After I read The Hobbit to my kids, my 6-year-old decided she wanted a Hobbit party for her bithday -- and you can't have a Hobbit party without defeating Smaug at the end, right?

I had already made the green dragon earlier that summer, and my daughter wanted her Smaug piñata to look like that, only scarier and red.

The sword in this picture has a red and black handle with a red tassel hanging from a string on the end.  There's a gold band around the tassel.

Smaug roared and growled and breathed fire most frightfully when the hobbit approached, but it was all for naught.

Just like in Tolkein's original tale, when the party was over, Smaug was nothing more than a heap of nonrecyclable newspaper laying in the backyard grass.

(I think that's how The Hobbit ended.  It's been a while since I read the book.)