In 2022, they nabbed the title of heaviest pumpkin in the UK—an honor, to be sure, but not quite on par with beating the Americans for world pumpkin domination. One might think that decades of near misses would put anyone off the giant pumpkin game for good. Today, it oversees more than 70 officially sanctioned giant pumpkin weigh-off sites from as far away as South Africa, Japan, and Australia. The Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival Contest—the ultimate crown in the giant pumpkin world—first started back in 1974. The exterior of a giant pumpkin is often a foot thick and tough enough you’d need a chainsaw to get through it.