It’s going to take a while for Senator Ted Cruz to put the story of his getaway to Cancun during a winter storm in Texas behind him. A party store in Dallas is offering a new item for sale – a pinata of Cruz dressed as he returned from the trip.

When Cruz returned to Houston from Cancun, he wore a Texas state flag face mask and carried his passport. Carlos and Elvie De La Fuente’s party supplies store, ABC Party HQ, has a two-week waitlist for the pinatas. The store is known for its cascarones (a hollowed-out chicken egg filled with confetti) and piñatas. Each pinata is handmade and takes three to five days to complete. They are 3-and-a-half-feet-tall, cost $100, and have to be pre-ordered.

Sen. Ted Cruz piñatas created at Dallas party store: https://t.co/ClkBrGIQRK pic.twitter.com/XjZU94ZtQx

— NBC DFW (@NBCDFW) February 23, 2021

De La Fuentes says it’s all in good fun for a much-needed laugh after a rough winter storm.

Carlos De La Fuente said humor was his motivation when deciding to create this new piñata.

“After all we’ve been growing through, we needed a laugh,” he said. “Something to give us hope and something to give us relief after six days of miserable weather and people going through bad situations.”

The piñatas take five days to make, and the traveling Ted Cruz piñata made its first appearance Monday around noon. By 5 p.m. the store already had five or six orders for Cruz piñatas, De La Fuente said.

A lot of Texans aren’t laughing, though, about Cruz’s poor decision to leave. Then, Cruz apologized and admitted it was a bad move and the critics jumped harder on him. De La Fuente says he watches memes on social media for inspiration for his pinatas. There were plenty of memes circulating from photos of Cruz at the airport.

The political pinatas De La Fuente sells are bipartisan. His last big seller was one of Bernie Sanders in his warm clothes at the Biden inauguration. The store also sold Trump pinatas during his term in office and also has one for the coronavirus.

“I watch a lot of news and see what’s trending,” ABC Party HQ owner Carlos De La Fuente said, explaining how he chooses what piñatas to make. “It’s worked out for me because the phone has been ringing off the wall.”

“I tell you, Donald Trump was a big hit for 4 years, 4 and 1/2 years,” De La Fuente said. “It was 50/50 there. People, they liked him, some of them bought them because they disliked him.”

Ted Cruz spoke out on a podcast Tuesday and said that his wife, Heidi, is “pissed off” that someone in her neighborhood text message group leaked her messages to the New York Times. Cruz called the leaker(s) ‘assholes’.

“I will say Heidi’s pretty pissed at that,” Cruz, 50, said about his wife, 48, on an episode of the political podcast Ruthless.

Cruz blasted the leakers as “a——-” during his podcast appearance.

“Here’s a suggestion: just don’t be a——-,” he said. “Like, just, you know, treat each other as human beings have some degree, some modicum of respect.”

I don’t blame Heidi was being angry with the leaker(s). And, there were the photos of her in a bikini splashed around in the press. Cruz says she has confronted a neighbor for the leak.

The Texas senator said it was “even more creepy” that Heidi was photographed on the beach by paparazzi during the Cancún trip.

Cruz said leaks are “a sign of how ridiculously politicized and nasty” people can be and said his wife “was over at a neighbors house” on Monday, indicating she had confronted them about the leaked texts.

Overall, Cruz attributed the fallout over his trip to political differences, even as he was blasted by some last week as “an enemy to our state” for leaving during the crisis.

“We just need to laugh a little bit and loosen up,” he said.

That’s what the party supply store owner said – Texans need a laugh. Maybe Cruz will find a laugh in his Cancun pinata.