Toronto's Mad Hatter Tea Party

This is a fascinating read of a children's birthday party venue called the Mad Hatter. This local Toronto event was run in the 80s entirely without any adult supervision by surly teenagers. From the sound of it, these parties sound like across between a Chuck E Cheese party and the Stanford Prison Experiments.

From the article: “I was desperate to get to a Mad Hatter party. They were legendary: Studio 54 for 12-year-olds.”—Hilary Doyle, 34 

“In retrospect, I can’t believe how totally dangerous they were—the shopping-cart bumper cars. One person would push a shopping cart while another kid sat in it…very treacherous. At my party we just went through a random door—I don’t think we were being supervised by anyone—and we ended up in the mall’s underground parking lot, so we were smashing into each other and smashing into cars.”—Erin Oke

Some of the conditions were so outrageous, that one wonders how this birthday party service managed to not be closed down by multiple lawsuits.

From the article: “We were in cages. It was probably a big room subdivided by plywood walls, but the walls didn’t go all the way to the ceiling and I remember this chicken-wire mesh or something over top. There were these wooden benches that we sat on, and popcorn was strewn all over the ground, which was really sticky. And there was just a tray of hot dogs, like, boiled, with white buns and condiments. We were throwing them around. There was a party of boys next door and they somehow climbed up and they were looking down at our party and yelling obscenities, and, you know, showing us their penises.”—Erin Oke 

“The hot-dog room was my nightmare. There was just a table and they’d throw the food down like we were animals, and then you’d get to throw it at each other. All of the condiments, too. There was no method.”—Miriam Verberg, 34

Here is a message board of Toronto kids, now grown up, who still seem to be asking themselves if this Lord of the Flies of birthday parties was real. They seemed to remember this experience fondly!

This wild behavior reminds me of a documentary put out a few years ago by British television's Channel 4. In the documentary, Boys and Girls Alone, the kids were segregated into two communities by gender. The children were monitored by CCTV, but left to make their own decisions. This probably wasn't a legitimate social "experiment" but exploitation "reality" tv, but the results are still interesting. The boys erupted into violence and wanton destruction and the girls were exceedingly cruel to each other.