On November 2nd and 3rd, 2019, the World Championship Punkin Chunkin event will take place in Rantoul, Illinois. Trebuchets, slingshots, centrifugals, cannons and more will all line up for the chance to send a pumpkin as far away from the launch point as possible. It’s a mad scientist method of having fun, something we can get behind. Lets be honest for a minute: outside of a pumpkin pie or whatever drink the local coffeeshop is hawking until the Christmas season kicks off, do you know anybody who regularly eats pumpkin anything? Roasted seeds, maybe. Otherwise, probably not. You buy pumpkins to carve up for jack o’lanterns and throw the rotting corpse away after Halloween is over. So why not try to use the large squash as a cannonball?

Bringing a pneumatic cannon attached to a 1955 Chevrolet truck to a scrapyard means one thing: target practice. Using pumpkins and bowling balls as some kind of sadistic cannonball substitute, “Blowdacious 707” here will have no trouble sending seasonal food and sporting goods through the broadside of a van. Though, you can hear a difference between the pumpkin and the bowling ball. One goes splat, the other makes one of the most sinister artillery whistles I’ve ever heard.

Load…clear…FIRE!