I wanted to make this costume as soon as I heard the Cold Slither song “These Fluffies are Fatal.” Unfortunately for the SDCC crowd, I was already too busy putting together the band’s costumes. I promised the Hasbro crew, however, that if we got to play again, I would definitely trot out this silly character from the G.I. Joe cartoon for the show. And I did.
With no budget to speak of beyond my own wallet, I was limited. But, having been in Ghoul and always working without a budget, I was resourceful!
Playing in a costume band already, I am well familiar with how to bring some big monsters to life. Usually, they’re a bit messier than the design of the Fatal Fluffy, though.
The easiest part was his gigantic boot-like feet and furry forearms and claws. In Ghoul, we had a gigantic zombified biker character that used four such pieces to bulk up in a similar way. The character was retired in 2016, but we still had the boots and gauntlets in storage so I modified those.
The boots were originally built with foam over some rubber boots. It was a simple matter of reshaping the boots by cutting into them to make them more like cloven hooves and putting latex and cheese cloth patches over them. The gauntlets were cast from a sculpt by Sean from Ghoul. I had to cut some molded spikes off of them and I filled in the fingers with moldable foam to make them three fingered and a littler more monster-y.
The “skin” parts were painted silver and I cut out fur fabric and used contact cement to attach that to the boots and gauntlets. The fur fabric is a bit difficult to work with, as it has to be cut from the back and can only be used in one direction, the direction of the fur. You don’t want cut edges showing up to blow the illusion of grown fur.
Because of his sleek design and muscular build, I couldn’t just make a big, bulky monster suit with buboes and warts all over. But he still needed to look bigger than life when someone put on the suit. The solution was two-fold. First, I built a muscle suit, cutting the foam out of muscles and using contact cement and a little bit of sewing to attach the muscles to a jump suit.
The muscle jump suit was then squeezed inside a silver lamé jumpsuit. The sleeves were sewn together to keep it in place and I (cheaply) decorated it with a Sharpie permanent marker to emulate the jointed plates on the Fatal Fluffy. I also sewed together a fur tee shirt that would act as his hair mane and further bulk the character up.
The last thing added to the body of the costume was a fur tee shirt I sewed together that would act as his hair chest pelt and further bulk the character up.
The head was the most difficult part… not so much in the actual build but I had to think long and hard about how I was going to raise the height of the character, make a monster face, make sure the wearer could see, and have it look cool. I originally wanted to sculpt and mold something, but what I ended up finding that worked perfectly was an old lacrosse helmet. I cut off some of the face guard wires and used the rest as a base for the moldable foam I would shape the face out of.
The teeth are literally just and old plastic food package cut into teeth. That’s where my eyes would go and to be honest the visibility is not that bad. The horns were shaped as a separate piece out of moldable foam, wire, and foil. It would be detachable so it could be protected in transit. All this was covered with latex and then airbrushed. Then I got a couple of “old witch” wigs and used the rest of my grey fur fabric to fill out his mane.
On stage, I think the results were great. Everyone, even my bandmates who didn’t know I was building this in my spare time, were surprised and delighted that this ridiculous character came to life on stage.
Of course, two minutes on stage wasn’t enough, so I wore costume myself to New York Comic Con the next day to walk around in. Holy balls, it was hot!! I did about 2 hours in the costume and sweat was pouring down my face by the end. But it was worth it to menace the Hasbro employees and threaten death if they don’t give us a Fatal Fluffy Classified Figure.
Until Cold Slither makes another appearance 🤞 the Fatal Fluffy will remain in storage. At least AFTER I got to repurpose it one more time. I showed the costume to a friend and she was like “OMG that’s basically a Krampus!! You should enter that costume in the Krampus pageant that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence put on!” I thought this was a delightful idea. The Fatal Fluffy costume just needed a few… modifications.
And that’s how I ended up doing my first ever drag performance, dancing to Type O Negative’s “Red Water (Christmas Mourning).” I didn’t win the pageant, but I got a lot of cheers whipping plastic wine bottles off the stage and the event raised over 4k for charity! Fuggin Sweet!!