Like Victor Frankenstein — the central character in Mary Shelley’s novel — Tony Dighera was determined to bring a new creature to life. Though he was fairly new to farming, Tony saw a profit to be made in strangely-shaped pumpkins, so he created “Pumpkinstein.” Grown in a plastic mold, the pumpkins bear the distinctive face of the Frankenstein monster. With a slight smile, a wide button nose, a slightly furrowed brown, and ears that stick out just slightly, the pumpkins are easy to mistake for something carved from wax. On his 40-acre organic farm north of Los Angeles, workers harvest about 5,500 of the monster pumpkins each year. The pumpkins sell for $75 each, and retailers typically get $100 or more for them in the weeks leading up to Halloween. It took Tony 4 years, 27 varieties of pumpkin, and roughly $400,000 before he found the right one to take the monster shape. His sales pitch to retailers is simple: "Even if you think the price is too steep, customers will come in just to see the oddly shaped fruits.”
