Frankenpumpkin

October 1, 2017 • 4:15 pm

Shopping at the local produce store, I saw that they were selling “Frankenstein pumpkins,” which I presume they make by forcing a growing pumpkin into some kind of mold that has a Frankenstein monster face.

Now a regular pumpkin with no face costs just a few dollars. What do you suppose they are charging for this one?

I suppose people are getting too lazy to carve pumpkins these days.

 

39 thoughts on “Frankenpumpkin”

    2. Dammit, first thing that occurred to me, and the first comment beat me to it! 😉

      cr

        1. Hmm…

          “Trumpkin is an intensely practical and skeptical dwarf”

          So, not a lot in common with the Orange One, then 😉

          cr

  2. “Now a regular pumpkin with no face costs just a few dollars. What do you suppose they are charging for this one?”

    They’ll be able to get thousands once somebody decides that’s the face of Jesus or the Virgin Mary.

  3. If they sold the mold for $5-10, I’d buy one for my parents. Can I get it in Darth Vader? Wicked Witch? Those would be totally cool! I could see a whole cottage industry in different face molds. While I’d still carve a pumpkin with my kid for the experience, I’d be very happy to substitute 1 ‘faced’ pumpkin + 1 carved one for our current 2 carved one tradition.

  5. What do you suppose they are charging for this one?

    If I’m recalling Mary Shelley’s novel correctly, Dr. Frankenstein obtained his materials gratis from charnel houses and gravesites. Why should pumpkin buyers pay more?

  6. looks like some classic batesian mimicry. the pumpkin has evolved to grow in the shape of a well-known monster. the pumkins with less threatening features were selected against for thousands of years

  7. Stopping myself from correcting the store and telling them Frankstein was the scientist and the nameless monster was his creation. Damn Hollywood.

    1. Frankenstein. LOL Frank Stein is probably some dude that shops there on Saturday mornings.

      1. That is the most common misconception of all literary allusions, I think. (i.e. that Frankenstein was the monster). Caused in part by the fact that the monster was nameless, and in many constructions ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ sounds really clumsy.

        For example ‘Frankenstein’s monster pumpkins’ has two different meanings.

        So the mistake (or possibly deliberate error) is excusable.

        cr

    2. I seem to remember that the monster wasn’t nameless, but referred to itself as ‘Adam’. This might have been a figurative allusion though.

    3. This from Wikipedia.

      Mary Shelley’s original novel never ascribes an actual name to the monster; although when speaking to his creator, Victor Frankenstein, the monster does say “I ought to be thy Adam” (in reference to the first man created in the Bible). Victor refers to his creation as “creature”, “fiend”, “spectre”, “the demon”, “wretch”, “devil”, “thing”, “being”, and “ogre”.[3]

      It has become common vernacular to refer to the creature by the name “Frankenstein” or “The Monster” but neither of these names are apparent in the book.[

  8. This is something that was done many decades ago (saw old film footage on it). But it never caught on.

    One of the best pumpkin carvings that I had seen that was also very simple was a set of pumpkins with narrow slit eyes and mouths. They were then ‘sewn’ shut with a leather cord. *Shiver*.

  11. Wow, there is a whole industry out there, you can buy buddha molds for pears too, star and heart molds for cucumbers – if you want that cross section and also underwear for peaches – presumably designed by someone who watched the relevant House of Cards episode.

    The molds for Frankenstein are about $40 no idea how much the pumpkin is though

    1. Not that the more traditional carving method isn’t cruel. The pumpkin cells are alive while all the vivisection and disemboweling is going on.

      I like to tease my vegetarian friends that those raw carrots they’ve eaten were alive and would have grown if they had put them in some soil.

  14. This pumpkin is modelled on Herman Munster, 5th Earl of Shroudshire,
    all round good guy, fond childhood memories of the b & w tv era.

  15. It resembles the Green Man in a way, an old motif in European culture, because of the combination of face plus vegetable or plant. In an odd way, it fits Halloween, which is also a pagan/celtic tradition embedded into Christian culture.

  16. There’s a big benefit to this sort of pumpkin. You can buy one now and have it sitting out for the rest of the month whereas you’d be wise to wait to carve your jack-o-lantern just a few days before Halloween to avoid it rotting too soon.

    1. I am not really sure that that is a benefit. It seems to me that – for mainly commercial reasons – most of the big annual feasts and festivals extend over much too long a period. By the time we actually get to Christmas, for example, we have been enduring weeks of cheesy ‘festive’ music in the shops, garish illuminations and such like. Does anyone really find this enhances their enjoyment of the holiday? Let’s keep ’em short and sweet.

    1. I wouldn’t pay $49 for it either – but it is cool. Not sure you can call pumpkin carving a dying art, though. Between fancy patterns to download on the internet and Dremel selling specialized carving kits, there are some darn fancy jack-o-lanterns these days. Several years back we spent many days helping our then middle-school son carve a Death Star

    2. $49 is a little much but I’m not surprised. Not a fan of this kind of pumpkin. I’d rather carve one.

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