Rotting pumpkins? Toxic FX is making waves

Blake Phillips: Hi, my name is Blake Phillips, I'm the President and CEO of ToxicFX. We're here at our booth at Transworld, I thought it'd be a good idea to show you a little something. We have some of our new products this year. We have our entire Runtkin line. This is one through five, all five versions are here today, available for $65. We also have some new things, our big guys right here. It's just something kind of decorative, we thought it would be cool, another flat decorative guy, they vary in price as well. Then we have our crafts that, basically, we thought it would be a good idea to kind of make this your own canvas, put your own face. Because we make our own little custom faces and everything, we thought that's cool, but thought it'd be a better idea so you can make your own. So, that's why we have these available as well. It was honestly a request. 

Blake Phillips: I pay attention to what people are wanting in particular, and though they love the faces, they feel like there's not enough of an option. I mean, of course. You can get the stuff from Michaels and Hobby Lobby and everything, but they sell out, and they sell out very quickly. So, I want to be at least able to give them that option. So, of course, you have orange and then white. That's the new thing that we have this year, we have different coloration options for you. 

Blake Phillips: They're foam and latex, so they have a very thin latex coat, and then they are like a semi-rigid polyfoam. The reason why it's thin is once you break that layer, you can really go into different depths of the craft pumpkin and show a really neat sculpture. So, it's for those artists that already have the different style pumpkins that they carve into, you can do the same thing with this, and it lasts forever. It's not like one of the real pumpkins that you carve and then it rots in two days and you have to redo it. There were some people that actually mentioned that today, this thing lasts forever. 

Blake Phillips: So, we put a weatherproof sealant on the outside, and then on the inside. What you can do with that option is it's actually a closed-cell foam. So, when you set it outside in the weather and everything it doesn't really affect it at all. Initially, I thought it would. That's just kind of weird, but it really doesn't. I know people that have left them out for like a year and a half and they look brand new.

Philip Hernandez: It's so different than the one you get at stores because it looks more like a haunted house pumpkin.

Blake Phillips: I wanted to kind of give it a little bit of a weathered look. I don't want it to look completely brand new, because it's never going to look that way when you're outside. It might look brand new for maybe a day or two and then it's going to start looking like this. So, I figured if I could already get that tackled, then you're in good shape.

Philip Hernandez: Yeah, and tell us about the white. So, you went white because of variety, or that was another request?

Blake Phillips: Yeah, it was another request. So, there are obviously two different styles of paint jobs. We have the green wash on our white guys, and the brown wash on our white guys. I like this one better because it looks a little bit more detailed, but they were both requested. They wanted them white, they wanted them with a green wash, they wanted them white with a brown wash. So, I just listen to what people want, what people need in their haunt, their retail store, theme park, or whatever it is. I'm constantly listening. That's why we have this here today.