Back to the Future Birthday Party Ideas and Themed Supplies

Back To The Future…is already in the past. October 21 2015 has come and went – and while our skies are still not darkened by flying cars there are several prototypes in the works (go team science!). Given the ‘Back To The Future’ frenzy of 2015 it’s no surprise that your child also got embroiled in the wonderful magic of time traveling Deloreans, hoverboards, flux capacitors and mad scientists with crazy hair.

Great Scott! What better time than now to throw a ‘Back To The Future’ birthday party for your children?!. To get your creative juice flowing, below you will find a plethora of ideas for a ‘Back To The Future’ themed party, from invites to party table set up to favors and goodie bags.

Back to the Future Birthday Party Invitations

The first flipping point of your party’s timeline is easy to spot – invites (no invites, no children, no party). When gathering up your team of time travelers, you need to make sure not to inadvertently set up a temporal paradox (no traveling back in time to warn your past self that the party is much more work than you thought, and the cleanup doubly so). The easiest way to get great ‘Back To The Future’ party invites is to buy them – you don’t even need to dust off your Google-Fu – there are a lot of customizable invites directly available on Etsy and Amazon.

*Free Printable Back to the Future Birthday Invitations
Never fear party planner, as long as your guests can get there in time, you’ll have the tools to get the message to them. Use these free printable Back to the future birthday invitations to make themed invites to send out to guests.  

*Free Printable Back to the future Thank You Cards 
 Alternatively if you want to thank your guests for attending your party, use these free printable Back to the future thank you card templates to make thank you cards to hand out or to place in party favors. 

Back to the Future Birthday Party Decorations

The tiny hoard of would be scientists and adventurers need to feel as if they stepped on the set of a magical world (or at least that’s how us parents envision it).  While it might sound more difficult to create a magic atmosphere for a movie that is set in the not so distant past and even closer future past (you’re welcome to join in on the headache inducing search for tenses) there are a few things that quickly come to mind.

*Free Printable Back to the Future Birthday Banner
 Firstly, utilise our back to the future birthday banner templates (its free). Just simply download and print of the templates, assemble the pieces and you’ve got a BTTF banner that reads “Happy Birthday”.

*DIY Back to the Future Welcome Sign
When guests enter your party venue a welcome sign is a great way to get them excited about the prospects of the party. This free Back to the future welcome sign template can be printed and put into a frame to display on a wall or table.

*Under the sea party decorations ideas
An easy way to find decoration is to make your own spin off based on the ‘Enchantment under the sea’ ball/dance from Hill Valley.  Start by strategically placing some Enchantment under the sea posters then feel free to go completely crazy with the sea theme – glittering blue, green and white streamers that form a ‘curtain of water’? Sure.  Dolphin or fish shaped balloons and giant clam shells…why not? And since giant shells don’t really grow on trees (and are even hard to find in their proper place in the ocean) you can even try and make the clam shell yourself – with lots of paper and glue. While on that sub theme, you can make a pretty nifty under water entrance by using a canopy and filling it with streamers. Finish it by and placing fish shapes. Another idea is to add jellyfish paper lanterns – they are easy to make and look great.

*DIY Flaming Tarmac carpet
Another Back To The Future party decorations idea is to make a flaming tarmac welcome carpet – use a long strip of black cloth with white stripes painted or sown down the middle and yellow flames to the sides – like this. Alternatively, for the flames, you can glue red and yellow tissues to the cloth.

*DIY Back to the future Signs
You can then spread around customizable party signs and Outatime license plates – you can buy them or make them out of thick cardboard and glue printed images of the old style license plate and futuristic style bar code license plate. Since we’re on that topic, why not add some speed limit 88 signs?

*DIY Tower clock Prop
For something really special you can add a giant tower clock and aim to replicate the clock tower itself with the aid of some brick sheets and wood strips/prints – like so. There is a tutorial on how to make your own giant tower clock (in fact, there are multiple tutorials on making prop or functional giant clocks, though the level of crafting skill and amount of time spent increase proportionally). 

Back to the Future Birthday Party table setup

The party table is an essential prop for your time rescuing operation – since that’s where your tiny, hungry time travelers will be spending a good portion of their time at.

*Under the Sea Table cloth
If you decided to go with the Enchantment under the sea theme then select a blue table cloth (it can also have fish prints, bubbles, waves).

*DIY Seaweed and Fishnet table decorations 
You can even make seaweed hang down the sides of the table with the help of some green tissues or streamers. Alternatively, you can even add a fish net over part of the table. 

*Under the Sea Plates and Cutlery
As for table wear, you can use clam shell plates, blue or green cutlery and the occasional shell or starfish decoration.

*Flaming Road Table Setup
Another Back To The Future party table setup idea is to make your entrance match your table and have a flaming road table cloth by using the flaming tarmac welcome carpet idea in the section above. To round off the look, you can place a Delorean poster at the end of the flames. Or, you can even add a paper Delorean. If you went with the tarmac option above, you make your tableware match the movie color scheme by adding red plates and yellow cutlery.  You can also use hoverboard plates (skateboard plates, available for sale).

*Hill Valley Paper Props
To round off the look, you can place a stack of Hill Valley Telegraph papers in a corner (using prints of this, or this or this) and place some time chrono-governor coasters (print this image and add to coasters). 

Back to Future Costumes and outfits

All time travelers need to be cautioned not to look out of place when they engage in travel – blending in with the locals makes them less suspicious of your origin. Luckily, Back To The Future offers a wide range of costume choices for any one character (what with varied trips over the time continuum – 1885, 1955, 1985, 2015 – take your pick).  That also means that you not only get the option of dressing up your offspring in 80s clothes, but also in the 80s idea of 2015 (which is pretty far from current fashion standards, although not when it comes to half/partially shaved head trends for women – go figure).

*Marty McFly Costume Ideas
Let’s start off with the main character and a simple Marty McFly costume. For that you need: jeans, a jeans jacket, a red jacket vest, white and blue plaid button-down shirt, high-tops and some accessories like a walkman with headphones and a wristwatch.

If you’re thinking of the 2015 version of the character, then here’s how you can make your own Marty McFly jacket from the future.  Which you can pair up with a hoverboard – the simple version and the more crafty one.

*Doc Brown Costume Ideas
When it comes to a simple Doc Brown costume, you can start with a mad scientist theme and build your way up – lab coat, khaki pants, white crazy scientist wig/Einstein wig, rubber gloves, Hawaiian shirt – and let’s not forget the accessories: goggles, tool belt, plutonium silver case (glue a radiation symbol to it).  Another Doc costume consists of a white onesie with a radiation symbol painted on top, yellow rubber gloves with a radiation symbol, a tool belt, a radio transmitter (the remote from a remote controlled car) – something like this.

For a more intricate Back To The Future birthday outfit, you can try and recreate Doc Brown’s mind reading hat – depending on how well you can stand getting zapped, you can chose to add (or not) electricity. If you’re looking instead for something simpler, why not try making these Doc Brown’s shades or Marty McFly’s hat (tie-dye a white cap). They are super easy to make and you can give them out to your guests at the start of the party.

*Jennifer Parker Costume Ideas
We should also not forget about Jenifer Parker (Marty’s long standing crush) – her costume is simple to recreate with the aid of white pants stamped with flower patterns, a white shirt and a jeans vest and grey vintage Reebok shoes.

Back to the Future Party Food and drinks

Back To The Future is great when it comes to preparing themed party food, mostly since the 80s were pretty shameless when it came to product placement. While today’s movie directors have to be subtle about sneaking ads in, Back To The Future blatantly displays brands.   

*Back to the future party drink ideas
That means you get to serve Pepsi Free or Pepsi Perfect at your table. You can make your own soda label or, if you’re going for maximum impact, you can purchase the newly released Pepsi Perfect bottles (that match the bottle shapes in Back To The Future 2). Alternatively, you can serve some Tab cola. 

*Free Printable Back to the Future water bottle labels 
A healthier alternative to soda is water. Use these free Back to the future water bottle labels to decorate bottled water. 

*Free printable Back to the future food labels
Additionally, compliment each futuristic movie based dish you put on your table with a label to help guests out. Use these free printable Back to the future food labels to do just that. 

*Pizza 
In the same movie future style, you can serve dehydrated pizza cookies. Or even serve pizza, like in the movie – half pepperoni, half green pepper with this label.

*Doc Brownies and Marty Macfries
If you don’t mind bad puns (or enjoy making your children squirm) you can add Doc Brownies and Marty McFries. Ow, and let’s not forget the “nobody calls me chicken” chicken thighs.

*Back to the future 50’s themed food ideas
If you’re going with the 50s theme of Back To The Future, why not serve “get me a milk, chocolate!” shakes using these 50 recipes, coupled with some standard diner food, like fries and burgers served on red checkered napkins. Let’s not forget about George McFly’s favorite snack – peanut brittle.

*Clock Tower confetti cookies
For something a bit more special, you can make some clock tower confetti cookies – and change the time to 10.04; or some plutonium jell-o syringes.

Back to Future Birthday cake and cupcakes

The birthday cake is the crown achievement of the party – since it also reminds our time travelers what year they are in. For a fantastic cake, you can always look to a professional cake decorator. 

*Marty’s colored cap cupcakes 
A simple treat are Marty’s colored cap cupcakes – like here, which you can make by splitting the cupcake mixture in four, adding food colorant and then pouring from all four bowls into the baking tray.

*Clock cupcakes
You can also try to make this easy pull apart cupcakes clock cake or these clock cupcakes. Let’s not forget that there are also Back To The Future edible cupcake toppers available on Amazon.

*Free Printable Back to the Future Cupcake toppers and wrappers
Another great way to decorate cupcakes for your BTTF theme is with our free Back to the future cupcake toppers and wrappers. 

*Flux Capacitor cake/ Hoverboard cake
Also in the easy range is this flux capacitor cake or the hoverboard cookie cake. For something more intricate, you can try your hand at this hoverboard cake below…

*Marty’s Power Lacing Shoe cake
The power lacing shoe part can follow this converse shoe cake tutorial instead– just cover it in grey/silver fondant instead.

Back to the Future Games and activities

Time travelers need to be entertained otherwise they get bored, start messing around with the timeline, and you might find yourself in a Man In The High Castle scenario.

*Slamball
The 2015 of Back To The Future had a game called Slamball – since you don’t exactly have flying sneakers lying around the house, you can adapt it to a game of volleyball, basketball, football – or event have the guests try to hit a target with a small ball (which would make it more true to its name – Slamball, bad puns and all).

*Make your own Hoverboard craft
 Another idea is to have them make their own hoverboards. You just need to get some mini skateboards, glue paper on top and arm the kids with crayons (just remember later, when you’re trying to clean colored smudges from the ceiling and other impossible to reach places, that you did this to yourself).

*Are you chicken laughing game
Going with the running theme, you can have them play “Are you chicken, McFly?” . For this game, one child stands in the center of the room and must interact with a rubber chicken to make the others laugh. Whoever laughs first gets to go interact with the chicken. If no one laughs in the timespan of 1-2 min, the child gets eliminated – last one standing wins.

*Untangle Time Game
Another Back To The Future party game idea is to have the children play the ‘untangle time game’ – a version of the Chinese puzzle, where all children but one stand in the circle and hold hands. The remaining child has to turn around/ be blindfolded. The children will try to tie themselves in a complicated knot without letting go of their hands – stepping over/under arms etc.. When they are ready, the remaining child must untangle them without having them let go of their hands (or it will break the space-time continuum)

*Hoverboard obstacle course
You can also host a hoverboard obstacle race – use skateboards and some small obstacles they have to avoid.

*Back to the future memory guessing game
Or try a what’s in the image guessing game – fill a sheet with back to the future items and characters,  show the sheet to the children for 30 sec then see who can remember and write down the most.

Back to the Future Birthday Party Favors

As your party is winding down, your time travelers will want to take souvenirs from their trips, before heading back to their own time.

*DIY Back to the future Treat Bags
You can make your own favor bags to hold candies and small favors with these free Back to the Future favor topper templates and cellophane bags or paper lunch bags. 

*Free printable Back to the Future favor tags 
These free Back to the future favor tags are handy as they can compliment any favors you plan to offer in favor bags. 

*Back to the future favor ideas
There are some very nice Back To The Future gift bags on Etsy which you can then proceed to fill with an AirMag snickers keychain, themed stickers and tattoos, electric guitar necklaces or small inflatable guitars. You can also add some 88 speed limit, clock tower or Outatime badges. Alternatively, you can even make an Outatime necklace using this dog tags totorial, where you print and glue the Outatime license plate. And since time travel is difficult, you can add some Delorean cookies (made with a car cookie cutter) to make sure they don’t get hungry on the way back.

Back to the Future Birthday gift ideas

When it comes to gift ideas, Back To The Future is rife with possibilities – you don’t have to dig through antiques/thrift shops to find good gifts, you just need to take a stroll down Amazon, Ebay or Etsy.

*Back to the future T-shirts and clothing
You can start off with clothing items like Back To The Future costume converse shoes or Delorean and Flux capacitor t-shirts.

*Back to the future Toys
There are also plenty of action toys available (unsurprisingly, Doc Brown and Marty come in the biggest variety).  There are also Delorean toy cars and build-it kit sets. While on that note, Lego has also given the Delorean and some sets a go.  There are also Back To The Future electric slot car race sets.

*Back to the future collector gift ideas
For the collector, there are Outatime license plate replicas and flux capacitor replicas. If however, you’re looking for something more functional, you can find flux capacitor USB car chargers or watches.

*Back to the future videogame
For the gamers, there is a Back To The Future console game on platforms such as Wii, Xbox one and PS4 now.