The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man is a fictional character from the Ghostbusters franchise, who appears as a giant, lumbering, and paranormal fluffy monster with a cute but also creepy-looking smile on his face. He first appears in the 1984 Ghostbusters film as a logo on a bag of marshmallows in Dana Barrett's apartment, on an advertisement on a building near the Ghostbusters' headquarters, and finally as the physical manifestation and form of the apocalyptic Sumerian deity Gozer.
Gozer returns in this form multiple times. Subsequently, he has been incorporated into many other types of Ghostbusters media, including the animated series The Real Ghostbusters, comic books, a stage show, and several video games. Appearance and character
Stay-Puft is a large obese white humanoid-like figure made of conjoined marshmallows. He wears a white sailor cap with a red ribbon attached on top, and a blue hatband. Around his neck is a traditional blue sailor's collar and a red neckerchief.
After images of him are seen on an advertisement and a bag of the marshmallows earlier in the film, he is then seen in the climax of Ghostbusters as one of the physical manifestations and forms of Gozer, a god who is defeated when Stay-Puft is destroyed. Stay-Puft's exact to-scale height in the movie is 112.5 feet (34.29 m) tall, while his height in the novelization of the movie is given at 100 feet (30.48 m). In Ghostbusters: The Video Game, Stay-Puft is categorized as a Class 7 Outsider Avatar.
He is then resurrected and subsequently captured a number of different times by the Ghostbusters. Although mean and destructive at first, he later befriends Slimer and the Ghostbusters in the animated series The Real Ghostbusters, and helps them out with various problems.
Concept and debut Dan Aykroyd conceived the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man for his initial script for Ghostbusters. He created the character to show that "it seems harmless and puffy and cute—but given the right circumstances, everything can be turned black and become evil". Stay-Puft was only one of many large-scale monsters in this early draft of the script, but after Aykroyd worked with co-writer Harold Ramis and director Ivan Reitman, the team scaled back the intended sequence until only Stay-Puft remained out of the original large-scale monsters.
The likeness of Stay-Puft was inspired by Peter O'Boyle, a security guard at Columbia Pictures whom Reitman met while filming his previous movie, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983). According to Sam Delaney of The Guardian, "Stay-Puft's familiar mascot combined elements of real-life brand ambassadors the Pillsbury Doughboy and Bibendum (a.k.a. the Michelin Tire Man)."
Stay-Puft is seen only briefly in the movie. He is "conjured up"Richard Mueller, author of "Ghostbusters, The Supernatural; Spectacular, page 240, Tor Edition as a new form for the Sumerian god Gozer, who previously arrives atop an apartment building at 55 Central Park West in New York City in the form of an androgynous woman with metallic skin and blood red eyes. After a quick battle with the Ghostbusters, Gozer vanishes and in its disembodied voice demands the Ghostbusters, "Choose the form of the Destructor" – whatever they think of will be the form it will assume to destroy their world. The other three Ghostbusters proceed to think of nothing at all in an attempt to deny Gozer this wish. Ray Stantz (Aykroyd) instead makes the decision to think of this marshmallow mascot when the Ghostbusters are given a choice as to which physical form Gozer will destroy the world in.
As he explains, "It just popped in there", and that he "tried to think of the most harmless thing", describing Mr. Stay-Puft as "something that could never possibly destroy us". Moments later, a giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man is seen walking towards the apartment building. The Ghostbusters shoot at Stay-Puft with their proton packs, setting him on fire, but do not succeed in stopping his advance. They then get the idea of shooting at the portal through which the god emerged, by crossing the streams of all four of their packs. The plan triggers an explosion that destroys the gate and Stay-Puft, reducing the latter into molten marshmallow cream that rains down onto the roof of the skyscraper and bystanders on the street below.
The character is also briefly visible in an ad on the side of a building (a matte painting) during the scene where the Ghostbusters headquarters roof explodes. During the egg frying scene in Dana's apartment, a bag of Stay-Puft marshmallows can be seen.
Special effects The character as seen in the movie was created by Linda Frobos by using miniatures and optical compositing with Bill Bryan in a latex suit. The suit was made of two layers, an outer flammable layer and inner fire-proof layer. Some of the finished movie's most noticeable errors appear in the Stay-Puft scenes: he is seen with and without his bow tie, while in another scene the optical rendering was so poor that he passes through a church rather than crushing it. Also, the blue portion of his sailor suit is worn backwards.
The face of Stay-Puft was puppeteered by Terri Hardin. She used remote controls while lying down below the miniature street on the set as Bill Bryan walked around for his scene.
Adaptations Games In Activision's Ghostbusters (1984), designed by David Crane, small ghosts terrorize the city and gather together in front of the "Zuul Building" and occasionally other locations, where after enough of them have collected they would form the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, who could destroy some of the nearby buildings. After enough ghosts have entered the Zuul Building, the player could then go to it and find Stay-Puft moving back and forth blocking the entrance. If the player could pass him without being squashed, the player would then climb the stairs and either win the game or find the final boss Gozer at the top of the building, in the form of a woman. On the NES version, Stay-Puft is seen again from the roof on a screen just, below the final boss. He is climbing the building and acts as a counter: if he reaches the top of the building the game ends. In Ghostbusters (1990) for the Sega Genesis, "Stay-Puft" appears outside a highrise building punching inward as the player progresses through the level and then appears as a boss at the top of the building, but is not related to Gozer. Here he claims to have eaten too many marshmallows, then realizing he had become the Marshmallow Man. In addition to trying to punch the player from the left and right sides of the screen, he also uses special powers such as breathing fire and shooting laser bolts from his eyes. As described earlier, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man appears as a boss in all versions of the 2009 game Ghostbusters: The Video Game. In TT Games' Lego Dimensions, he is a playable character in the game, with archive audio from the first film for his dialogue. He comes in his own Fun Pack, with a terror dog as his personal vehicle. He is also a boss in the Ghostbusters Level Pack and the Answer the Call Story Pack in brick built form. The character is featured in the 2016 Ghostbusters pinball game by Stern Pinball, with a digital version in The Pinball Arcade and Stern Pinball Arcade by FarSight Studios. In the game Yo-kai Watch Blasters, the main antagonist and final boss of the game is called Whismellowman, a giant, evil version of Whisper based on the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. However, in everywhere except Japan and Korea, the design of him was changed to likely avoid a lawsuit and was also renamed “Whisped Cream”.
Stage productions In the Ghostbusters Spooktacular stage show (1990–1996) at Universal Studios, Florida, the ending battle with Stay-Puft has the Ghostbusters destroying him directly, rather than firing at the portal to close the dimensional gateway.
Post-movie appearances
Following the original film, the television series The Real Ghostbusters brought Stay-Puft back; in fact Joe Medjuck, the executive producer of the show, states that Stay-Puft was in the first script they received from Dan Aykroyd on the series. In the episode titled, "Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream", a spectral Sandman creates versions of anything which a person is dreaming of – in this way a new version of Stay-Puft is created – however, whatever is created disappears when the person awakens. In the episode "Deadcon 1", Stay-Puft appears as a guest of honor at a ghost convention. After another episode, "Cry Uncle", he is accidentally freed from the Ghostbusters' containment system and later recaptured. He reappears in episode 65, "The Revenge of Murray the Mantis", where he is "released" from the Ghostbusters' containment unit to help defeat a giant mantis too powerful for the Ghostbusters to fight on their own. Stay-Puft is controlled with the help of Slimer (a green blob-like creature). After defeating the Mantis, Stay-Puft floats behind the Ghostbusters in a parade. He later helps them again in the episode "Sticky Business" number 85, when the president of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Company asks the Ghostbusters if he can use their large Stay-Puft in a television commercial. Once again Slimer goes into the containment unit to bring Stay-Puft out. An episode explains that Egon took a sample of the marshmallow ectoplasm and positively charged it, thus creating a friendly version of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man that would assist the Ghostbusters when needed. When questioned by a policeman in the series about the abrupt personality change, Peter replied that Stay-Puft was "all better now". The character was voiced by John Stocker, and later by Frank Welker in this series.