Space Jump Pumpkin

Any questions??! Space Jump Pumpkin is a vile veg from the future. He's hard headed and uses his thick skin to attack the Grosseries. With his pumpkin flicking shooter, he's out to squeeze as much gross from the Grosseries as possible. So stay off his patch if you don't want to be smashed! As we begin, we've got to offer a correction for something said in the Potato Punk review: as said in that review, the "Time Wars" story is about a time portal opened in a toilet [so... a Chron-O-John? --ed.], but it turns out that the May 1, 1973 date is the same on all the packages, so unless they're claiming both the caveman and the cyborgs are coming to us from the early '70s, we have no choice but to admit that the date did not refer specifically to Potato Punk. This series of action figures is available in two styles: the full, standard releases, just like the two previous series, which are available at Target; and simple, accessory-free versions at Five Below. It's like the way DST sells their various "_____ Select" lines with a lot of extra pieces at specialty stores, and fewer pieces at mass retail. Anyway, if you can find this guy at Target, you'll get an exclusive Grossery featuring an angry little pumpkin with cybernetic implants. And if you don't care about that, you can save a few bucks by shopping at the discount chain. David S(pace) Jumpkins is, surprisingly, not the main villain of the Time Wars cartoon - the previous two series only offered one villain apiece, while this one doubles that number. Not really sure why a pumpkin would be a villain, or who gave him Borg-style implants (and to what end?), but there you go: this is a half-robotic pumpkin from the future, the only possible outcome from the rampant use of GMOs. In truth, "half" is pushing it: the pumpkin has a cybernetic eyepiece, a robotic right arm, and metal boots. His more natural limbs are formed from vines, and really, we'd have preferred getting just a plain jack o'lantern man to this android conglomeration. He's spitting up purple pumpkin guts, with more of the same leaking out from beneath his bright green stalk. The eyepiece, arm, leg band and feet are all a dark silver, while the large mechanical glove covering his right hand is a bright tone. His eyes are black, because they're meant to just be cutouts like his mouth, but he's got a red pupil in the center - and yes, that's true for the cyber eye, as well. The toy isn't as spherical as a real pumpkin would be, because he needs to fit in the standard packaging; he's fine from the front and back, but viewed from the top he's got an oblong cross section. He's sculpted with a pumpkin's ribs, as well as other dings and nicks in his skin. The body is bright orange, as you'd expect, but it fades to a light yellow-green down by his butt - they remembered to paint his field spot, the blank place where the pumpkin rested on the ground while it was growing. With Space Jump Pumpkin's entire body being a single gourd, he's clearly going to be one of the Grossery Gang toys without a removable head. In fact, none of the new characters in this series have that feature. Guess Moose Toys decided to let it fall by the wayside. Shame; that was fun. That lack means his only points of articulation are swivel/hinge joints at the shoulders and hips. Nice work putting notches on his front-butt so his legs can come all the way up, though! I was unable to find this figure at Target, so I settled for the Five Below version, which means that I didn't get the rubber Grossey, and I didn't get the "Flick 'n' Launch Grot Blaster." Gee, such a loss. If I had gotten it, it would have been a futuristic green gun that shoots a small purple pumpkin missile. Why purple? Why not make it white, like those tiny pumpkins that have been gaining in popularity recently? We don't know exactly what year Jacko here comes from, just "the future," but the oldest pumpkin seeds anyone has ever found were from 9,000-7,500 years ago in Mexico (and these days 90% of all pumpkins grown in America come from within 90 miles of Peoria, IL). As said above, it would have been much more interesting, not to mention more seasonal, if this had just been an angry pumpkin without the electronics grafted onto his bodyparts, but maybe pretend he's playing dress-up for Halloween. -- 10/27/18

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