Just when you thought your Halloween decorations were on point, this Iowa dad goes and constructs a living, interactive monster door that puts all other front stoops to shame.
Greg Dietzenbach decided he wanted to scare trick-or-treaters this year, so he built an interactive piece that’s part Cookie Monster and part front door. Nicknaming it the “Monst-DOOR,” the wooden contraption comes to purple monster life as kids approach, screaming one-liners like, “Do you like candy? Well, I’m going to eat you!”
The door has animated eyes, and its fuzzy arms and mouth move thanks to Dietzenbach, who turns into a puppeteer when someone knocks or the doorbell rings.
“Don’t knock on this door, it’ll knock you back! This year I wanted to make something to trick the treaters. We’ve been wanting a new front door so I thought I’d make one…with a little twist,” he wrote on Instagram, sharing some videos of his creation on his social media channels.
“I’m going to eat you!” says Monst-DOOR.
“I’ve seen people decorate their doors before in the past, but I wanted mine to come to life,” Dietzenbach told NBC News, saying he started sketching it out before creating a mini prototype of the door “to make sure that everything was going to work.”
He said the door took 10 days and $200 to build — 15 days if you count the conception of the idea. He used real oak paneling and a door knob so it looked as authentic as possible.
And according to an interview with CNN, he uses a line attached to his foot to control the Styrofoam mouth and broomsticks to control the arms. Plus, he voices the purple beast himself!
“As much as I love being able to operate it from behind, I’m not able to see the reactions, so I have to go back and review the video afterwards,” he said, laughing.
Does his name or face look familiar to you? That’s because it’s not the first time he’s gone viral for his love of the Spooky Season. Dietzenbach who works as a creative director for a company that builds museums and corporate environments, has a history of going all out for Halloween.
In 2020, he created a Zoom meeting costume for his daughter that basically broke the internet during the pandemic. The costume included a cutout for his daughter’s head in the middle of the “meeting” and one camera that captured the person giving out the candy. Genius!
“My kids challenge me every year to make a unique costume,” he told The Dad in 2020 about the Zoom costume. “Building a transforming sock robot for my son almost broke my brain so this year I wanted to make it a lot simpler. Due to Covid we didn’t even know if our town would have trick-or-treating this year.”
And in 2019, he created an amazing Rock ‘em Sock ‘em robot for his son, stress on the sock.
Can’t wait to see how kids react to the Monst-DOOR on Halloween, or what this creative dad will get up to next year.
