5 Kung Fu Panda birthday party ideas kids actually remember

One of my favourite orders was a Kung Fu Panda birthday intro for a six-year-old whose name was in the title. Po tumbles out of a bamboo forest, lands in a fighting stance and then a child's name sits where the film title would normally go. It is the order I would point to if anyone asked me why a kids' party does not have to be Disney.

DreamWorks intros are underrated for kids' parties. Everyone reaches for Disney and misses the more playful option, and Po is about as playful as a lead character gets. He is clumsy, he thinks about food constantly and he still wins. A parent can build a whole afternoon out of that.

So what makes a Kung Fu Panda birthday party work? Borrow the things Po actually does in the films. He eats, he trains badly and he opens a scroll. Start with a short custom intro carrying the child's name, decorate in the film's own colours, turn the food into a game and keep the villain away from the youngest guests.

These are the five ideas I would use, in the order I would run them on the day.

1. Open with an intro that has the child's name in it

I am biased here, because I make these by hand for a living. I still think it belongs first. A banner hangs on a wall all afternoon and gets one glance. A short opening on the television gets every child in the room looking at the same thing at the same moment, and the thing they are looking at has the birthday child's name in it.

The wording is where people go wrong. The most common mistake I see on any order is too much text, and I suspect a birthday is where the temptation is strongest, because the age, the date and a line from every relative all want a place on screen. An intro holds a name and a few words.

The order form makes the point for me. On the page for a custom Kung Fu Panda intro the title field stops at 12 characters and the optional subtitle stops at 20. A first name fits the title. "Happy Birthday" does not, because it is 14 characters once you count the space, so it goes on the second line and the name gets the big one. I like that the limit settles the argument before it starts.

If the child's favourite is one of the sequels, there are separate versions for those. The Kung Fu Panda 2 one has a paper-cut ink-wash look and the Kung Fu Panda 3 one is Panda Village in warm greens and gold. Ask the child which film they mean before you choose, because they may not mean the first one.

On the day I would put it on the biggest screen in the house with the sound up, once everyone has arrived and before the cake. All the Priyansh Animations custom intros take a day or two to make, which is the honest trade, so this is no use for a party tomorrow. I would also drop the grand opening if guests are drifting in over an hour and there is never a moment when everyone is in one room. In that case play it just before the candles.

2. Decorate from the film's opening

The obvious way to decorate is black and white with a lot of bamboo green. The film's own opening looks nothing like that.

Art of the Title has a nine-frame contact sheet of the 2008 opening, and I went through it frame by frame. The title card sets KUNG FU PANDA in heavy, slanted, dark-brown capitals with a white sun sitting directly behind the letters. The sky is pale yellow and cut by diagonal orange brush streaks. There are red banners on poles and a warrior under a wide straw hat. Leave out the night sky behind the DreamWorks logo in the first frame and the palette is yellow, orange, red and black. There is one cool colour on the rest of the sheet, a green blade in the last frame.

So the green that gets sold as the theme colour is, in the film's own opening, a single accent.

That opening is also hand-drawn, which matters to anyone holding scissors. The producer of the sequence, Hameed Shaukat, told Art of the Title that it contains no CG animation at all: "It's all 2D / traditional / hand-drawn." The frames are flat shapes in four colours. A parent can cut flat shapes out of card in an evening, and nobody can say that about the fur on a computer-generated panda.

What I would actually do with this is cover the table in yellow paper, hang red banners from garden canes, put black card silhouettes on the wall and allow exactly one green thing, which I would give to the birthday child to hold.

Then add a scroll. The end credits of the first film were designed by a studio called Shine, and its creative director Michael Riley told Watch the Titles that they pitched a horizontal crawl in place of the usual vertical one because "we wanted to replicate the opening of a Chinese scroll". A roll of lining paper run sideways along one wall does the same job at a party. Paint the child's name across the middle in dark brown and let the guests add red and orange brush marks around it as they arrive. If you are doing the lettering yourself, slant the capitals and keep them thick. Thin, upright letters will look like a different film.

I should be straight about the shop-bought route. Licensed Kung Fu Panda tableware comes and goes with the film releases, and I have not checked what is on the shelves this month, so I would not plan a party around finding it. Coloured paper is in the shops every week of the year.

This idea fails in a hired hall where nothing can go on the walls and you have twenty minutes to set up. Keep the palette to the table in that case and leave the scroll at home.

3. Borrow the Panda Sanctuary

The best real party I found while researching this was not in my colours at all. Hostess with the Mostess featured a "Kung Fu Marley" party in 2011, styled by Ebony of Sparkling Events & Designs for her daughter, and it was hot pink and green. So my yellow and orange is only a preference.

The idea of hers I would steal is the Panda Sanctuary, a table where each guest stuffed a small panda bear. She took it from the end of Kung Fu Panda 2, where Po's father turns up living in a panda sanctuary. Guests were met at the door by wooden Po figures in three different moods that her brother had sketched. She wrote that 95% of the decorations were handmade by family. She also wrote something I agree with: "Children need appropriate activities at a party."

A simpler version is a paper or felt panda that each child gives a face and a name. I would put the table in a corner away from the television, because a party full of kung fu needs somewhere for the child who has had enough noise.

Leave it out if the party is under an hour. Ebony's own account says the children and the adults loved throwing the filler all over the place, so I would also think twice in a room with a carpet you care about.

4. Make the last dumpling a game

Food is already a plot point. Po's father, Mr. Ping, runs a noodle shop. Master Shifu only manages to train Po once he works out that food is the motivation, and the training ends with the two of them fighting over the last dumpling with chopsticks.

That is a party game with the rules already written. Two children, a pair of training chopsticks each, one dumpling on a plate in the middle and everybody else chanting. Use a foam ball or a paper dumpling if real food on the floor would upset the venue. I would run it as a knockout so every guest gets a turn before the food comes out, and I would let the birthday child play Shifu and judge the final.

The other food joke is the soup. Mr. Ping finally admits that his Secret Ingredient Soup has no secret ingredient. Put a covered bowl on the table with that label on it, make a small ceremony of lifting the lid and have it turn out to be whatever the birthday child eats most days. I suspect a six-year-old will find this funnier than it deserves.

Skip the real dumplings if there are allergies in the room or the hall has rules about hot food. The duel works just as well with paper ones.

5. End on the Dragon Scroll

The Dragon Scroll is said to hold the secret to limitless power. Po opens it and finds a blank, reflective gold surface with his own face in it.

Give every guest a small piece of gold card and ask them to draw the birthday child as a kung fu master. Roll the cards inside a larger gold tube and have the child open it after the cake. With very young guests, an adult can write a caption under each drawing. If the child hates being watched while opening things, hand it over quietly at the end and let them look through it at home.

One caution about Tai Lung

Common Sense Media rates the first film for age 6 and up, and the scene it singles out as possibly too scary for the youngest viewers is the villain's escape from prison. The six-year-old in my favourite order was right on that line. For a room of four and five-year-olds I would leave Tai Lung out of the decorations and the games altogether and build everything around Po.

If the birthday child would pick Bikini Bottom over the Valley of Peace, I wrote up SpongeBob birthday party ideas the same way, and that party is a much louder one. For this one, if you only do a single thing from the list, make it the first. Count the letters in the child's name before anything else, because the title line stops at twelve.