Avengers Family Fun Night Ideas

I am a geeky mom of a geeky family that loves super heroes! Avengers is the ultimate when it comes to super hero movies and we are beyond excited for it come out on DVD & Blu-Ray, this Tuesday, September 25, 2012.

To celebrate the upcoming release, our family held an Avengers Family Fun Night!

Here’s what we did and what you can do too:

#1: Download Avengers Augmented Reality App

Right now there is a really cool app available that you can use while shopping for your family fun night at Walmart. To download it, scan the code HERE. 

Once you get to Walmart, you can look for trigger points within the store and use the app to play the “What Avenger Are You?” game or unlock other special content. Here’s a map of where you can find trigger points at Walmart:

Our family had a lot of fun playing the  “What Avenger Are You?” game as we went through Walmart shopping (you can see all the photos from our shopping trip HERE). We found this display near the toys department that had trigger points on them:

By scanning the trigger points, we were given questions to answer on the app. Here’s an actual screenshot of one of the questions that popped up while we played the game in Walmart:

At the end of the game, it tells you what Avenger you are and you to take photo to put your face onto the body of the Avenger. Here’s my husband as Thor:

#2: Have MarketSide Pizza for an easy dinner

In the deli area at Walmart, they sell MarketSide Pizza which you bake at home in your oven. We’ve bought MarketSide Pizza several times and been very happy with it.

Right now, their 16″ extra large pizzas feature several of the Avengers right on the boxes (which are also able to be scanned with the Avengers Augmented Reality App). They are a great deal too — for less than $10, you get a huge pizza!

We bought three pizzas…yes, 3 for our party, to satisfy the different tastes of everyone in our family. Considering that sometimes we spend $40-$50 on pizza delivery for a party, this was a great deal. We bought a pepperoni pizza and the ultimate meat pizza (we also made some bbq chicken wings too):

Now, one of my little dilemmas with the Marketside pizzas is that I like a pizza loaded with vegetables and no meat. They do sell a good one that is a supreme with lots of veggies and sausages, but our Walmart was sold out. I solved my pizza dilemma by buying the cheese pizza, and when I got home, I added some of my favorites to the pizza before baking. I added sliced mushrooms, artichoke hearts, broccoli florets, and sliced onions. I even had a little bit of cheddar cheese that I need to use up, so we threw that on top too.

It baked up beautifully and I was happy with my quick veggie makeover of the Walmart MarketSide Cheese Pizza!

#3: Quick & Easy Avengers Costume Play

We weren’t looking to go all out on Avengers costumers for our family fun night, but the kids wanted to get into the fun with some quick and easy Avenger dress up. In the party supply aisle at Walmart, we picked up a 4-pack of these cool Avengers masks:

Mattie snagged the Thor’s helmet for himself, and Courtney had dibs on being Captain America (the funny look is completely on purpose). You can also download free printable Avengers masks on this page HERE.

Also on the party supply aisle, there is Avengers tattoo’s, so we bought a package of those and had fun putting them on our hands, faces, and shoulders.

 #4: Make Avengers Cupcakes

No family fun night is complete without something sweet to eat!

For our Avengers Family Fun Night, I made cupcakes that were inspired by Captain America’s shield. To make them, simply make your favorite brand of white cake mix, according to the package directions (or make it homemade, if you prefer). Divide the cake mix into two bowls, keeping about 2/3 in one bowl and the remaining 1/3 in another bowl.

In the bowl with more cake mix, add red food color until you achieve the color you want. Be prepared…it may take 1 oz or more of liquid red food color to get the red you see in my photo. Add white food color to the smaller of the two bowls of cake mix so you can achieve a more true white color (I used Wilton’s White Icing Color).

Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners. Place a layer of red in the bottom of each cup. Then a layer of white, and finally, a another layer of red. Take great care when spreading the layers on top of each other so you aren’t mixing them. Bake in your oven according to the directions of your cake mix or cake recipe.

When they are done, you will have a 3 layer cupcake: red on the bottom, white in the middle, and red on the top.

You’ll want some white frosting for the stars, but also plenty of blue frosting. If using premade frosting, I would recommend buying two containers of vanilla frosting and tinting one blue with food color. The one that is left white can have the white icing color added to it, so it becomes a more true white.

If you make homemade frosting, set aside approximately 3/4 cup of the frosting to be used for the stars. Tint the majority of your frosting blue with blue food color.

Spread the tops of the cooled cupcakes with the blue frosting. I try not to go all the way to the edges so you can see a bit of the red cupcake peeking through. Fill a pastry bag assembled with a small pastry tip with white frosting. Draw and fill stars on the top of the cupcakes with the white frosting.

And there you have it…Avengers cupcakes, designed to look like Captain America’s shield.

 #5: Watch Avengers, of course!

When you read this, Avengers will be available (or almost available), but for us, we couldn’t watch Avengers for our Avengers Family Fun Night because at the time of writing this, it’s not out yet. So, we had to come up with an alternative, which wasn’t hard to do.

My husband loves to add movies to his DVD collection, but Thor and Captain America were two that we didn’t own yet. It was a great time to add them to our collection! We found both easily at Walmart and while we enjoyed our Marketside Pizza, chicken wings, and Avengers cupcakes, we watched them again.

BONUS TIP: The Avengers Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack at Walmart will be coming with a limited edition graphic novel! We always like it when the Blu-Ray/DVD combo packs include a freebie, so we think it’s pretty cool. I was lucky and already received a copy, and can tell you that it’s a nice bonus to have.

This, of course, is just the start of ways you can have an Avengers family fun night at home. What ideas do you have for celebrating the release of Marvel’s Avengers movie?

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