WALL•E the Piñata

Before getting into the subject of this post, I must convey I neither support or condone the dangerous practice of the piñata. Teaching small children to beat things with bats can be extremely dangerous as the following testimonial shows.

We lost our beloved parrot, Polly, to pinata violence. A neighbor boy came by after a Pinata party and convinced our son Jon that Polly was filled with starburst candy. Jon beat poor Polly to death with a bat.
-Brenda Edelbrock

That being said, many of my memories of the "Brewer Christmas Party" revolve around the piñata. As children, my brothers and I dialed in our techniques to achieve maximum candy uptake. We would stay low to the ground (this also helps avoid getting a bat to the face as you dive in), slide on our stomaches, arms stretched as far as they would go, and scoop the candy into a pile. We would then transfer the pile to our ziplock bags as fast as possible. Another technique involved tucking your shirt in at the bottom and scooping the candy down it as you were sliding. This took a bit of practice to get just right.

This year, Goose and I had the assignment to build the piñata. We wanted to build something that would take the traditional newspaper piñata to the next level. Dan and I talked about adding some small explosives in strategic places. We could then detonate different parts of the piñata on demand. I guess this idea was vetoed by our better judgement.

WALL•E was born in my basement over the period of 2 weeks. This is no regular piñata as you can see. It took some serious design preparation and planning to get everything just right. The finishing touches were applied by hand to give him the worn and distressed look.

It seemed the kids were more excited to take home a piece of WALL•E than they were the candy. Here is a picture of the proud new owner of a robotic finger.

Yes, it was bitter sweet to see such a beautiful work of art come to an end.