Peter McEvilley never expected anyone to care about some silly songs he wrote in 2019 for a toy singing pumpkin. But recently, a concerned mother posted to TikTok a warning about a toy singing pumpkin called Jabberin’ Jack that included a song that was oddly… horny.
The mother’s video went viral on TikTok and then later X. However, instead of hand-wringing and concern, most commenters seemed highly amused by the sexy crooning pumpkin with lascivious lyrics such as: “Who wants to be wicked for one night?” and “Come closer, I have a kiss for you, and it tastes like pumpkin pie.”
It gets much more suggestive than that — you have to listen to the song to fully appreciate just how amorous the vocal performance gets. Headphones on:
There’s one particular lyric that commenters have noticed seems to be eyebrow-raisingly sexual: “How would you like to scream all night? I’ll fill you full of fright. I’ll spoil you with my roasted pumpkin seeds.”
He’s pretty sure that the word “my” was added as an ad lib by the singer (who isn’t McEvilley), and says it didn’t appear in the original lyrics, which makes it slightly more tame.
“Can I deny that I understood the double entendre when I wrote it? The answer is no, I can’t,” McEvilley told me.
“I’m not sure who he was supposed to be seducing, but the idea is that behind the villainous facade, there’s a lonely pumpkin who wants to be loved. And what does he have to offer when you think pumpkins, pumpkin pie, and maybe roasted pumpkin seeds?”
George Balanchi, president of Mindscope Products, the company that makes the toy, is aware of the recent controversy. “We hear the concerns parents have raised about one of Jabberin’ Jack’s songs, and we take that feedback seriously. We’re sorry the song has caused discomfort. Our goal is to bring the Halloween spirit into a fun and creative decoration,” he told Business Insider.
The company plans to refresh the toy for 2027, and the sexy, crooning “Wicked for One Night” tune will not be included in the new version.
The origin of the pumpkin songs
McEvilley, who now lives in the Bay Area, had a long career in Los Angeles as a working musician. He was in a touring reggae band, released a few albums under the name Peas that charted on the electronic charts, did other production work, and did soundtracks for film and TV.
One of those gigs came via a friend who was working on a new product that combined sound and a dynamic light display — a pumpkin whose face would change and sing along to preset music, which would become Jabberin’ Jack.
The friend asked McEvilley to write some Jack O’Lantern-themed songs for the project — a mix of spooky songs, traditional, and silly (there’s a robot pumpkin song). McEvilley told me he doesn’t remember how much he was paid, but “a few thousand bucks” sounds about right.
McEvilley recorded rough demos of the songs with his own music and lyrics, but a different singer voiced the final recordings.
He hadn’t thought about those pumpkin songs in years, and was incredibly amused by the recent virality. “I was crying laughing at some of the comments,” he said, although he stressed to me that he never intended these songs to be for little kids.
If it had been made today, it might be AI
He’s frustrated that people assumed the song was AI. “There’ll never be another time where a human can create something and somehow convince people that AI was not involved in some way,” he said.
“It’s crazy sad that creativity, one of the greatest gifts we have as humans, has kind of been taken away in a way,” he said. “When I read those comments, I was like, ‘Wow, that’s so strange that people think that a human didn’t make this.'”
However, he realizes that if this had been made today instead of in 2019, there’s a good chance it would’ve been made with AI. “I don’t think anyone would ever make something like this and go through the trouble of having me write the songs, then go into the studio and record it when they can just have AI do it.”
For musicians like McEvilley, who had relied on this kind of commercial work, AI is now the competition for paying gigs.
“No one is going to make an internet commercial with background music and pay somebody. It used to be they’d pay $7,500 and then $2,500 and then $500. Now they just do something with AI,” he said. “A lot more people have access to inexpensive, really good tools, but it’s going to be way, way, way harder for someone to actually make a living doing it.”
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