Eddie the World's Biggest Kid

Columbia, South Carolina, United States

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

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Eddie is a 40-foot, 35,000-pound seated fibreglass boy in the atrium of EdVenture Children's Museum in Columbia, South Carolina, built by ThemeWorks, assembled in 2002 and designed for children to climb and slide through.

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Eddie the World's Biggest Kid

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Site-level location · 34.0007° N, 81.0330° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Eddie is a 40-foot-tall seated boy who fills the atrium of EdVenture Children's Museum in Columbia, South Carolina, and visitors are meant to climb, bounce and slide through him.

Columbia's tourism site calls him the world's largest 10-year-old and says he weighs 35,000 pounds; his heart alone, it says, weighs more than 500 pounds and can hold a family of four. Inside, a playset runs through sections showing his internal organs, and a slide leads down his digestive tract.

According to Sue Williams, who started the group that incorporated the museum in 1995, the founders wanted an iconic fixture to promote children's physical activity, health and education. Haizlip Studio designed him and took his name from the museum's. ThemeWorks, a Florida-based company, built him in sections over nine months; they were shipped to Columbia and assembled in the atrium in 2002. The atrium walls could not be finished until he was in place, and the museum opened in 2003. Williams said his complexion was intended as a composite of all the racial skin tones in South Carolina in 2002.

Eddie has often been described as the world's largest sculpture of a kid. In 2025 The Post and Courier reported that Guinness World Records had not immediately responded to its inquiry, while the museum's chief executive said: "We haven't found anything larger."

He reopened on 20 December 2022 after the exhibit was closed for about a week for floor work, with a refurbished exterior, ramps and wider slides for children with disabilities, and four new science exhibits, supported by a donation from Prisma Health. The dragonfly on his finger was replaced with a firefly in 2023. In 2025 the paper reported that EdVenture's management does not want to make big changes to him.

Seeing Eddie means a museum visit; the museum draws about 200,000 visitors a year, The Post and Courier reported in June 2025.

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WHAT TO EXPECT

Eddie fills the museum's central atrium and is explored from inside: children climb his vertebrae, bounce on a playset and slide down his digestive tract, with organ displays and sound effects. A 2022 refurbishment added ramps and wider slides for children with disabilities.

ACCESS

Eddie is inside EdVenture Children's Museum in Columbia, South Carolina, on a campus that Experience Columbia SC says includes the South Carolina State Museum and the Columbia Canal and Riverfront Park. A visit means entering the museum.

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Strom Thurmond Monument

Columbia, South Carolina

The Strom Thurmond Monument on the South Carolina State House grounds in Columbia is a nine-foot bronze figure on an eight-foot base, designed by William Behrends and installed on 4 December 1999. It was amended in 2005 to add the name of Thurmond's daughter.

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0.2 km away

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