In 1986 a group of men in the US were arguing over who could throw an anvil the furthest. Hearing that some students were throwing pumpkins to raise funds for their school, the men's anvils became pumpkins and punkin chunkin was born.
That year only three teams competed and a mere handful of onlookers watched. Bill Thompson and Trey Melson won with a throw of 128 feet, 2 inches using a machine made with garage door springs.
Since then the competition has grown massively and thousands of people turn up to watch nearly 100 teams compete to throw pumpkins (or punkins as they're known locally) as far as they can.
After 20 years, it's time for Scrapheap to take part - but under Scrapheap-style rules. So that meant just a couple of days' construction time on the heap in the UK before shipment of the machine by sea to the US, where there would be a few days' tinkering time.
One heck of a challenge, given that the locals have a whole year to create their machines. But who could rise to it? Only one team came to mind ¿ The Scrapheap All-Stars of course!
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