I used to look forward to carving pumpkins the week before Halloween (and I still do), but from year to year I always forgot how much I did not enjoy scooping out the cold, slimy, seedy, stringy insides. The scooping needed to be complete before the fun of carving the pumpkin could begin. No matter what hand tool you used — tablespoon, serving spoon, ice cream scoop — it still took too long and wasn’t part of the fun. Life is short, the life of a pumpkin even shorter, and children can have short attention spans, so why waste time?
The $10 Pumpkin Gutter adds machine power. Chuck it in your household electric drill, and the pumpkin-destroying process starts with the dramatic roar of an electric motor. It helps to have 2 people, so one can hold the pumpkin steady while the other one goes to work attacking the pumpkin’s insides. It’s perfectly safe inside the pumpkin, and while it has five edges, it’s not sharp enough to cut anyone. Move it around vigorously inside, and every so often dump out the loose orange stuff. If the strings get wrapped around it, just take it out and let them slide effortlessly down the handle end. You’ll have it cleaned out in no time at all.
Even better, the Pumpkin Gutter can cut into the pumpkin itself and make the walls as thin as desired. If you want to take your pumpkin carving art to the next level, where you carve away the skin and let the light shine through, it’s great to have a tool that controls the amount of that light.
The Pumpkin Gutter has a nice long handle, so you can use it to carve the largest jack-o-lantern you want, and it’s dishwasher safe, which makes an inherently messy task that much tidier. Having one might even inspire someone like Daisy, who doesn’t necessarily share my enthusiasm for Halloween and power tools, to carve a pumpkin of her own.
Available from Amazon
