How to Make Your Own Dr. Octopus Costume

Since I was hosting a Spider-Man themed party on Halloween, I wanted to make a costume that would fit with my theme. Going as the man of the hour himself would have been too complicated and required a lot of Spandex, so I mulled over what other characters I could go as. Then I had a flash of inspiration: I could make a Dr. Octopus costume out of dryer hose! My general rule of thumb with Halloween costumes is that if they make me laugh, they’re a winner; and this idea was so silly that I knew I had to do it. It was surprisingly easy to put together and used items I already had on hand, so I thought I’d share a brief tutorial in case anyone else wants to give this a go next Halloween!

Here is a closer look at my “Arms”. What I did was cut a length of dryer hose in half to make four arms. I thought this would look better with traditional metallic dryer hose, but we already had this plastic dryer hose left over from a household project so I just used that. You’ll need wire clippers to cut the hose in half.

Next, we bent two coathangers into a straight line and strung them through the hose.

By bending the ends, I could then tuck it inside the dryer hose to stay put.

The final step was to cut four “Claw” shapes out of cardboard and cover them with black electrical tape. I wanted to use silver duct tape, but we didn’t have any, so once again I improvised! Once the claws were finished, I just taped them onto the coathanger as shown above.

Once the claws were in place, I crossed both arms over each other and taped them to a pair of suspenders. I also put tape over any jagged ends jutting out of the dryer hose so I wouldn’t poke myself. That’s it!

For the rest of the costume, I dug out every green piece of clothing that I owned and put it on, since I was fresh out of green jumpsuits. 😉 The green shirt that I’m wearing is actually my Universe Knows hoodie! Many of the pieces I used were actually recycled from my Poison Ivy costume a few years back:

I added a long black coat on top of my outfit to complete it. For accessories, I wore a pair of clear eyeglasses and also donned my brown wig which I clipped up in an attempt to recreate Dr. Octopus’ tragic bowl cut. I also wore green eyeshadow, just because I’m color-coordinated like that!

And that’s it – an improvised Dr. Octopus costume made from things around the house! It’s not the most elaborate or fancy costume, but it was easy to put together and gave me a lot of laughs!

What did you wear for Halloween?