The Fugo balloon hypothesis

In the middle of the last century, aliens were typically portrayed as "little green men." Often shown wearing spacesuits and helmets with antenna, little green men were sometimes fearsome (see the infamous Topps "Mars Attacks" bubblegum cards from 1962), sometimes comic (see I Love Lucy, "Lucy is Envious," 1954; My Favorite Martian, 1963; Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, 1964; The Flintstones' Great Gazoo, 1965). Although little green men live on in children's media the portrayal of aliens as little green men has been eclipsed in contemporary culture by the image of "greys"—short, thin humanoids with large heads and large, slanted black eyes.

What caused this change in the public imagination? The 1997 Popular Mechanics article Roswell Plus 50 provides the basis of one explanation. PM Writer Jim Wilson suggests that what crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 was not a UFO but an experimental US aircraft testing Japanese WWII high altitude Fugo balloon technology. The bodies in the crash were not aliens, but a Japanese flight crew. If Wilson is right, then the contemporary depiction of aliens as greys derives not only from texts like Whitley Strieber's influential Communion, but perhaps from Japanese features filtered through the imagination.