Runaway Pumpkin Goes On Rolling Halloween Rampage Through Arizona Streets [Video]
At Halloween, Linus has the great pumpkin, Ichabod Crane has the Headless Horseman who kills him with a pumpkin, and now Peoria, Arizona, has a rampaging Halloween pumpkin of its own: The Runaway Pumpkin.
The massive, smiling, and terrifying inflatable Runaway Pumpkin took to the Arizona streets Thursday, reports WTHR, tearing free from its tethered anchors as a promotional shtick for a Halloween party and barreling along the boulevard like a psychopathic pumpkin on the edge.
In the video below, the seemingly unstoppable, tumbling gourd seems to have a mind of its own, though the wicked fall desert wind is clearly in control. Runaway Pumpkin seems almost like an enraged bull, except for the obvious jack-o-lantern smile, bouncing this way and that before rolling hard to the right and across several lanes, seemingly without any concern for the surrounding oncoming traffic or fellow Halloween travelers.
Though a utility pole initially stymies Runaway Pumpkin’s incoming street rampage, the pole is no match for the ginormous inflatable squash, as Runaway Pumpkin shrugs off the pole and continues on his way.
After shedding the utility pole, Runaway Pumpkin demonstrates his potential for speed and agility, rolling and bouncing down the road for several hundred yards. Ultimately, RP decides to bail over the side of the road, catches some air to clear a wall, then careens through a business parking lot before navigating into a Peoria park.
Diego Ramirez captured the magical Halloween footage of the Runaway Pumpkin in action. The videographer, and now Runaway Pumpkin documentarian, is clearly entertained by the spectacle, laughing and enjoying the rogue inflatable squash. That is until Runaway Pumpkin sets his triangle eyes on the cameraman and makes a beeline toward him, much like the aforementioned Headless Horseman did to poor Ichabod.
The Halloween gift that is the Peoria, Arizona, Runaway Pumpkin obviously gave surprised drivers an early scare as the inflatable emerges seemingly out of nowhere before bouncing out into the intersection.
And as far as pumpkins go, if size dictates the potential for winning awards, Runaway Pumpkin would most likely decimate the competition at any state fair, maintaining a dizzying height of 25 feet and weighing in at a prodigious 350 pounds of pure orange pumpkin delight.
City officials confirmed that the Runaway Pumpkin, before making his escape, had been on display to call attention to an upcoming Halloween party. But whether it was the long hours, the pay, or simply that Runaway Pumpkin didn’t like being tied down, the promotional gig apparently just wasn’t for him.
Fortunately, no injuries to humans were reported, but Runaway Pumpkin did leave a number of Peoria’s utility poles some damage to remember him by.
Previous news stories about inflatables like the Runaway Pumpkin include a runaway blimp and 2009’s balloon boy.
Both the runaway blimp and balloon boy events also join Runaway Pumpkin as occurrences that took place in October.
The runaway blimp was a military craft that, like Runaway Pumpkin, tore loose of its moorings and made a getaway into the sky, reports CNN.
The runaway blimp wasn’t AWOL for long, however, the military catching up to it in a “rugged, wooded area” in Pennsylvania.
The runaway blimp also suffered a fate quite a bit worse than Runaway Pumpkin’s with soldiers pumping a few shotgun rounds into its nose in order to deflate it, then tearing the runaway in two for transportation purposes.
Balloon boy, meanwhile, was a 2009 pre-Halloween inflatable event, in which millions had their eyes glued to their TV sets as a balloon believed to be carrying a young boy, that had inexplicably climbed aboard, flew along at dangerous speeds and heights.
Unlike Runaway Pumpkin who is as real as real gets, ballon boy turned out to be a hoax, the child being found in his family’s attic, never having been aboard the balloon at all.
Regardless, for now its Runaway Pumpkin that gets the spotlight in the inflatable-news category. So if you hear somebody shout, “Runaway Pumpkin!,” don’t bother to look, just run!
[Images and video by Diego Ramirez via YouTube]
