FarmVille Balloon Crop now in store, but unavailable to grow [UPDATE: Now available]

UPDATE: The Balloons Crop has been officially "released" as part of the New Year's Ball Drop / Party Barn event. You'll need to unlock access to planting the crop after having 10 of your friends accept your invitation to your party. Find out all of the details about this new event by clicking on this link.

If you've been looking forward to planting some of the cheerful and colorful Balloon crop seeds in FarmVille as much as we have, you'll be happy to hear that the Balloon Crop has now been spotted in the wild, via an in-game store listing that is now available for players to look at. However, that's all you can do with the crop at the moment, as it is "Locked."

The reasoning for the locked status is that a "License is needed." We'll be sure to let you know how to obtain said license as soon as we can, but in the meantime, let's take a look at the announced stats for this new crop. First, it's cheap, available to grow for just 15 coins per square. It grows for 16 hours, and you'll be able to harvest each square of ready balloons for a return of 126 coins per square.

This looks to be a fairly good crop for lower level players to jump into planting, not only due to its low price, but due to the fact that you'll gain 2 experience points for each and every square of the Balloons that you plant, which might allow some players to level up before all is said and done. Finally, the Balloons Crop can be mastered, with the first star or mastery coming after harvesting just 80 balloons.

When will the Balloons Crop be available to grow? That much is still up in the air, but we'll be sure to let you know when it unlocks, or what you'll need to do in order to unlock it, as more information becomes available.

What do you think of this unusual, imaginary new crop? Will you attempt to master the Balloons Crop before it (presumably) leaves the store? Let us know how you think we'll be able to unlock it in the comments.