Few images from the original Ghostbusters are as iconic as the sight of a kaiju-sized Stay-Puft marshmallow man stomping through the streets of New York. And if Jason Reitman’s long-awaited legacy sequel Ghostbusters: Afterlife is intentionally leaning into the iconography of his dad’s original movies – including the return of the Ecto-1, now being driven by incoming kids played by Mckenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard – that means that Mr. Stay-Puft is coming back too. Or, Stay Pufts, plural, we should clarify – because a new promo video for the movie sees Paul Rudd’s character terrorised by a horde of (here’s the twist) miniature Stay-Pufts. Check it out:
Whether this is an outright clip from the movie or just a promotional video introducing the mini-marshmallow-men is unclear (surely they’d make a killing actually producing those in time for Halloween), but there’s a pleasantly Gremlins-esque sense of humour on display here, with the marauding Stay-Pufts skewering and toasting each other (see the one fully melting onto the grill), turning each other into s’mores, and zooming around on robot vacuums. And Paul Rudd plays along gamely as teacher Mr. Grooberson, expressive as ever as he reacts to the chaos around him. Kudos, too, to the person who decided Rudd should be buying a tub of Baskin Robbins ice cream at the start of the clip – remember people, Baskin Robbins always finds out.
We’ll discover exactly how the Mini-Puts will factor into Ghostbusters: Afterlife when the film finally (we hope) arrives in cinemas on 11 November – fingers crossed it turns out to be a post-Halloween spooky-fun romp that gives us all some much-needed escapism on the other side of the summer. And marketers, if you’re reading this, yes, we would all buy Mini-Puft plushes in our droves. Get on it.