What would be in your ideal party bag?

[headfairy]

I'm not talking fantasy ones - no ipads or keys to a ferrari - but when you take your children home from a party, what things in party bags make your heart sink and what things do you think are really great?

only cake. Seriously. The dc's will be happy with it.

sink -

sweets and more sweets

great -

balloons (but my DSs are still little, thay adore balloons)
lego minifigures

bubbles and balloons go down well with dd

bubbles and sweets are fine. Everything else is just shite. This year I went down the big bag of sweets route (I love poundland), one for each child. Nobody complained. Easy. Thanks to the mumsnetter who suggested it.

Hate - plastic tat
Love - haribo. My DCs don't like hem and hand them straight over

Balloons - not keen (could be choking hazard).
Books great (colouring or cheap paperback, buy multipacks from red house or book people).

Cake always welcome.

cake. haribo. balloon = great party bag ,
any 1 or 2 of those 3 = good party bag.

Pencil, rubber, colouring book, book etc type stuff as well as cake = nice party bag

pack of seeds, football, inflatable guitar. = party bag from a themed party, nice.

Pens that leak, spikey elephant, water pistol, bulldozer that falls apart = not so good party bag .

balloons? seriously? I hate them, ds can never do it properly so gets really frustrated and yells and drops blooming soapy water everywhere. I never put bubbles in our party bags purely for that reason.

I tend to only put one little packet of sweets... or one tiny chocolate.

My faves are little toys the kids can play with, our local toy shop did some fantastic little sticky men which crawl down a window when you throw them at them, they only cost about 30p each. Occupied him for a good half an hour while I mnet cook dinner.

anything tht makes horrific amounts of noise ie those awful plastic shrilly whistle things

DD had her 3rd birthday party recently and had a variety of children of different ages and the big hit was plastic curly drinking straws

We got a great party bag today. It had;

1 piece of birthday cake
1 note book
1 pencil
1 rubber
1 pencil sharpener
1 hair bobble.

All on a butterfly theme.

I seem to be running a one woman campaign on this but DO put cake in a sandwich bag instead of a napkin (which gets forgotten until the next day or left on the side and by the time it's ready to be eaten the cake has consistency of a brick). I think this is mainly because I'm a bit precious about my cakes

balloons? oops, meant bubbles of course!

simpson argh, those whistle things are the devils work, ds came home from a party yesterday with one. They look like recorders but just emit a horrendous screech because ds blows too hard.

LOL, those were some weird-arsed soap leaking ballons.

I hate lollipops, those chewy bar things, balloons in a party bag(why?- but inflated helium balloon is OK), random plastic tat.

No balloons for a start, or sweets they've had enough at the party.

I am buying one decent quality toy for £5 and giving them that and a bit of cake, in fact if it's a build a bear party (which it currently is leaning towards) then that's it.

a good idea is to buy plain white paper bags (with handles) and buy sheets of stickers... cut the sticker sheets into smaller squares and put them plus mini coloured pencils or pens into bags. you can add cut out tiaras (ie gold pointy shape) or animal ears to the tops of bags (just staple them on) to make them more exciting. they can then design their own bags. have one 'done' to show them.

you can buy those wiggly stick on eyes too to make the bags into animals/heads.

bit of cake and maybe a wee toy and you're sorted.

£5 on a party bag????? Really?????

I LIKE party bags that have CAKE, chocolate rather than sweets, something they made at the party (if it was a home party kind of affair).

I DON'T like plastic tat (we have too much already), or sweets, or anything that is more expensive than the present dc gave to the birthday child!!

£5 per bag is daftness

Depends what you are spending on the rest of the party though, I don't do much in the way of food because the children are always too excited to eat it anyway.

Stickers are fab for any age plus cake and sweets job done.
Tend to throw plastic crap before it falls apart!

I did these all before years ago with big DCs and dreaded every party - it was at the time when party/party bag competitions seemed to take off (mid 90s) and some of these children parties ended with bags with stuff worth upwards of £10. I refused after the first two years to do them any more and did lucky dips - hair bits/sparkly pencils for the girls and cars/alien eggs (don't know if they're about anymore) for the boys - wrapped in either pink or blue and pack of buttons or similar attached. It was the trend to invite the whole class and I was not prepared to spend £300 quid on the bloody party, let alone that again on party bags again!!! Three DCs - birthdays all within 6 weeks..., followed by Christmas a month later. Nope...

DD3 is not big enough for parties yet (almost 2) but I'll be doing the same for her when I have to, except I'm hoping that whole class dos are not the done thing these days. Please.

we went to a party a few wks ago where they did not do party bags but wrapped a book up for each child to open and also got cake too.

I thought that was a nice idea

DD's are going to have a chocolate fish, a big jelly sweet, fish-themed bouncy ball, fishy stickers, light-up balloon (cos they're cool) and a slice of completely non-fish-themed birthday cake (fish theme kind of came along cos it's a swimming party).

Have also been to parties where a book was given as the 'party bag' or 'going home present'.

Personally I do not like the book idea/going home present idea at all! Why oh why does every child need to be given a present?? They have just spent two hours being entertained and fed, they do not need to be given a present!! It's not their birthday!