We're just a month or so away from the release of MTG The Hobbit, but those tricksy halflings are up to mischief already – the community has cottoned on to there being pumpkins in Magic's version of the Shire, and it's reignited a debate that's sent me down one hell of a rabbit hole.
As often happens with new sets for the best card games, MTG The Hobbit features specially themed cards… including seasonal basic lands that follow a hobbit hole through the year from Spring to snowy Winter. One card has pumpkins in pride of place outside the door for Fall, and that's where our problem begins. You see, pumpkins aren't allowed in Middle-earth. As in, at all – and the Tolkien estate has a history with making damn sure these squashes are forcibly evicted from Lord of the Rings.
In a reddit thread discussing the cards, user PublicOutcome27 points out that "it's really weird to see giant orange pumpkins (Themselves a modern breed from the 60s/70s [...]) in the Shire" before giving a very insightful explanation as to why that blew my mind. Middle-earth is apparently supposed to be prehistoric Europe in a time history forgot (with the Shire being roughly where modern-day Oxford is in England today), so Tolkien was dedicated to making sure it highlighted local flora and fauna you'd find on that continent. Because pumpkins are found in North America, they shouldn't be available here. Sorry, Bilbo Baggins – no Jack-o-Lantern for you.
If you want the seasonal Hobbit basic land cards, you'll need Prerelease Packs, Bundles, and Gift Bundles. These are proving tricky to find, and I'm only seeing the Gift Bundle at Amazon for now.
While MTG seems to have gotten away with this, other developers haven't been so lucky. As originally discussed in a Polygon article, developers who'd worked on Lord of the Rings-related video game projects told stories about how the Tolkien estate came down hard on them for including pumpkins and even tomatoes in their work. Hidden Path Entertainment CEO Jeff Pobst says that his team at the time "had pumpkin patches in the Shire" for a Fellowship of the Ring game from the early 2000s, "and the Tolkien Enterprises people went nuts about it." They then had to pause production while these were removed.
Honestly, it feels like a bit of a weird hill to die on – and Tolkien himself had to backtrack after including New World produce in his work like potatoes, corn, and tobacco. (He suggested that Aragorn's ancestors, the Numenoreans, may have shipped it over.) And as pointed out by Fit-Government8676, "i could be wrong but i dont think there were elves and nazgul in europe either."
What do you think? Would you prefer that pumpkins stay away from Middle-earth, or are you happy for the halflings to invent pumpkin spice lattes a few millennia early?
For recommendations on what to play before MTG The Hobbit arrives, why not try the best board games or the best tabletop RPGs? As for gaming on the go, we're also covering the best travel board games right now.
