Big Hero 6 Movie Party

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Have you had a chance to see Big Hero 6 yet? My family was mesmerized by the story of the sweet health-care-companion robot turned super-hero and his friends. It was so fun to plan a big movie viewing party and share it with our friends! Here is an overview about how we threw a fun and memorable movie night. I will follow-up with more details in a future post, since there is so much to share here.

INVITATIONS: I didn’t get the opportunity to send out formal invitations, but if I had I would have used the ones found on the Disney website. They have Baymax coming out of his suitcase. Perfect!

MOVIE: You can’t throw a movie party without the movie (as we found out the hard way, when we had to go back for our copy). If you are shopping at Target–and who isn’t shopping at Target–you can’t miss it! Once you work your way past the Dollar Spot, look for a big display like this! Ours was right by the checkout stand. We also found cute Baymax snack container cups at the Dollar Spot and included them as part of the party favors, filled with Hiro’s gummy bears.

CRAFT: Build your own Baymax!

My Olaf marshmallow craft has been such a hit, I knew marshmallow Baymaxes would be, too–especially, since he is referred to as a giant marshmallow at least a couple of times in the movie. We let the kids put these together and put them in a plastic sack to take home with their other favors.

You need:

1 large marshmallow

3 standard marshmallows

8 or so mini-marshmallows

toothpicks

and an food writer pen.

The giant marshmallow becomes the body, with the standard ones as legs and his head. We strung the small ones on toothpicks to make arms, and inserted the toothpicks into the body marshmallow at an angle, so that the arms would hang down as much as possible. I love how Baymax has such a simple design for the face. It is not difficult for anyone to draw that on the marshmallow using an edible ink pen.

FAVORS:

The marshmallow craft became one of the favors along with the gummy bears and a bookmark I found on-line and printed out to add to the bags. Again, Baymax’s face transforms plain white balloons and plain white lunch bags into special Baymax favor bags. I cut these out of black vinyl with my cricut.

DECORATIONS:

Since the movie is set in the fictitious San Fransokyo (a combination of San Francisco and Tokyo), I wan’t going for a particular accurate cultural representation, but I wanted to highlight the Asian–particular Japanese–styling and references in the movie, hence the lanterns and many of the food choices.

The backdrop of the food table is actually a shower curtain with a colorful cityscape I found that I thought reflected the setting and the superhero theme. The colorful lanterns lit up added excitement! Of course, I had to turn one white lantern into Baymax by adding his signature vinyl eyes. For a centerpiece, I talked BSB into coming up with a balloon animal Baymax to be in the center of the action of our metropolis. Yes, my daughter is sneaking food while I am photographing the set-up(#bloggerkidproblems), and yes, she decided to dress as Baymax for the evening, complete with pillow padding.

The MENU:

The main characters are kind of named after foods, so I had to incorporate a signature item for each one:

Baymax Sushi – We made our version of California rolls featuring a seaweed Baymax face.

Go-Go Tomago: Tamago (a Japanese rolled omlet…yes, I talked BSB into figuring out how to make it!)

Wasabi No-Ginger: Wasabi Snack Mix

Fred: Flaming Cheese Snacks (It is Fred’s greatest wish to be a fire breathing dragon).

Hiro’s Gummy Bears – He had a thing for them in the movie. All the kids had a thing for them at the movie party.

Honey’s capsules:  Candy (shiny gum balls in a few different colors would also work great for this).

Movie Popcorn bar: Including regular, wasabi (popcorn with wasabi peas), and my favorite, Baymax popcorn. Popcorn with chocolate mints in it that look like Baymax eyes.

Super Baymax Cake Pops! Regular Baymax would also be cute in a cake pop and a pretty simple design, but since we had the pros at Pixycakes provide the pops, they made these awesome pops featuring Baymax in his red helmet.

OUTDOOR MOVIE Set-up:

The big splurge of this party, was getting a “Baymax” to sit on to watch the party. The kids at the party loved the novelty of having a big squishy white chair to snuggle in! I again turned him into Baymax by adding the vinyl eyes.

We used a large tarp to act as a movie screen and borrowed a projector from some friends to give us the movie-theatre/drive-in feel.

I think Big Hero 6 is going to be big (pun intended) this year when it comes to party themes. It’s such a great movie–and now Academy Award winner! Have you seen it yet? Do you have a Baymax fan in your house? Have you ever held an outdoor movie party?  Let me know what you would like more details about for my follow-up post and I’ll share a little more insanity that went into putting this party together!