This is one of those skins that leaked a few days before actually hitting the game, but it’s unsettling to see it all the same. Fortnite: Battle Royale just released the Tomatohead skin into the game, letting players roleplay as the deranged mascot for longstanding pizza restaurant point of interest Tomato Town, located in northeast quadrant of the map. Tomatohead’s name really says it all: he’s got a giant, red tomato where his head should be with a green theme throughout the rest of the body: check it out below.
Tomotahoead costs 1,500 V-Bucks. If you want to complete the set, it will cost you an extra 800 for a googly-eyed glider and another 800 for the axearoni pickaxe, which is shaped like a pizza slicer.
There is one big question surrounding this skin: namely, how will headshots work? Headshots are a pretty important part of combat in Fortnite, and being on the receiving end of one will take you down in a hurry. Using this skin would seem to dramatically increase the chances of that happening, for obvious reasons — it’s basically like wearing a bonus-sized target on your head. But it’s unclear whether or not the big tomato effects hit detection, increasing the area for a headshot, or if it’s aesthetic only. I’d assume aesthetic only, but that makes it harder for enemies to tell where your “real” head is. Either way, it’s somewhat curious.
It’s still a fun skin, however. I think what unsettles me the most about it is not the tomato itself — though that’s plenty strange — but the fact that it’s stuck on top of the muscular body of your average Fortnite model, complete with combat boots and battle-worn clothing. There’s a distinctly serial killer vibe to the whole thing, both due to the pasted-on grin and the lethal capability implied by the rest of the outfit.
There are bound to be a bunch more cosmetics dropping in Fortnite soon with the imminent arrival of Season 4, but things like this remind you just how flexible this aesthetic is. We can have bunny rabbits, we can have John Wick, we can have a bizarre, murderous pizza mascot. That sort of flexibility is helpful for any game that makes its living selling cosmetics.
