100 t220,000 lb
The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man weighs about 100 tonnes (roughly 220,000 lb) by our estimate. Ghostbusters never gives an official weight. We scaled a person up to his 30 m (100 ft) height and made him of marshmallow, a quarter as dense as water. Estimates that model his much rounder body go as high as 2,000 tonnes.
| James Hind’s estimate (MEL Magazine)About 4,300 m³ built from spheroids and cylinders, at 0.5 g/cm³ | 2,130 t4,700,000 lb |
|---|---|
| Gizmodo’s estimateA 112.5 ft cylinder a third as wide as tall, at 0.5 g/cm³ | 1,760 t3,870,000 lb |
| Our method at the film’s 112.5 ftA scaled-up person, 34.3 m tall, at 0.25 g/cm³ | 150 t331,000 lb |
| Our estimateA scaled-up person, 30 m tall, at 0.25 g/cm³ | 100 t220,000 lb |
The films give a height but never a weight. According to the book Making Ghostbusters, one part of the crew wanted him 100 ft tall and another 125 ft, so director Ivan Reitman settled it at 112.5 ft (34.3 m). The novelization says 100 ft (30.5 m). We used a round 30 m.
A 1.75 m, 75 kg adult takes up about 0.075 m³, since people are roughly as dense as water. 30 m is about 17 times taller, and weight grows with the cube of height: 17.1 × 17.1 × 17.1 is about 5,000. That gives around 380 m³, which we rounded up to 400 m³ for his pudgy build. Store marshmallow is mostly air, whipped to about 0.2 to 0.3 g/cm³, so we took 250 kg per m³. 400 × 250 kg is 100 tonnes.
Scale the same body to the film’s 112.5 ft and it comes to about 150 t. Denser marshmallow pushes it up too: a 2024 lab study measured 0.35 to 0.44 g/cm³, which would make our 400 m³ weigh 140 to 175 t.
In 2014 Gizmodo treated him as a 112.5 ft cylinder a third as wide as he is tall, filled with marshmallow at 0.5 g/cm³, and got 3.87 million lb (about 1,750 t). In 2021 Nottingham Trent University mathematician James Hind built him for MEL Magazine out of spheroids and cylinders (head, torso, arms, fingers, legs) and found 151,772 cubic feet of marshmallow, about 4,300 m³. At the same density that is just over 4.7 million lb (about 2,130 t).
Two things make the difference. They used marshmallow twice as dense as ours, and their volumes are 9 to 11 times our 400 m³, because Stay Puft is far rounder than a scaled-up person, with a huge head and a barrel of a body. Their shapes are probably closer to what you see on screen, so treat our 100 t as the light end. With our lighter marshmallow, their volumes would weigh roughly 900 to 1,100 tonnes.
On set, Stay Puft was effects artist Bill Bryan in a foam suit, stomping through a miniature of Central Park West. The suits stood about 6 to 6.5 ft tall, and Bryan, at 5 ft 8 in, looked out through the mouth. That puts the miniatures at roughly 1:18 scale. The crew made 3 hero suits and 18 for the burning shots, at $20,000 to $35,000 each, and filmed at three times normal speed to make him move like something heavy.
The marshmallow that rains down at the end was shaving cream. William Atherton, who played Walter Peck, was told his load weighed about 100 lb, and he asked for about 25 lb to be taken out after it knocked a stuntman flat. Ghostbusters: Afterlife added the Mini-Pufts, tiny marshmallow men about 3.5 in (9 cm) tall that crawl out of bags of Stay Puft marshmallows.
112.5 feet (34.3 m), Ivan Reitman’s compromise between the 100 ft and 125 ft versions the crew argued over. The novelization says 100 ft, and an early 1983 script draft made him 300 ft.
About 220,000 lb by our estimate, which treats him as a scaled-up person made of light store marshmallow. Estimates that model his rounder shape with denser marshmallow land between 3.9 and 4.7 million lb.
No. The production settled on his height, but no film, novelization or guide gives a weight. Every number, including ours, is a fan or press estimate.
James Hind’s volume calculation for MEL Magazine works out to about 297 million standard marshmallows, enough for the same number of s’mores.
About 3.5 inches (9 cm) tall, roughly the size of a real marshmallow. They first appear in Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), hatching from bags of Stay Puft marshmallows in a Walmart.
Last checked October 2, 2026.
