scientists are working to create bioplastic and biodegradable beads. Following the 2024 parading season, the Krewe of Freret announced a ban on tossing plastic beads in their parade, eliminating an estimated two million strands of beads from the city’s storm drains and landfills over the next decade.