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| “ | Halloween has come! All you lucky kids with Silver Shamrock masks, gather round your TV set. Put on your masks, and watch. All witches, all skeletons, all Jack O'Lanterns, gather round and watch. Watch the magic pumpkin! Watch! | „ |
| ~ The Big Giveaway Commercial's narrator just before the killer "magic pumpkin" flashes on screen. |
The Big Giveaway Commercial is a deadly TV commercial produced by the Silver Shamrock corporation in Halloween III: Season of the Witch. At first appearing to be a normal TV advert, when the "magic pumpkin" flashes onscreen it activates the cursed Halloween Three masks, killing anyone wearing them at the time.
History[]
The Big Giveaway Commercial is a televised advert by Silver Shamrock Novelties, to be shown at 9pm on Halloween 1982 during a horror movie marathon all across America. The commercial seems to be completely normal as it coincides with a "Big Giveaway" by Silver Shamrock and so appears to be promoting their merchandise. However, during the Big Giveaway an image of a pumpkin (the "magic pumpkin") is shown and activates microchips contained in the company's masks, killing anyone unlucky enough to be wearing the masks at the time in a grotesque pagan ritual. The commercial's narrator encourages all children watching to put their masks on just before the magic pumpkin appears to ensure maximum casualties.
The true sinister nature of the Big Giveaway is revealed when Dr. Dan Challis witnesses the Kupfer family being subjected to "market research" at the Silver Shamrock factory. Buddy Kupfer Jr., the family's young son, is tricked into wearing one of the cursed masks and shown the Big Giveaway on a nearby TV. The magic pumpkin flashes onscreen, and Buddy Jr.'s head begins to gruesomely decompose and release bugs and snakes, which kill his parents.
Dr. Challis is then captured by Silver Shamrock's CEO Conal Cochran, who forces him to wear one of the masks and ties him to a chair. Dan is then forced to watch a tape of the Big Giveaway in order to kill him, but he breaks free and decides to take revenge on Cochran. He discovers several boxes of Silver Shamrock buttons, which contain the company's deadly microchips, and dumps them over the factory's main control room. Punching buttons in the control room, Dan plays the Big Giveaway commercial and activates the microchips, killing most of the technicians in a shower of chips. This triggers some kind of magical chain reaction from a Celtic monolith that kills Cochran and blows up the factory.
At the film's end, Dan makes it to a filling station just before 9pm and starts desperately calling TV network executives, begging them not to air the Giveaway. Two of the networks heed his advice and pull the commercial before it's too late, but a third ignores him and Dan can only watch helplessly as the magic pumpkin appears, presumably killing hundreds of children across the country.