A Giant Pumpkin Drop: Woodward's spectacular way to celebrate Halloween

WOODWARD, Okla. (KFOR) — Hundreds of kids in costume, parents in tow, the Main Street Program here hosts a trick-or-treat event every October.

Businesses and city agencies hand out treats for a couple of hours, but the crowds stay for a different reason.

"It's very exciting," gushes Bryan Baker, "at least I think so."

We first met him in June 2024 as he embarked on yet another attempt at growing a state record gourd.

"I'd really like to grow a 2,000-pound pumpkin someday," he told us then. "That's been my goal."

We met him again at the Oklahoma State Fair with several other giant pumpkin growers who try for the same thing.

Which brings us back to the end of Trick-or-Treat on Main, and why the crowds don't go home once the candy is handed out.

For the past several years, Bryan has hauled in the best of his crop, and the biggest pumpkins he can find, to the base of a big construction crane.

"This is how we finish with giant pumpkins," he shouts. "We smash them."

Crews attach straps and hoist these garden monsters several stories into the air.

Then, they drop them to the pavement in the most satisfying of ways.

"It kind of blew up," one young witness described.

"Yeah," says another. "I thought it was going everywhere."

Baker likes to fill his pumpkins with ping pong balls containing prizes for the kids.

It's kind of like an Easter Egg hunt, but with violence.

"That was a pretty good splatter," Baker tells us after dropping a 300-pound pumpkin he grew in his own garden.

The big pieces of pumpkin shrapnel don't go to waste either. A local goat farmer, Linda Jo Meyer, takes them to her kids north of town.

She informs us, "They all have names and they eat it like candy."

The biggest pumpkin at the fair in 2024 came from a Missouri gardener. It tipped the scales at 1,734 pounds.

The grower donated it to this year's 'Giant Pumpkin Drop.'

Baker was pretty sure, "It's probably the biggest pumpkin in the state right now."

Again, a crane took it high into the air.

"This is what I look forward to when I'm planting seeds in the ground," he continues.

Volunteers had to pull hard but it dropped all right, again, with the most satisfying of thuds.

As darkness descended, another Pumpkin Drop heralded a wonderful holiday season full of just the right combination of pageantry and mayhem.

For more information on Woodward's Main Street Program and the annual Giant Pumpkin Drop go to their Facebook page here.