Do I want one hook or two? I’ve seen some on line not sure if I’m going to keep it simple in this shape or add middle sections between each body part .
Answer from Piñata Boy
When you’re making a multi-part piñata and wondering how many hanging hooks to use, there are two things you want to keep in mind.
First is the balance of the piñata. Normally for a long, horizontal piñata I’ll use at least two hanging hooks because with only one hanging hook, once the whacking starts it’s really easy for the weight to shift inside the piñata and then suddenly the piñata is hanging vertically. With only one hanging hook sometimes it’s hard just to get the piñata to hang right in the first place.
The other thing to keep in mind is let’s say you have a four-compartment Very Hungry Caterpillar piñata and you have one hanging hook, in the first green section behind the head. If that section of the caterpillar takes a few good whacks early on and starts to come apart, the other three sections, pulled down by the weight of the candy inside and unsupported from above, are likely to break off and fall to the ground intact. When I have multiple candy compartments in a piñata, I usually put a hanging hook in each compartment — that way any one of them can be demolished and the rest remain hanging so the game can continue. With four (or more) compartments you don’t want hanging strings all over the place, but you can combine a few segments of the caterpillar into one larger compartment, and have correspondingly fewer strings coming off the top.
I used three hanging hooks on the dolphin piñata to support its three compartments and keep it hanging horizontally. The jaguar piñata also had three compartments, but I didn’t want a string coming off the head, so the head was unsupported by a hanging hook. That meant there was a risk of a well-placed blow decapitating the jaguar and having the head fall to the ground with all the candy inside, but it all worked out okay.
There isn’t just one “right” way to do this, but I always keep in mind 1) how the piñata will hang not just at first, but also once the whacking begins, and 2) what happens if the compartment with the hanging hook gets destroyed.
Good luck!