My son recently turned four, and we threw him a superhero birthday party. My amazing pastry-chef friend made him cake pops in the shapes of Batman, Spiderman, Venom, and The Incredible Hulk. Batman had a little paper cape, and Venom’s tongue was a sour gummy bootlace. We decorated the back yard with a city skyline – big cardboard boxes wrapped in black construction paper and painted with acrylics to look like skyscrapers. I also made comic-book bunting. I had to vet the comic-book flags carefully after I’d cut them out: there was one gnarly issue of Spider-Man featuring a story about an AK-47-toting skeleton army. It was actually visually very cool – the whole story was done in black, grey, red and white – but there was no way I could decorate a four-year-old’s birthday party with pictures of arteries squirting and chests ripped apart by bullet slugs.

I got a lot of my party supplies on Etsy: I didn’t want to send my son’s friends home with goodie bags full of generic junk (although, apparently, I didn’t have a problem giving them plenty of candy), so Etsy was the perfect place to find party favors and other accessories. I also hit up Amazon for a few bulk items I felt fit the theme without being too trashy. Here’s a roundup of what I got.

1. Superhero stickers: $6.05 for 24. From SimplySweetness. (These sealed the top of the goodie bags, which were light blue and dark blue paper lunch sacks.)

2. Spiderman blowouts: $7.22 for 8. (These went in the Spider-Man pinata, which I got at 9th and Central in downtown LA. It’s a pull-string pinata, which means the kids pull on ribbons to open it instead of bashing it with a stick. 10 four-year-olds bashing something with a stick = several four-year-olds bashing each other with a stick. Also, I would feel weird beating Spider-Man till his head exploded.)

3. Marvel Heroes foam balls: $7.49 for 12. (These went in the goodie bags.)

4. Marvel Pez dispensers: $20.99 for 12. (For the goodie bags.)

5. Superhero masks: $9 for 6. From Quax. (I cut a deal with the seller for more at a discounted price. The masks came in four colors: red, blue, pink and black. We set out a big bowl of masks and let the kids wear them as they played. It was interesting to see the kids’ reactions: some of them loved the masks and kept them on the whole time, and some refused to put them on at all.)

6. Superhero thank-you cards: $15 for printable file, $13 for set of 10 cards. From The Blue Egg Events. (The seller lets you send her a picture of your kid, which she “cartoonizes” and adds to the card.)

7. Batman chocolate lollipops: $14 for 12. From Autumn Lynn’s Chocolate Sins. (These also went in the goodie bags. A pinata, Pez and chocolate lollipops = seriously wired children. Sorry, everybody.)