Largest bath toy

The largest bath toy is Canard de Bain, aka Rubber Duck – an enormous, floating replica of a traditional rubber duck measuring 26 m tall, 20 m wide and 32 m long (85 ft × 66 ft × 105 ft), created by the artist Florentijn Hofman (Netherlands) and released into the dock at Saint-Nazaire, France, in 2007.

The giant inflatable duck is one of a series created by Hofman and released around the world. This iteration – his largest to date – was displayed as part of the Loire Estuary Project 2007, which installed a series of artworks along the river bank between Saint-Nazaire and Nantes from June to 1 September 2007.

Hofman writes: "The Rubber Duck knows no frontiers, it doesn't discriminate people and doesn't have a political connotation. The friendly, floating Rubber Duck has healing properties: it can relieve mondial tensions as well as define them. The rubber duck is soft, friendly and suitable for all ages!"

Larger inflatable ducks might have been made since, but none as big as this have been designed with the ability to float on water, like the original bath toy.

The rubber duck can be traced back to the latter half of the 1800s and the earliest days of vulcanized rubber, although these solid "toys" were typically unable to float so were sold as decoys for duck hunters, or as chew toys for babies and dogs. Latex was later used to create bath-tub toys – notably a pair based on Walt Disney's Donald and Donna Duck characters – but the classic bright-yellow ducks that we are familiar with today were most likely inspired by the design patented in 1949 for an "uncapsizeable duck" by the Russian-American sculptor Peter Ganine (1900–74), who was more famous for designing chess sets.

Based on the average bath toy measuring 9 cm (3.5 inches) in length, a bath-tub scaled up to the same size as Rubber Duck would be about 3.4 km or more than 2 miles long!