Most people have fond memories of delicious marshmallow Peeps. As vegans, we just can’t bring ourselves to eat one. Nevertheless, Peeps do not go unpunished in our home. Over the years, we’ve created some fond, and equally macabre, memories of our own.
In 2008, as a celebration of Davis Day (yes, we invented our own holiday), we were challenged with the prospect of entertaining four children and six adults, more or less simultaneously. Our two goals: first, entertaining can get quite expensive so we decided to set a $25 game budget; second, each game must somehow entice both youngsters and old fogies to push past the 3 minute attention span.
Fortunately, Davis Day occurs on the second Sunday of March (often coinciding with Easter merchandising) and the stores were packed with brightly colored products. The smell of Peeps was in the air. At the 2007 Davis Day Celebration we held Peep Wars–stick one toothpick in each of two Peeps and microwave them both until one Peep impales the other. Marvelous fun! A lot more exciting than it sounds, really. Anyway, we were determined to make this year’s event just as memorable.
We started (and finished) at the Dollar Tree–our local version of a dollar store. The store had Peeps in three colors. Huzzah! We nabbed one box of each color: pink, green, yellow. As we walked the isles in a peregrinating haze, we spied a set of foam beads, which were about the same color as the Peeps. Well, one thing led to another, and before we knew it, we were devising a target-board.
After 40 minutes of scouring the bins and rifling through shelves of Easter trappings, we hatched a scheme to use slingshots to hurl unsuspecting Peeps and impale them against (dun dun duuuuun!!!) THE TARGET-BOARD OF DOOM.
The Dollar Tree had everything we needed to fabricate the game. And the total bill? $10.00.
Here’s what we purchased:
Peeps
cotton swabs
foam beads
foam board
extremely crappy slingshots
To begin, we glued the beads in a target-shaped pattern onto the board. Next, we cut the ends off the cotton swabs (one end only) and glued the fuzzy, uncut ends into the beads … leaving a myriad of tiny white death spikes in the shape of a target.
We then covered an empty garbage can with a white garbage bag and labeled it with a large Sharpie, “POWER TO THE PEEPS!” We used an old crate to prop the target up.
To play, we had three teams, each choosing a team color: pink, green, or yellow peeps. Each team member then had three chances to hit the jagged pink bull’s eye and send the Peeps to their tiny Peep maker.
The kids–both young and not-so-young–played for several hours. Everybody won, except for the Peeps. Their ending was not a happy one.
We hope you give this idea (or something inspired by it) a whirl. Power to the Peeps!
In Kindness,
~JnK