Sticky, Squishy Pumpkin Parts Kit!
My adventures in idiot blogging have brought many pumpkins to their doom.
There was the time I hammered Lite Brite pegs into one. Another time, I turned a pumpkin into the Trix Rabbit. Then there was the afternoon when one grew a clay face and Yoda arms.
This year, I hope to bring the total number into the triple digits.
On the other hand, this kit doesn’t really kill pumpkins. It just makes them look like gooey clowns.
Made by Pumpkin Masters, it’s the Kid’s Sticky, Squishy Pumpkin Parts kit — a title so cumbersome that I’ve already made the concrete vow to never type it again. You probably know Pumpkin Masters for their traditional “knife and scooper” sets, but I remember ‘em more for the kickass Pumpkin Hatchers I found last year.
Though there’s no way a bunch of jellied body parts could ever top that, I think it may come close.
You get fifteen gooey appendages, from vampire lips to frog legs. If you’re familiar with those gelatin-like window clings, these are virtually identical. (In fact, the back of the package outright tells you to use them on windows when you finish messing with giant fruit. Pumpkin Masters seemed really adamant about that, so I assume some dark deal with the devil was in play.)
At heart, I’m a jack o’ lantern traditionalist. Give me a knife and a bag to throw the guts into, and absolutely nothing else. If I’m going to cheat and use a kit, it has to be especially weird.
I think a kit that lets me put Jell-O noses on pumpkins falls under the “especially weird” umbrella.
Jack ‘o lantern decorating kits are so often marred by low quality tools, but Pumpkin Masters never lets me down. In this case, the sticky body parts work so well and are so fun to fondle, I can only sit here and pity the version of me who existed eight hours ago. That Matt did not know the power of gooey pumpkin eyes, and he was worse off for it.
The package doesn’t provide any firm directions on applying the parts. It’s totally up to you. You want a one-eyed vampire with frog legs? Go for it. Go for it, just like Aimee Garcia did in that terrible dancing movie. The one you’ve never heard of. I hate Aimee Garcia.
To demonstrate the possibilities, I gave figurative birth to three different pumpkin creatures. They are below. For easy reference, each photo includes the particular creature’s name in a large and colorful font!
Dylan Decay is a big-nosed vampire, and if you can defeat the powers of intense sun glare, you might even notice his fangs. His eyes look like olives and his arms are more ineffectual than a T-Rex’s, but he has it where it counts: Alliteration in name/surname.
Gourdon T. Evil is such a stupid name, but what could I do? He insisted on it.
“Gourdon.” Oh, please. I tried to explain that gourds are only pumpkins if you get super extremely technical about it, but Gourdon didn’t care. Nor would he tell me what the “T” stood for. What a brat.
Is Gourdon an amphibian? A mammal? I believe he’s both. With bat wings, frog legs and a worm for a nose, Gourdon rocks his maraschino eyes and Desert Krawk beard with equal fierceness.
Hey, somebody has to set the trends. If Gourdon wasn’t such a spiteful ass, I’d start his fan club.
Merga Supreme is…wow.
Okay, here’s how it goes down. Every now and again, some mighty pumpkin enemy will roll into the patch, looking for trouble. When Dylan and Gourdon feel outmatched, they combine into Merga Supreme and kick all kinds of unholy ass. It’s a move straight out of Devastator’s playbook, but without the neat crunchy sound effects.
With the respective powers of Dylan and Gourdon realized in a single super-monster, Merga Supreme is an unstoppable force and an immovable object, worth more than the sum of his parts. This guy is the real deal, so don’t mess with him. If you plan to step in the ring with Merga Supreme, you better think pain feels like handjobs.
PS: It’ll drive me crazy if I don’t clarify this. “Merga” is pronounced “mur-jah.” Not “mer-gah.” Should you reference him in a future conversation, please do so correctly.
Love this line from the back of the package:
“Kids can make a new creation every day until they find the perfect creature to greet Halloween night.”
I know it’s just an incredibly roundabout way of saying “you can make lots of different monsters,” but damn, it’s charming. I love the idea of a kid disassembling and recreating his monster, night after night, all with the maddeningly critical eye of a self-loathing artist who refuses to let Halloween down.
I hate assigning letter grades to things like this, but for some reason, I’m perfectly fine with number grades. 8 out of 10.
I deducted two points because there was only one nose.
