Make way for the corndog: Arkansas State Fair kicks off

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s… a corndog?

To be more precise, it’s radio personality Roger Scott dressed in a corndog costume atop a scissor lift at the Arkansas State Fairgrounds on a somewhat-dreary Friday morning. 

To do what, you may ask? To inaugurate the newest tradition of the Arkansas State Fair — the corndog drop.

“Forget the ribbon cutting,” a news release from the fair read. “We’re dropping a corn dog.”

So in the minutes before the decades-old fair officially opened for its 2026 edition, rides such as the ferris wheel, Crazy Mouse and Polar Plunge were still and the fairgrounds located south of downtown Little Rock were occupied only by vendors and staff. 

A crowd was beginning to gather near the front gates as the clock approached 11 a.m. Cheerleaders with the Arkansas Diamonds, the minor league football team set to play its games at the fairgrounds’ Barton Coliseum, huddled close together, smiles never budging despite the windy chill.

They were joined by fair and rodeo queens young and younger, wearing sparkly tiaras and cowboy boots, while uniformed members of the Arkansas State Police and the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office looked on. Some people looked nervously up at the sky. One person wondered aloud if it would rain.

As Scott hammed it up and Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders expressed relief that the bipedal corndog appeared to be wearing pants, Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School’s marching band played stands tunes as its cheerleaders and color guard smiled and danced. Lt. Gov. Leslie Rutledge was also on hand.

“We are so proud to be out here to kick off the Arkansas State Fair tradition,” Sanders said. “(Her brother) and I have spent many hours and many days at a lot of fairs across the state of Arkansas, campaigning for my dad. I think we’ve been to at least about every county fair in the state of Arkansas.”

With a drum roll from the marching band, the scissor lift began to descend, the corndog dropped, and confetti and pyrotechnics followed, officially marking the start of the 10-day fair.