The Hulk's Star Wars Party!!

If you're looking for inexpensive ideas for a Star Wars birthday party for a little boy, you've come to the right place! If you're not looking for ideas, but want to see how awesome I am anyway, stick around.

First, I gotta tell you, my Superman was the MVP of the day. I was planning on running the show but Superman surprised me. He stepped up to the plate and knocked it out of the park! Honorable mention goes to our friend, David. He's a big Star Wars fan and surprised us with some games he made. We would've been in trouble without them!

As the kids were getting there, we had a little R2D2 for the kids to play with. Superman found it on eBay several months ago and it's been a fun toy. He responds to voice commands, moves, and makes the R2D2 noises. It was a big hit with party goers. So as the kids were getting there, R2 kept them entertained.



My original plan had been to buy silver balloons to tie to the kids ankles and do "The Death Star Stomp." (Kids try to pop each other's balloons.) But the only bag of silver balloons I could find had like 50 balloons and it was twenty dollars. No way was I gonna spend that on balloons meant for popping!

That's where David's games saved the day.



Once most of the kids were there, we played "Pin the Storm Trooper on the AT-AT. " David had drawn a big AT-AT, then we printed out storm troopers from a site online. The kids loved it.




The next game we played was "Fly down the trench and fire the missile at the thermal exhaust port directly below the main port," or "throw the ball in the hole."



David had drawn the thing they had to hit with their missiles to blow up the death star with a hole cut in the middle. We had them "fly down a trench" (run on the picnic tables) and fire their missiles (throw a whiffle ball.) (Yes, I know that running on picnic tables isn't the safest of ideas. But it was the only trench we could come up with. If we had been at home we might've had them run through folding chairs, or behind the couch.)

(Superman in his Tom Cruise stance, explaining the game)

Superman explained that he had heard that Darth Vader was going to blow up the park and we had to blow up the Death Star so the park wouldn't blow up. Most of the kids realized it was a game, but one took Superman seriously. He was waiting in line with his hands over his ears in case the park blew up! Poor guy. We explained to him that it was just a game.

The Hulk, blowing out his candles

After the games, we had cupcakes and opened presents. I made yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting and baked them in silver foil liners. The plan was to get Star Wars rings for the tops of the cupcakes, but I couldn't find them at party stores in time. Then I was going to decorate them with yellow icing, but decided against it. I knew my work wouldn't be appreciated and decided not to waste my time. I considered making green punch/koolaid as Jedi training juice, but decided against that as well. Most of the kids there couldn't read anyway, and it meant having a juice dispenser and cups and a LOT more work. So I bought the Koolaid that comes in the plastic bottles. No one spilled or needed refills. Easy peasy.


After presents, we introduced the peice d'resistance. Light sabers and training orb. (Think Empire Strikes Back when Luke is training with Yoda in the swamp in Dagobah.) We made light sabers from foam swim noodles. I bought them from the dollar store, so 20 light sabers only cost me $10. We cut them in half and put duct tape at the end.

I made the pinata from a punching bag balloon that blows up into a big sphere. Mized glue with water and pasted on strips of newspaper. The original plan was to spray paint it silver like the Death Star, but I realized that making a training orb would be much better. It didn't require spray paint and in the movie, Luke learned how to use a light saber with a white training orb. I found some puff paint that I mixed with water and painted the pianta after it dried. Poked a hole and filled with candy. Duct taped the rope to the top.



The kids had a blast trying to hit it. We had the youngest kids go first since it was a pretty weak pinata. Even the kids waiting in line had fun because they had light sabers to play with. By the time we got to the end of the line, the pinata was ready to break. I had ziplock bags for each kid that they used to hold their candy. Looking back, I wish I had just filled 20 bags with even amounts of candy, then each kid would just have to pick up one bag.



We were done with all the games about 20 minutes before I had told the parents to be back. So Superman had the kids divide up according to light sabers colors and battle. They loved it!!! The foam noodles were so soft that no one got hurt. Well, the two girls there came up and told me that they had been hit on the arm, but none of the boys complained.

All in all, it was a great party, and really cheap. I think I pulled the whole thing off for less than $30. We had 19 kids there. 4 parents stayed to help. I had one on camera duty and one on baby duty (Miss Marvel only slept half the time) and the other two were helping with everything else. Blindfolds and napkins and head counts and keeping kids in line.

There's not much I would change about what we did. We invited nearly 20 kids, thinking about half would attend. But I guess we picked a good Saturday since nearly all were able to attend. We had planned to divide the kids into two groups so they wouldn't have to wait in line as long, but we didn't have all the kids there right away and they were getting restless.

But everyone there had a great time. It was the Hulk's first friend party and I'd say it was a smashing success.