Why: I always thought this blow mold pumpkin was the most unique looking (out of the dozens of other blow mold Halloween characters out there), I sort of found it down right ugly when I was a kid thanks to the buck teeth, and that’s why I think I like it so much now. It’s actually kind of cute.

Bayshore Industries blow mold Halloween Pumpkin

I’ve always wondered about this blow mold pumpkin because unlike a few others I have he has no production stampings and no trademarks of any kind. I do know now it came with the light, which I suppose makes sense. Well as it turns out there are a few floating around out there with the original stickers (yes, stickers) still in place that give a little bit of manufacturing information.

Read on:

The ONLY production markings on the entire thing.

Diamond shaped (sort of) yellow sticker with black border. Reads “BAYSHORE HALLOWEEN LIGHT-UP DECORATION WITH BULB/BAYSHORE INDUSTRIES, INC., NY, NY, 10010, a subsidiary of Miner Industries, Inc. Made in USA”

Bayshore Industries opened in 1946 by Alvin L. Gursha in Elkton, Md. They ran into financial problems and were absorbed by Miner Industries, located in New York.

Fulfilling the acquisition, 1961 saw production moved to Amsterdam, New York, Bldg. 65 on Willow St., which formerly housed a plastic production company (Larc Products Co.) that folded in 1956.

According to Eugene Swee, president and chairman of the board of Miner Industries, Alvin L. Gursha was to be president of Miner’s Bayshore Division.

Bayshore produced such novelties as Halloween masks, hobby horses, balloons, bowling sets and more.

The bits of information I did find about the business deal are from the Amsterdam Evening Recorder, July 24, 1962.

I could find little else about Bayshore. From what I’m lead to believe, Miner Industries, whose offices were located at 200 Fifth Avenue, Room 234. NY, NY 10010, filed chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1978.

This makes it pretty difficult to contact the company for any sort of history or patent sketch like I was hoping for, but it was interesting digging up the history nonetheless.

Judging by the fact that Bayshore had become Miner’s subsidiary by 1961/1962, that must mean this jack o lantern/cat blow mold is POST 1962, and since I believe Miner went under completely nearly 2 decades later, pre 1978.

Bayshore blow mold and some friends hanging around.

I’ve found many of these on eBay so they are by no means rare at this point in time. I had one as a child and actually found the one I have now in the garbage, looking very sad. Ones I have found on eBay with the old price tags in place said they cost a little over a dollar, retail, when new.

The jack o lantern/black cat blow mold can easily be found on eBay for about $10 before shipping. Or if you have a very keen eye on garbage night.

I had all three, and I remember hanging them up every year, because they were good sized and cool. I got them from Twin Valu grocery store in Euclid, Ohio, long before I actually lived in Euclid.  They were indeed filled with the little candy bars.

Like I said, there were 3 different containers.  The Snickers ghost, who was a white ghost with a typical ghosty expression.  You know, he looks like he’s moaning and being otherwise scary.

Then comes the Milky Way pumpkin (Jack o Lantern), who in contrast is quite happy looking.  And he was filled with Milky Way, so he automatically wins.

Anyway, the third was a green guy who I assumed was some sort of goblin, as what else is green really?  He had 3 Musketeers bars.

To make a very long story incredibly short, I moved and had to leave them all behind with a lot of other things.  So in my eBay stalkings, I’m very slowing starting to get things back, and last year (2009) Guy and I were able to track down the Snickers ghost and the 3 Musketeers pumpkin.  I was so happy I got all emotional and I’ll be the same way if/when I can find myself a nice goblin to buy.

I’m not posting this so much as a happily ever after type thing, but because I googled last year extensively and this year as well, and I actually found even LESS about these premiums this year, so I wanted to put it all together in one spot, along with all the information I know (Mars Inc., 1989, lids are removable and have a thin rope in place so they may be hung or used as trick or treat pails, I would assume) and some pictures.  These were really neat little Halloween critters and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one out there who remembers them.

Here’s a shot of my two guys:

My Snickers ghost, being quite ghostly.

My Milky Way pumpkin. Very jolly dude.

And if you have a goblin to sell me at a reasonable price, feel free to drop me a line at jen at euclidboo dot com.  Thank you!

I don't know where this is from, if it's yours, please let me know and I will credit accordingly.

ETA: I contacted Mars about these, hoping to get some information, anything really, but I didn’t get too far:

In response to your email regarding SNICKERS BRAND, MILKY WAY BRAND, and 3 MUSKETEERS BRAND.

Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately, the information you requested is not available.

Have a great day!

Your Friends at Mars Chocolate North America

This is Halloween from The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack.

I Put a Spell on You by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

We were stuck.  We wanted 6 fake pumpkins, something we could carve, that would last a while, that wouldn’t cost a small fortune.  Surprisingly, searching the Internet didn’t return a whole lot.  I found something called Funkins which sold for about $25 a pumpkin.  A PUMPKIN, for fake foam pumpkins!

Even on sale, we were looking at $84 for 6 pumpkins, and that meant 6 pumpkins that all looked the same.

Yeah… no.  Everyone has seen the amazing Stolloween, and I think most have been intimidated to even try.  I know I was, he makes it look so easy!  That said, we really had no choice, so we gave paper mache pumpkins a try.  I’ll spell out how we did it, and I think you’ll agree, it was a spooktacular (Sorry, I couldn’t resist & I’m kind of lame like that) idea.

We used the same paper mache recipe as the last batch of paper mache pumpkins we made last year.  You remember, the vintage ones.  Yeah, those.  We took grocery bags, filled them with crumpled up newspaper, tied them up, and used tape to make “grooves”.   Toilet paper tubes provided the shape for the stems.  Basically, they oughta look like a pumpkin made out of bag and tape at this point.

Now that you have that done, go on and make your paper mache glue and tear newspaper into long strips.  For life sized pumpkins, we went and did 3 layers of the strip, thoroughly letting each layer dry.  This took us about a day, starting in the afternoon.  Get out a box fan to speed things up.

Now you’re going to have to make your paper mache clay.  We used 6 cups of flour, 1 bottle of elmers glue, a cup of liquid starch (1 cup of water + 1/4 cup of corn starch).  Mix that up and add some GreenFiber Natural Fiber Blow-In Insulation.  A huge cube cost us $7.25 from the Home Depot.  Use as much as you want until you get a thickness you like.  Apply clay to just the tops of the pumpkins.  Note where you’re going to cut your eyes, as this stuff is VERY difficult to cut through.  Drying takes a while but we found a heat lamp really helped things along.  We got a tiny bit of sun that helped us out too, but late September in Ohio = little sun.

Onto the the next day.  Now that the tops are dry, cut a circle in the bottom of your pumpkins and yank out the paper guts, and the bag too.  We left our toilet paper tubes in place.

Not much to see now.  Carve your face, cut some thin cardboard to line your cuts with (think of depth for the eyes and mouth) and get some more clay going, and slather it on.  Let them dry more.

The one up front?  He was named “Lampy” shortly after he made Facebook debut.

We painted the insides of the fake pumpkins orange.

And then we painted the outsides flat black, covering everything well.

It all comes together right now.  This is exactly one week from when we started.  Break out some primer and dry brush your surfaces.

That takes about 5 minutes to dry.  Now get artsy!  I dry brushed as to not overkill the entire project.  A little brown, yellow and orange was all I needed.

And some detail, too:

Time consuming? Yes.  There was 2 of us working on 6 pumpkins and it did take us about a week, doing it leisurely some nights.  Worth it?  Definitely.  They look infinitely better than anything store bought and they cost hardly nothing to make.  Now that’s a treat.

Real Vintage Paper Mache

Click any image to view larger

I love those vintage pumpkin lanterns that go for like $50 on eBay.  If I had billions of dollars and thousands of square feet, I’d probably already own all of them like some weird collector that aims to have the last existing whatever.

Lucky for the rest of the world I have neither.  But I do have newspaper, water and flour.

So Guy and I made our own paper mache lanterns, and I gotta tell ya, they were fun and pretty easy to do!

We made 3 small and one large.  We ended up making the glue like 4 times, but it’s not a big deal.  If you wanna do this, I’ll break down the supplies we used.

* Newspaper, ripped into strips about 6″ – 12″ long
* Assorted balloons from the dollar store
* 2 cups hot water
* 2 cups cold water
* 1/2 cup flour
* 3 tablespoons sugar
* White tissue paper

Heat the 2 cups hot water to boiling.  Meanwhile, mix 1/2 cup flour into 2 cups cold water.  When hot water reaches boiling, mix your cold water/flour mixture into it.  Bring this all back to a boil.  When it’s done, add in your 3 tablespoons sugar.  Mix, wait for it to cool, and enjoy.

paper mache strips

We learned not to “pre-soak” your strips because it pretty much dissolves into unusable snot.  Dip a strip in, wring out the excess glue with your fingers, and slap it down on your balloon.

We placed ours on wax paper with a phone book pressing down so they had a flat top and bottom.  We stuck them in front of a fan.  They dry pretty quick, the top/bottom taking longer, of course.  We ended up putting 2 layers down when I realized I should have rubber banded either the balloon or the covered ballooon while it was wet to make a pumpkin shape.  I slapped some extra on there, and it looked ok.

The general rule is to really let these things dry.  We made these over the course of a few days.  It was fun to get dirty time and time again.  Really!

Next: Pop the balloon, pull it out.

Carving was fun.  We modeled a couple after the vintage lanterns we found on the internet and a couple we just cut typical jack o lantern faces into.

I looked all over the place trying to find the right thing to paint it with.  I was totally paranoid that we’d screw them up and have a pile of sad goo.

We ended up going with colorful latex house paint we had laying around in the basement.  2 light coats (think unsaturated) and you’re in business.

Mix some water with your paint for an aged effect for both the green base and to fill in areas that would naturally have shadows.

We finished by drawing the eyes and mouth on tissue paper, cutting them to size and taping them in.