Marshmallow gun party fun

A while back we made some marshmallow guns out of pvc plumbing fittings with the kidletts. The lovely man that I am affiliated with blogged about it over on his own blog, FangleTronics (his blog is usually about electronics projects). You can pop over to read that post here if you're interested in how to put together your own marshmallow gun.


My older daughter really really wanted to have marshmallow guns at her birthday party a few weeks ago. I was a little bit reluctant seeing as there were going to be about 20 kids there and I had visions of some poor kid getting one point blank in the eye or something horrendous, so I said "we'll think about it". After a bit of a conflab we came up with a plan that would work.

We put together twenty marshmallow gun "kits", so that the kids could make and decorate their own marshmallow guns using a simple instruction sheet, and then they could battle it out safely with a shoulder bag of ammo, a paper plate shield and some heinously cheap swimming goggles.

It was a really cute experience to go to Lowes with the kids and find and count out all the bits that we needed to make enough marshmallow guns for everyone. It ended up costing just about a dollar a gun and my daughter had fun counting out and checking off the parts we needed while her little sister tried on the larger plumbing fixtures like bracelets.

The hubster used his pipe cutter to cut up the three long pipes we bought into 3, 4 and 5 inch pieces, and we sent everything through the dishwasher to sanitize it (it was pretty much a full load!)



Here's the kit packed up in a ziplock bag ready to hand out


...and here's the contents of the kit:

• mouth piece
• T-junction
• end cap for the handle
• three lengths of pvc pipe
• instruction sheet
• sheet of stickers (halloween ones because it was a spooky halloween party)
• halloween treat bag filled with mini marshmallows for ammunition and with string tied to be a shoulder bag.
• swimming goggles (these we found for less than a dollar each online and they are pretty good ones that I'm sure the kids will use after the party is over)
• paper plate shield that was just made by stapling a piece of card across a paper plate so you could fit your arm through and wear it on your forearm.
  

The parents at the party helped their kids to put them together and read the rules of combat. Then the kids had fun blasting marshmallows at each other. The shields doubled up as targets for the smaller kids to shoot at too.

Only at one of our family's parties can you expect the party favours to be some pvc pipe and a pair of swimming goggles!

The birthday girl was very happy that her freinds got to play marshmallow gun wars with her and I was very happy that no one got maimed by high velocity candy on my watch.

Here's a copy of the instruction sheet I put together rather hurredly at 1.30am the night before the party. It ain't too fancy, but it did the job and you are welcome to use it yourself or adapt it's contents for your own marshmallowy warfare. Just click on the thumbnail below and that should take you to a full resolution image to save and print. It is US letter size, not A4, so if you want to print it on A4 paper then you'll have to remember to select "fit to page".





Judging by the amount of fun all of the dads at the party seemed to have with the whole thing, I recon it would make a great father's day party activity if you got a load of dads and kids together in teams for some marshmallow gun building and battling. Maybe with targets and games and challenges!