Sonic the Hedgehog Birthday Party

Much to our surprise and completely out of nowhere, our son asked for a Sonic theme for his fourth birthday. Turns out, he saw a Sonic game on his Kindle and became obsessed with everyone’s favorite blue hedgehog. Not having watched the movies or tv show, our knowledge about Sonic the Hedgehog was limited to the 90’s Sega game, which became the basis of the birthday party theme.

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The Party Slogan

For starters, every birthday party needs a good theme phrase. For this one, we chose “New High Score! Cameron’s Four!”, which we used for the custom design created in Canva and uploaded into Evite.

The Cake

The first idea that came to me for his part was – no cake. Instead of serving a traditional cake, what dessert could we serve that is round? The boys absolutely love donuts, so I bought a small donut maker and used yellow lemon cake mix and a simple powdered sugar icing dyed yellow to make golden rings. They were huge hit!

To do the icing, I used a plastic icing bag to drizzle mixture over the cooled donuts. When first applied, the icing looked really transparent, but as it hardened, the yellow definitely started to show up more. Yellow is a difficult icing color as it it, but with a thin powdered sugar icing, it’s a bit more challenging. If I were to do it over, I would do two thin layers, allowing the first one to fully harden in between.

The Food

Fun Fact: Did you know Sonic the Hedgehog’s favorite food is chili dogs?

According to the internet, this was revealed in the second movie and it became the basis for our menu. We did a simple, kid-friendly menu, including:

Chili dogs
Regular hot dog condiments for those who didn’t want chili dogs
Frozen crinkle cut french fries
Veggie platter
Chips and dip

The Goody Bags

For the party guests and for Cameron’s classmates, we did goody bags with Rice Krispie Treats, Airheads candy, branded notebooks, and Sonic the Hedgehog tattoos. We were even able to find these branded goody bags to tie the whole thing together. Here are some other Sonic the Hedgehog party favor ideas.

I know there’s a movement for no longer providing goody bags, but the boys love giving them to their friends at school and giving them as a thank you as their guests leave their party, so we’re sticking with the tradition. We keep the formula pretty simple: something food-like (Goldfish, Fruit Snacks, etc), a sweet treat (candy), something to use (notebook, crayons, etc), and something just for fun (tattoos, slap bracelets, Play-doh.) This makes it easy for me to make decisions and shop for bulk items.

The Decorations

Always my favorite part of putting together a party! I immediately knew I wanted to cover the house in gold rings, but the question was how – and how to have the least amount of waste. I originally thought about using my Cricut to cut rings out of scrapbook paper, but at $0.99 per sheet, that would have been wildly expensive for a simple decoration. Then I saw the yellow plates at Party City…

A package of 50 plates at Party City was only $6.00 – definitely the less expensive option. Unfortunately, you can’t stick a paper plate in a Cricut machine. So using our rice cooker lid and an exacto knife (and a lot of patience), I cut out the middles of the plates to create golden rings. Worked like a charm!

On the note of not creating waste, I saved the middles for future crafts and the golden rings are being used to create fall wreaths. If I can give anything a second life, I will – especially when I spent hours cutting it out by hand.

Another fun find for the party was this vinyl wall print of Sonic. We needed to have a Sonic somewhere and this was the perfect, economical way to get him. Instead of sticking to the wall, I applied the vinyl to a poster board so he could be easily put up and taken down.