For some families with small children, though, the combination of sharp knives and wet smooth surfaces was a bit too dangerous.
"We used to carve, but this year we are going with stickers for each of the different parts of the face," said Miriam E. Adams.
The Adams-Edelman family's five pumpkin purchases weighed over 86 pounds and required a red wagon for transportation to the car.
For all of the heavy lifting, though, the purchases came with no assurances that they would last the next six days until they go out with the trash.
"I already had one pumpkin this season, but it got stolen," Kotin said. His was not the only pumpkin snatched in his Cambridge neighborhood, he said, constituting a full-blown crime wave.
"It must have been students at one of those other universities or colleges," Kotin said.