Can you please give me some advice on the best method to make a banana piñata. It’s for my son’s 4th birthday. He has asked for a banana themed party.
Answer from Piñata Boy
The easiest way to make a banana piñata is to start with a banana-shaped Mylar balloon. I didn’t see any banana balloons online, but I did see a lot of moon balloons, and once it’s decorated as a banana no one would ever know it started off as a moon.
I would go to a party store and find a crescent moon Mylar balloon, then ask them to fill it with air rather than helium (or just take it home and blow it up yourself). If it’s too curved and the ends are too pointed, I would use duct tape to bend the points backward and tape them down. Then cover it in a few layers of papier mâché, cut a hole to pop and remove the balloon, and decorate.
When making a large piñata like this for young children, you want to be careful not to make the walls too thick. They have to have a certain minimum strength to prevent them from collapsing inward, but if they’re too strong the kids can’t break them. One way to make piñata walls that will keep their shape but still be breakable is to add each layer of papier mâché strips in a checkerboard pattern leaving spaces between the strips instead of covering the entire piñata with each layer. Another way to weaken the walls if they’re too thick is to stab holes in them and then cover the holes with the decorating.
Good luck!