Pumpkin bomb replica: Cast from production prop, or recast fan sculpt?

[PhantomForge]

Hello everyone!

I was hoping someone could help me identify/confirm the origin of this prop replica.

This is something I've been meaning to try to learn more about for years but never got around to it— YEARS ago when I was dumb and hardly did any backtracking/research into what I was buying before I bought it, I got this Spider-Man 3 pumpkin bomb off, thinking it was a 3d print, fan-made replica, something to that effect:

(my photos of what it looks like today after a little bit of work done on it, not what it looked like when I originally got it, but not too far off from what it looked like either)
After I got it and noticed the obvious seam-lines, it sort of hit me that this might be a RECAST and I started to get worried. I did a quick search around and didn't really find any other replicas like it, and started to feel better but I was still skeptical. So, I shot the seller a quick message and asked where it came from, asking if it was a fan sculpt, if they made it, if they were just reselling it, and they told me:

"I actually bought a cast that was made for the production many years ago. This is a copy of that cast. I can't remember the person I bought it from but I haven't seen any like it floating around so I'm quite confident it wasn't fanmade. I was told the prop I bought was made for the film but not painted nor used for it ultimately."

Now, "I can't remember the person I bought it from" was a bit of a red flag, but to be fair... I couldn't remember who I bought this from without the emails I archived for the purpose of fact checking. If I didn't do that, I honestly wouldn't be able to recall who I got it from, just that I got it from ebay. So while it was sketchy then, it sort of feels less sketchy now??

I also noticed that it was missing the screws, and the bulbs/points on the top were positioned wrong for Spider-Man 3 (but right for Spider-Man 1) and did some research into different versions of the props used in 3, and found a bunch of examples like this:

https://www.yourprops.com/Pumpkin-Bomb-original-movie-prop-Spider-Man-3-2007-YP59285.html

There were a bunch of solid resin pumpkin bombs made for set dressing used for 2 and 3 (molded from the first movies bombs, interestingly enough) which matched up pretty close with what I have here, and looking back at it now I think some of the blemishes even match up, but I'll have to take a second look— but with that I accepted the origin, called it a day and put it on my shelf, meaning to eventually fill the bubbles and sand the seam-lines and paint this thing.

And now that I finally started doing that, years later, I realized I still didn't REALLY know where this came from. Like, did it really have lineage back to the original mold used for the movie? Obviously not screen-used, but did the original casting come from the same mold? Things added up with what the seller told me, and it seemed to match the screen used set-dressing props I've seen float around the internet, but does anyone know if there was a run of props this might have been cast from, or does this look like it was cast from the real deal? Or from a casting of the real deal? Or a casting of a casting of a casting of the real deal?

Thanks for your time!

 

[TheNickFox]

Ooh this is interesting. I’ll need to dig into my reference folder when I get home to compare, but high level one thing that’s interesting to me is that the knurling is the right width to be from SM1. (Don’t ask why I know the scale of the knurling offhand haha)

If it does have lineage it would be at least 2nd or 3rd generation since the bombs were constructed in 4 parts around a central sphere and a production made 2nd generation is believed to have been made for solid stunt pumpkins.

Any other info you have beyond this? The diameter alone could probably tell us what generation it is if it has lineage.

I love a good mystery!

 

[PhantomForge]

Ooh this is interesting. I’ll need to dig into my reference folder when I get home to compare, but high level one thing that’s interesting to me is that the knurling is the right width to be from SM1. (Don’t ask why I know the scale of the knurling offhand haha)

If it does have lineage it would be at least 2nd or 3rd generation since the bombs were constructed in 4 parts around a central sphere and a production made 2nd generation is believed to have been made for solid stunt pumpkins.

Any other info you have beyond this? The diameter alone could probably tell us what generation it is if it has lineage.

I love a good mystery!

The diameter is roughly 8.8 cm EDIT: 7.9 (though that was taken digitally, I can take some more physical measurements once I find my outside caliper measuring tool), and for reference the cubes on that mat are half an inch each if you wanted to try some measurements yourself in photoshop or some other such program, but otherwise let me know if there's any other measurements you want me to take by hand!

Here's some more photos, if it helps.

Yeah, I actually have a suspicion they used castings of the stunt bombs from SM1 for the goblin lair scenes in 2 and 3 since the set-dressed props positioning of the LEDs matches SM1, but not the hero prop/3D model in SM3.

I reached back out to the seller to ask about them, but they told me pretty much the same thing, that the most they knew about it was that they had cast it from a prop made for production. They stopped selling them around when I bought this one since they couldn't really market it due to copyright infringement issues that ebay got onto their case about. They wished me luck and referred me to some good STLs they saw a few other sellers on Etsy selling if I was interested in buying more pumpkin bombs.

 

[PhantomForge]

Ooh this is interesting. I’ll need to dig into my reference folder when I get home to compare, but high level one thing that’s interesting to me is that the knurling is the right width to be from SM1. (Don’t ask why I know the scale of the knurling offhand haha)

If it does have lineage it would be at least 2nd or 3rd generation since the bombs were constructed in 4 parts around a central sphere and a production made 2nd generation is believed to have been made for solid stunt pumpkins.

Any other info you have beyond this? The diameter alone could probably tell us what generation it is if it has lineage.

I love a good mystery!

A correction on the other post, using a vice (I couldn't find my caliper) I got a diameter of about 7.8 cm, not 8.8 cm that I measured digitally before.

Any update based on your reference folder? I'm very curious!