I feel like the pinata, won't you take a swing at me

March 18, 2008 9:25 AM

A friend and I are turning 23 this weekend. We're making a pinata! What should we fill it with?

Besides tiny bottles of booze - we've got some of those. The more hilarious/nonsensical, the better. A "WTF" reaction is sort of what we're going for.

posted by troika to sports, hobbies, & recreation (36 answers total)

Bees.
posted by box at 9:28 AM on March 18, 2008 [8 favorites]

Condoms.
Dark chocolate.
posted by gregvr at 9:28 AM on March 18, 2008

Once for a party I made a piñata shaped like a giant bulbous tick, and I filled it with wintergreen Life Savers. Even though someone else broke it open, I was the clear winner because no one else wanted to eat weird candy out of the crushed abdomen of a tick.
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] at 9:30 AM on March 18, 2008 [3 favorites]

Puppies.

Besides tiny bottles of booze - we've got some of those.

Make sure they're sort of impact-resistant so you don't just end up breaking them.
posted by LionIndex at 9:32 AM on March 18, 2008

I don't think you could top a pinata filled with bacon.

But just because I love suggesting things:

pudding
mismatched socks
pom poms (you can buy scads of them at any fabric store)
underwear
plastic sporks
glitter
superballs
flour
posted by iconomy at 9:36 AM on March 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

meat. bacon would be messy, but you should be able to find relatively small individually-wrapped sausages, for example. beef jerky. and brussels sprouts.
posted by mumkin at 9:37 AM on March 18, 2008

• Smaller pinatas. (For some reason, this just cracks me up.)
• Superballs. (This would be truly amazing to see. On preview, iconomy had the same idea)
• Plastic easter eggs, green plastic grass, and chocolate bunnies.

By the way - happy birthday!
posted by mattybonez at 9:37 AM on March 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

http://www.lollyphile.com/maple-bacon.php

Bacon Lollipops.
posted by legotech at 9:39 AM on March 18, 2008

fortune cookies

aquarium gravel

stickers

little babies

cheap sunglasses

Watch out for people's eyes if you use tiny items like the aquarium gravel (or glitter) - maybe require safety glasses when attacking said pinata.
posted by amtho at 9:45 AM on March 18, 2008

PETA brochures
posted by mkultra at 9:45 AM on March 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

Slinkys. Slinkies? Slinkees? ??? You know what i mean.
posted by Kololo at 9:46 AM on March 18, 2008

How about a bunch of small, pre-filled squirt guns? Chaos inevitably ensues when there is a pinata getting broken into. It would get taken to a whole other level as people realized that the destruction of the pinata is only the beginning.....
posted by otolith at 9:52 AM on March 18, 2008 [2 favorites]

Little plastic bottles of tequila!!!
posted by Jacqueline at 9:53 AM on March 18, 2008

smaller pinatas ?
posted by dawdle at 9:58 AM on March 18, 2008

gravy.
posted by dawdle at 9:58 AM on March 18, 2008

Little bottles of chocolate, filled with liquor.
posted by TheNewWazoo at 9:58 AM on March 18, 2008

Tobasco

Chick Tracts

posted by bondcliff at 10:03 AM on March 18, 2008

Depends, do you like this so-called "friend"?

If not: Thumb-tacks!

If so: Quarters!

Cause at least if they have monetary value, it will be worth the pain when they come flying out at your face....
posted by Grither at 10:08 AM on March 18, 2008

Van Holten Pickle pouches
posted by mkb at 10:08 AM on March 18, 2008

Slime, the stuff they sell to put in your bike tires. Along with the booze and the bacon.

Shaving cream.

Gear oil. Gear oil with bacon.

Live mice (You can buy these at the pet store. Being in a pinata is probably a better fate than having a snake eat you alive. If I had to pick one, that is.)

Embarrassing photos of guests, applied to plastic photo mugs, keychains, etc.

Chloroform.

Nitrous oxide.

Trigger cans of silly string affixed to the pinata to go off when it breaks.
posted by yohko at 10:10 AM on March 18, 2008

nitroglycerin? If none is handy, then lottery tickets, booze, joints and chocolate.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 10:13 AM on March 18, 2008

Water balloons (with or without the squirt guns per otolith's suggestion).

Or several cans' worth of shaving cream.
posted by Metroid Baby at 10:14 AM on March 18, 2008

Dead fish, live mealworms, and one ipod shuffle wrapped in plastic. The little bottles of booze can be empied into the other fillings to add texture and aroma.
posted by contraption at 10:33 AM on March 18, 2008

the tiny bottles of booze are AWESOME in pinatas, but be sure to, uh, drink responsibly -- I've had some embarrassing moments (and now funny stories) that have resulted from packing those into pinatas.

the other obvious things are condoms and candy -- i've found depending where you are (darkened club?), a couple of 'ironic' glow sticks can be a bunch of fun. Confetti is also fun and potentially annoying for people to clean up, so I usually throw some in there if it's not at my house because I am an asshole. I've also considered putting eggs in there, again, because I'm a jerk. If you're nice you might find some single serving packs of aspirin/tylenol, emergen-c and the like so when people wake up with a pounding headache the next morning they'll have something handy.

Logistics wise, here's some advice (i've done the 'adult' pinata thing many times):

If you haven't bought the tiny bottles yet, they are more expensive than you think (usually a dollar a bottle or more). Try scouring the 'outlet' groceries and 99 cent stores around where you live if you have time -- occasionally you will be able to find them there at a discount. Condoms are similarly suprisingly expensive -- either buy in bulk from Amazon or the like, or, better, if you know someone who works at a family planning clinic or is willing to go there, you can often get boatloads of condoms for nothing or next to nothing.

Buy MORE stuff than you think you need. You are going to need a lot of filler because you will not be able to afford to fill the whole thing with liquor and cool stuff. Dollar stores are a good place to get candy and little toys cheap; in my area they also tend to be located by Mexican markets, where the best and least expensive pinatas can be found. Still, don't OVERFILL -- if it's too heavy the wire hanger will break before anyone even gets a chance to hit it.

Obvious, but make sure you have a rope (that can HOLD the weight), a blindfold, and a 'bat' (wiffle bats are good balance between being light and yet fulfilling to swing -- you definitely don't want a baseball bat that will destroy the thing on the first hit), and somewhere good to hang it. Let the LEAST coordinated and weakest people go first, and ALWAYS have someone manning the rope to make it hard to hit (this is actually more fun than trying to hit it, imho). It is totally lame when you spend $60 and two hours filling a pinata and the first guy up breaks it.

oh, and be prepared to be underwhelmed. The pinata NEVER bursts open into a massive candy explosion like you're hoping. Maybe get a ringer in to go last and really nail the thing.
posted by fishfucker at 10:39 AM on March 18, 2008 [2 favorites]

Lube!
posted by jenfu at 10:53 AM on March 18, 2008

Sex toys. Light one, preferably. Best-case: a veiny, semi-realistic pink dildo, made of a decently light-weight material.

"Yes! Chocolate!"
"Booze!"
"Condoms! Maple-flavoured!"
"... A... Dildo? Seriously?"
"Yeah, well, I got a butt plug, so you got lucky."

For extra credit, put a strap-on harness somewhere else in the pinata. Wait until people figure out the connection.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 11:11 AM on March 18, 2008

The random eyeball and finger shaped foil-wrapped chocolate from Halloween. Surely you can find it somewhere.

If you want to go for super WTF how about peeps? you can mutilate them prior to sticking them in with plastic cocktail swords, tassled tooth picks, red food coloring, etc. Get them in both bunny and peep variety in many colors.

Things that are wrapped, because they're going EVERYWHERE when they come out and you don't want to eat candy corn off the ground.
posted by arnicae at 11:20 AM on March 18, 2008

If you're filling it with the small bottles of booze, these Japanese 6 stages of drunkeness keychain charms should work nicely.
posted by spec80 at 12:09 PM on March 18, 2008

Tiny bags of Doobage.
posted by Scoo at 12:32 PM on March 18, 2008

You're turning 23? Make it a pinata of a pyramid with an eye at the top and fill it with Discordian texts.
posted by Gucky at 12:53 PM on March 18, 2008

Super balls.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 1:09 PM on March 18, 2008

My friends had one at their party over the weekend.. candy + condoms + lube + squirt guns.

A few packages of lube got damaged, so you might wanna reconsider that. There was also a cock ring / tickler which caused much amusement to us all (no, we didn't take out of the package).

..and lastly, the water guns continued the chaos for the rest of the afternoon. Definitely get water guns.
posted by hobbes at 1:25 PM on March 18, 2008

Ice. Have your hard drinks at the ready to catch some.
posted by chairface at 4:01 PM on March 18, 2008

a bunch of random from Archie McPhee's
posted by fieldtrip at 6:10 PM on March 18, 2008

I went to a really fun party last year where the pinata was filled with glue-on mustaches and eyebrows and moles/beauty marks, fake glasses, funny jewelry, costume makeup, and other ingredients for disguises. Then we played dress-up with each other after the pinata was burst open. Love the suggestion for squirtguns too.
posted by olecranon at 7:02 PM on March 18, 2008 [4 favorites]

Damn, that sounds like so much fun. I wish I was turning 23 again. Enjoy and Happy Birthday! I have no further advice as to what to add to the pinata. All of the suggestions sound great to me. Have a ball.
posted by wv kay in ga at 7:34 PM on March 18, 2008