This is one piñata that didn't really turn out according to plan.

The biggest challenge in the design of the Medusa is how do you get all those long, curling snakes to stay in place when they're only attached at one end?

I decided to try using papier mâché over long, skinny balloons, and if that worked, my plan was to paint this piñata instead of my usual crepe paper decorating so that the snakes would have a smooth, shiny look to them.  Unfortunately, it took so much papier mâché to anchor the snakes in place that by the time I was done, each snake arose from a bump in Medusa's scalp.  The papier mâché snakes themselves were also very rough and bumpy, so painting them would have revealed every flaw.

But that's not all.  Even though Medusa had 28 snakes for hair, there was still a lot of bare scalp between the snakes, and if I painted her, she would have looked like a balding Medusa. So I had to use crepe paper.

I wrapped the snakes in snipped crepe paper, but didn't fluff the paper once it was on the snakes.  Still, the snakes (predictably) ended up looking hairy instead of smooth.  In hindsight, I should not have snipped the crepe paper at all, and simply wrapped the streamer around the snakes the way I later ended up decorating the mouse tail on the Warlord of Nibblecheese piñata.

All things considered, this piñata turned out pretty well, but if there is another Medusa piñata in my future, it will look better than this one.

When it came time to break the piñata, the snakes effectively shielded the head from attack, so the snakes had to be knocked away with the stick one by one before the head could be torn open.

This was good fun for the kids, because each snake could be satisfyingly dispatched with a single well-placed hit.  Removing the snakes became a kind of pre-game show, and the kids didn't even make an effort to break Medusa open until they had completely deserpented her head.