"Ghostbusters" may have come out two years before he was born, but Tyler Reid remembers obsessively watching the New York sci-fi comedy in his formative years -- resulting in the 24-year-old building his very own Stay Puft Marshmallow Man for Halloween this year.

"I originally thought of the costume back in February while brainstorming ideas for a bigger and better Halloween costume than last year's," he said. "When everything's said and done, this bad boy will stand 13 feet tall and about 6 feet wide."

During the day, Reid works as a mechanical engineer for a dental company. ("It's a fun job and it's always neat to see your designs in people's mouths, even though they're usually causing them pain," he says.)

And whatever extra cash the fanboy rounds up designing orthodontic brackets he puts toward the Mr. Stay Puft project, which has become much more involved and expensive than he had planned.

Keep reading to learn how Reid plans to build the anthropomorphic confection.

Reid is using a method similar to what propmaker Volpin did with his Big Daddy costume, which involves constructing a positive foam mold, hard coating, and then hollowing out the foam, leaving only the hard shell.

The foam, a combination of extruded polystyrene and expanding foam, isn't cheap -- it cost about Reid $150 in materials for the torso alone.

The total cost is currently lingering in the $600–$800 range. But no worries there -- it's not like Reid has a lady to spend that extra moolah on.

"I'm finding that guys who build costumes in their backyard don't usually have girlfriends," Reid admitted. "I'm lucky to have the space to store everything, but I'll have to cut the torso in half to get it out the barn doors."