10 Designs That Will Now Never Be Published

10 Designs That Will Now Never Be Published
Extreme Pumpkins II represents the end of the line in pumpkin carving. It is my second book on the subject and I think the last. Between the two books I have publshed how-to's on 40 pumpkins. I doubt I will do any more.

That said, there were some designs that just missed the cut. I wanted to publish the list at the end of the second book, but the publisher suggested that we leave all doors to the future open:

This has got to be the end of the line for pumpkin carving books. Honestly, does the world need three of them? I don’t think so. I wasn’t even sure that we need two, but I cashed the check already and you are reading it, so it must have worked out. Anyway, here are all of the designs that I thought of, carved, or just sketched that never made the cut.
1. A terminator pumpkin. The terminator pumpkin was to be similar to the frankenpumpkin but with movie specific pieces and parts.
2. A pin-striped pumpkin. I like the pinstripe art of 50’s hot rods, but the overall idea wasn’t strong enough make the cut.
3. An Animal Trap Pumpkin: Turning a giant pumpkin into an entrapment device for animals and small children sounded cool, but never happened.
4. The bulging eyeball pumpkin: We covered this type of thing with the sneezing pumpkin. It wouldn’t be a huge leap to use the techniques presented in the sneezing pumpkin to make your very own bulging eyeball pumpkin.
5. Hot Dog Pumpkin: The first book had a hamburger pumpkin and this book may have had a hot dog pumpkin if your author hadn’t refused to carve it because he thought it was “girly”.
6. A pumpkin helmet: I really wanted to make a football helmet or a storm trooper uniform out of pumpkins for my son. I tried to make him a helmet but I made a measurement error. My deadline passed before I had a chance to get it right.
7. An exorcist pumpkin with rotating head: Listen, as much as I would have loved to show you a rotating, pea-soup spitting exorcist head, I just haven’t got the mental energy. Sorry dude.
8. A Pumpkin Punch Bowl: Although I figured that a pumpkin would be clean enough to drink punch out of, I doubt that my wife and friends would believe me. I let it slide.
9. The Chainsaw Pumpkin – A pumpkin that lost its battle with a chainsaw seemed like a good idea to me, but my editors in New York City sounded bored by it. Not a lot of chainsaws in the city. It made me wonder what would happen if you rode the subway with a chainsaw. I bet you would get a seat…quickly.
10. A Pumpkin Pinata for Adults to Hit: I like the idea of having a birthday party with a piñata, but piñatas are too easy to break. I thought using a pumpkin would make it more fun and harder to smash. It just didn’t look very interesting.