Hot Wheels Party Ideas?

Hi C.,
We just did a race car birthday in December for our 5 year old. I like to do crafty things so a lot of these ideas are do it yourselfers. First off, if you go to familyfun.com you can see the cute race car cake and game ideas. I did one of their game ideas- Each child took a turn with this. We took our Volvo and I made sponser signs with each child's last name to decorate it. We made a relay race of sorts. They had to "pump" up the spare tire using my husband's air compressor, then run to a small step stool and clean the window with a washer, fill up a bucket next to the gas tank to mimick gas, hop in the car, put on a helmet and honk the horn. At first we started to time them but they just liked doing it so we stopped doing that. I also had them paint wooden cars that I found at Oriental Trading. Another idea which I had ready but didn't need to do was using the foam "paper" you can get at Michael's have them create personal license plates. When each child came in I took their picture with a poloriod and wrote pit crew on the bottom of it and tied it a string around their neck (I borrowed the camera but the film was one of the most expensive things). As a favor I bought the small model cars at Michael's in their dollar section. If you look for their wooden things to paint you should find them there- they are race cars and come with EVERYTHING you need to put it together for $1!!! They are perfect. I also bought black, red and white paper stuff from Oriental Trading. For lunch they at the concession stand and had hot dogs, applesauce, grapes and strawberries, jucie and hot wheels fruit snacks. I had salad for the adults. You can also find candy hot wheels at Oriental Trading. It was a fun birhtday and I had lots of compliments.

Best of luck!!
K.
Oh- I also wore my husband's coveralls he uses when changing oil. I think you can buy them used for cheap at a store like pep boys.

I have been through the hot wheels, nascar, speed racer, anything on wheels parties with my boy. Here are some of the things I have done:
Oriental trading co. is a great inexpensive mailorder/online resource. I have bought many kits or just inexpensive toys. I always look for groups of 12 packaging at least. Also I go to the dollar store.
I have found wooden cars about an 1 1/2" big that one year I painted as the Mach 5 for party favors. Also they usually have checkered flags.
At the dollar store or even at WalMart or Kmart I can find packages of hot wheel size cars for cheaper than trying to buy individual packages which are usually more than 2 bucks.
If you wanted an activity you can have them paint the wooden cars as they want.
Make a pin the tail on the donkey version with stickers of cars closest to the finish line.
you can find nascar or hot wheel stickers usually at kmart and walmart. I have also used these at as a party favor.
I have also used pencils that has cars on them as party favors. Haven't shopped for this item in a while so if I couldn't find that I might go back to Oriental Trading co. where you can customize pencils and have happy birthday ______ (your child's name)put on them.
Invitations could be made in a word program.Usually I can find clip art that will work. Sayings like "come have a roarin' good time." or "come celebrate in Victory Circle with (your childs name).
These are just a few that I can think of right now. Another car venue that is popular right now is the Disney movie Cars.
Good Luck! K.

OOOHhhh!! I love to plan parties! There are a lot of things you could do, many home-made! Pin the wheel on the car (make the car out of construction paper, or go to your local copy store and enlarge a picture of a hot wheel). Who can push their hot wheel from point a to point b with their nose the fastest. Who can collect the most checkered flags - place x number of checkered flags in the yard (similar to an egg hunt) for the children to find. White paper lunch sacks for goodie bags colored to look like a checkered flag with curling ribbon in blue, yellow, red and orange (or a hot wheel tied to the top). Crepe paper decorations in similar colors. Have fun with the theme! Put hot wheels everywhere - even if you are using ones that your child already has... Good luck! I hope they have a wonderful time!

Hi C.!

At this age, boys really just want to play.....maybe you could buy plain White plastic tableclothes from the Dollar Store, and (using a Sharpe) draw a road on each cloth. Each boy can get a Hot Wheel Party Favor that they pick themselves from a BIG Presentbox you've made, and they can use this car to drive all over your tableclothes. Then use a "honk" to tell them it's time to switch to another table to drive on.

They can even "color" on the tableclothes (with Crayola Washables Markers) adding bridges, grass, firestations, whatever......

Their Goody Bags can have anything in it. A tattoo, bubbles, another Hot Wheel, anything really.

If you think you can make a "ramp", you can always have them place their cars at the top of the ramp, then let them go......pretend racing....We used an old Refridgerator box at the time. We put a yardstick at the top to "hold" all the cars at the same time, then moved the stick to watch them go down to the "finish line".

Anyway, there's my suggestions from a hot Wheel party we had YEARS ago!

Have fun!

:o) N.

Give each kid a hot wheels car and put out some art supplies (glitter glue, paint ect.) and have them each customize their car. Put them in the sun to dry while doing the cake and icecream thing and afterward hold races. If you're having the party at a park the cars can race down a slide if your doing it at home you can set up a ramp with a little wood and some bricks (the ramp doesn't have to be very tall, probably only 2 or 3 bricks high).

For the invite. Get some grey paper cut into circles to put the invitation info on and glue them onto small black paper plates to look like tires. You could probably go to the hotwheels website to capture an image of their insignia to print out on the paper as well.

Have fun, it sounds like a great party idea.

We had a hot wheels party for my son when he was 6. It was a success and lot of fun! I actually made my own cake using 2 round pans next to each other making a figure 8 track.
For the invitation - You could get a simple blank card and add your own designs from clip art. I did racing flags at the top and race cars at the bottom. I think it said something like - Get your engines ready! Race over to celebrate "your child's name" birthday! The address was listed as the name of the track, the RSVP was listed as "will you win or run out of gas?" You can get really clever with this....
For the games. I collected 4 boxes - large packing boxes and painted them like cars. I cut off the top and added straps. The children could step inside and put the straps on their shoulders. Then we made a course for them to race each other.
As far as goodie bags...I've never been a fan of them! It sad to see parents buy trinket toys and candy only for them to be thrown out by the end of the day. For the same amount of money you could go to a book store and buy an inexpensive book about race cars. I think Hot Wheels actually publishes these little books.
Good luck!

Hi
I know Birthday party's can get expensive! Have you tried going online with Oriental Trading? They have tons of party stuff for kids, are inexpensive, and I'm pretty sure they will have things you are looking for. There is also a catalog and web site for Birthday Express as well that is pretty reasonable. I ususally just order a few items that are in the theme of the party and then go buy plain color cups, plastic cutlery, etc because it's more cost effective.
For goody bags you could go to K-mart, Wal-mart, or Target and get the jumbo pack of hot wheels and divide them up (they are pretty cheap), some car stickers and mini bottles of bubbles. Colored bags are also available at any of those stores. Depending on how many kids you have coming and how much time you have; your son could make his own invitations out of card stock or construction paper. He could use some of those stickers you buy for the goody bags and make each one his own.
Hope this helps a little. Getting ready for a 3rd birthday party for my son as well.

There is a website called birthdaypartyideas.com I get a lot of good low cost ideas there. Also, Family Fun magazine has an online site.

Hi there, For a goodie bag idea you could look for pencil boxes (which you may find at a dollar store) and put two hot wheels in each along with two pencils with cars on them.
I belive I just saw car pencils last week at either Boswells or Party America (both in Pleasant Hill on Contra Coast Blvd).
You may even find something else regarding cars at one of these two stores as they have all sorts of neat little stuff
that doesnt cost too much.

Hi,
This website is wonderful: http://www.birthdaypartyideas.com/
Once there, click on "search" and type "hot wheels". A bunch of ideas on this theme popped up when I did the search.

Let them help decorate card board box cars and have races.

Have you ever heard of Familyfun.com ? I have found a lot of good ideas from this website when it came to planning kid parties.

Good luck,
R.

Hi C.,

I know that Wal Mart at least they did when I did hot wheels birthdays have Hotwheels invitations and probably gift bags and napkins and such.

in the goody bag you can put a hot wheel car or 2 in them. in the toy department they usually sell party packs that have 5 or 6 cars in a package.

as a game, this doesn't have anything to do with hot wheels, its called the Slow turtle race. it's a race except the first to cross the line loses the last one that crosses the line wins. as long as they are moving and not just standing in one spot works.

I hope your son has a great birthday and lots of fun.

For a game, maybe you could do "Red Light, Green Light" since it's a cars-type of party. Or you could do a variation on "Pin The Tail on the Donkey" by doing "Put the Tire on the Car" and get a car poster or something and make cut out wheels with tape on the back.

For invitations maybe you could print your own on the computer and use clip art cars. If you dont have a color printer (or to save ink), maybe your son could color his own invitations to give to his friends.

Hope this helps a little, good luck!!

How about cutting out invitations in the shape of a car, and a hot wheels car in each goody bag--they won't need much else as they will all be playing with their new cars!

My son had a hot wheels party and we played pin the wheel on the race car and had hot wheel races on a track drawn by chalk on our patio. Have fun!

Hi C.. You could look online for some game ideas http://www.amazingmoms.com/htm/party_hotwheels.htm
For party bag favors you can usually find a pack of 5 Hot Wheels for less than $5 or find individual Hot Wheels for less than $1 (WalMart, Target, KMart). Also there are Hot Wheels fruit chews, I found some at a super WalMart. You could also include car stickers or tatoos. Sounds like a fun party, have a great time.

For decoration or for an activity, have some of the cars "drive" in paint across a big piece of paper, making tire tracks all over. This could be cute tablecloths if you do it before on big peices of butcher paper. You can also mix it up by using different sized cars and trucks. Sounds fun.

Hi C.,

You may be in luck with the new Speed Racer movie that is coming out. I'm starting to see all kinds of decorations due to it. Also, I have found a lot of great ideas at the ZOOM website on PBS. They show you easy, step-by-step ways to make things and demo how to play games, do science, art, etc. There is LOTS offered at ZOOM and I also had luck at this next website. http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/toddler/
Arts & Crafts for Kids

Good luck!

I found ticket style invites on ebay, raceway party scene setter wal mural iron on hot wheel logo for kiddy t-shirts to put into party bags. download kid approiate songs about cars or had the word car in it. partycity has a great selection online now. Pit crew hats and racecar driver helmets. Good luck still in the process of throwing this party.

For ticket style invites -http://cgi.ebay.com/Custom-Hot-Wheels-Birthday-Party-Tick...

Go online to orientaltrading.com They have the coolest stuff at very reasonable prices! Good luck.

Birthday Express (www.birthdayexpress.com) has Hot Wheels Party supplies. Also Oriental Trading (www.orientaltrading.com) has great items for goodie bags for any theme. They have crafts as well.

They sell those race track carpets in stores so you could let the kids place races on it and give a hot wheel car to the winners or buy the little wooden box cars and have them build their own car and try to make a track where they would let their car go and see who wins. You could make it a party where all the kids have to make a car out of a box and paint it then let your son help judge the winner and honorable mentions. You could make the ribbons or buy them (not that expensive. Have fun

family fun.com usually has some great party ideas...or you can google for them...i know party express has some hot wheels items... maybe you can take their ideas for goody bag items....
L.