Mobs which spawn wearing a carved pumpkin or jack o' lantern on Halloween never also spawn with a chestplate, leggings, or boots

Since 24w33a, which fixed MC-182478 - Mob armor generates starting with boots rather than helmet, a zombie that spawns with armor ALWAYS has a helmet. The halloween pumpkin is only applied when the helmet slot is empty, so pumpkins no longer spawn on mobs with armor. I think this is an unintended side effect from the armor fix. Before that bug fix, pumpkin mobs wearing boots, leggings or a chestplate could spawn.

Steps to reproduce:

Change computer date to October 31

Stand in an area with maximum local difficulty (mine was 6.75 when testing)

Spawn a ton of zombies with a repeating command block using “/summon minecraft:zombie”

Check whether any pumpkin mobs have boots, leggings or a chestplate

Expected result:

Some zombies that roll armor but have an empty helmet slot should also get a pumpkin, since the pumpkin only needs an empty helmet slot. This is what happens in versions up to AND including 1.21.1.

Actual result:

On version 26.3, out of 1000+ zombies tested, none of them had boots with an empty helmet slot, and none of the 318 pumpkin zombies had boots, leggings or a chestplate. Armored zombies always had a helmet, so the pumpkin never had a free slot. On 1.21.1 with the same exact setup, pumpkin zombies wearing leggings and or foot armor DO appear. (attached screenshot)

I’m not saying MC-182478 should be reverted, since it restored the intended helmet-first order; but it removed halloween pumpkins from armored mobs, which I do not think was intentional.