Fear factor birthday party theme

A guide to creating a birthday party with a fear factor theme. This article includes ideas for fear factor themed party invitations, decorations, food, games, costumes and prizes.

Just when you thought your child was getting too big for birthday parties with themes, we found one that will scare them into enjoying themselves! Boys and girls of all ages (even teens) will enjoy getting gross with this Fear Factor birthday party.

Fear Factor Birthday Party Theme

Fear Factor Invitation Ideas

• Make a postcard size invitation with the Fear Factor logo on one side, and write the party details on the back. You could start your invitations with – If fear is not a factor for you, come to Tom’s birthday party on….
• Make a batch of jelly in individual jars, and drop in plastic flies and insects. Put your invitations in waterproof seal-easy bags (Glad bags are good), then poke them into the jelly jars. Your guests will have to scoop out the invitation before they can even read it.

Fear Factor Decorations

You will want to make your house look as scary as possible, so start by making the entrance way a dark tunnel which your guests will have to navigate their way through. Cover the doorway with black polythene and attach plastic bats, cockroaches, rats, spiders and insects. Drape cotton wool from the corners to make cobwebs, and hang rags soaked in liquid soap from the top of the door. As the kids walk through they will be plastered in slime.

Fear Factor Games and Activities

If you want to go the whole hog, you could have a series of Fear Factor challenges where guests get eliminated until an eventual winner is found, or you could simply have a whole lot of gross games where everyone gets a prize. Either way, here are some revolting activities to get you started.

• Find 6-8 foods that feel “gross” to touch and put each one in a separate container. Blindfold each child and ask them to guess what each food is by simply touching it. Foods that are guaranteed to get a “ewwwww” response are cold spaghetti or baked beans, creamed rice pudding, soft tofu, peeled grapes, and thick cold gravy.
• Set up an obstacle course to form the physical part of the challenge. You could make a tunnel out of an old fridge box (get one from Farmers or Noel Leeming), have hoola hoops that they need to dive through, and ice cold water (and ice cubes) in a paddling pool which they need to cross. Add in shooting goals, skipping down the drive, or whatever else you can think of. Time each contestant to see who can do it the fastest.
• Fill up a paddling pool with jelly (or cold spaghetti if you want to be really disgusting), and toss in heaps and heaps of plastic flies. Give each guest one minute to see how many flies they can fish out of the pool. To make it really hard, you could ask them to do it with no hands, or with a pair of chopsticks.
• Give each child a plate of Fear Factor food to eat, and see who is willing to eat everything on their plate. The food doesn’t have to be revolting, just food that children may not normally eat. Try putting on things like artichoke hearts, olives, anchovies, sun dried tomatoes, pickled ginger, or raw fish. Mmmmmm sounds delicious.

• Put a large jelly snake onto a plate and completely cover it in with whipped cream and custard. Make it a race to see which child can at the jelly snake first – without using their hands. Everyone ends up with a face full of custard.

Fear Factor Party Food

You could go really overboard in this area, and make some concoctions that really test the limits. However, if you don’t want to make your guests sick, try some of these fun (but still revolting looking) treats.

• Have ordinary party food but add green food colouring to everything to make it look mouldy. Add plastic flies to the ice cubes and jelly, and scatter plastic cockroaches around all the plates.
• Have a plate of scary looking lollies like giant snakes, chocolate skulls, Dracula’s teeth and candy insects.
• Make everyone a ‘Pigs Blood’ smoothie by blending together frozen berries with plain yoghurt.
• Make ‘dirty doughnuts’ by rubbing them in cocoa powder (for dirt) and green coloured coconut (for grass). Hang the doughnuts from a tree branch and have your guests eat their doughnuts without using their hands.
• Make a big plate of spaghetti and meatballs and tell your guests it is intestines and kidney stones.
• Drop scoops of boysenberry ice cream into batter, then deep fry them in super hot oil until the batter is crispy. When the children bite into them the ice cream will ooze out like brains!

Fear Factor Costumes

There are not really any costumes for a Fear Factor party, unless you want the girls to come in bikinis and the boys in muscle shirts! Just make sure that the children are dressed in old clothes, because some of the challenges might get a little mucky.

Fear Factor Loot Bag

• Instead of traditional loot bag, why not get a T-Shirt printed for every guest that says: Fear is not a factor for me. I survived Tom’s Birthday Party.
• Make each guest a DIY Fear Factor kit to take home. You could include a packet of jelly, some plastic flies, a blindfold, a tin of gross food (like sardines!), and book of scary jokes or stories.