The brief
A fifth birthday at a garden restaurant with a proper playground — treehouse, slide, and a knotted rope web strung between them. Mostly boys, all around five, which is the last age at which the character can be completely real to them. So the whole party was built around making sure he was.
What we built
A comic-book city: a skyline in red, black and yellow with <i>DAVID</i> across the top, <i>BOOM</i> and <i>POW</i> bursting out of the panels, Spiderman swinging through it, and a standing <i>5</i> on a red plinth. Balloon garland in red, navy, sky and black, with Spidey foils in it. Face painting so every guest got a mask across the eyes before he arrived.
How the day went
He came in a full high-detail suit — the sort that holds up at close range, because at five they will be six inches from it — and worked the lawn first, then took a run at the climbing web and went up it. That was the moment. After that they followed him everywhere: onto the treehouse, down the slide, through a running battle across the grass with streamers, and back to the set for photographs where six of them piled onto him at once.
What the parents got
One completely convinced five-year-old and eight of his friends, a venue where the playground did half the entertaining, and photographs their son will believe for years.
