BLOOMINGDALE — Just a germ of an idea two years ago, an inflatable Christmas display at a Macopin Road home has grown truly huge.

Now a 30-foot Santa, the Abominable Snowman and, the most recent addition, a Heat Miser are stopping traffic along the section of Macopin between Camp Vacamas and Star Lake as drivers scramble to take a picture of the larger-than-a-house icons of Christmas specials past.

There's also a Grinch peering over his roof, but Kevin Malinski, aka Kevin the Painter, said it was too small, and he placed it on his roof to make it more impressive.

Malinski said he loves doing something for kids. He came up with the idea of a yard full of inflatables after seeing 15-foot ones for sale in a Hammacher Schlemmer catalog.

He figured he could go one better, and found a Chinese company to create the figures. The first experiment, a 22-foot Santa, wasn't commercial-grade plastic and didn't last long last year.

His next ones drew inspiration from 1970s holiday children's TV shows.

"I loved the movies growing up, so one day I said: Let's start doing this," Malinski said.

So he plucked popular characters from Christmas specials "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "The Year Without a Santa Claus," stop-motion animation classics made by the now-defunct Rankin/Bass Productions.

The new, larger figures went up this year. They cost around $1,000 each, although the next figure he's ordered, Yukon Cornelius from "Rudolph," will cost about 20 percent more because of all the detail.

Malinski said the display has caused quite a stir.

"People are always slowing down to take pictures," he said.

As if on cue Monday, a motorist stopped, pulled out her iPhone and snapped a shot.

"Merry Christmas," she called out.

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The inflatables also have attracted a fair amount of attention on social media.

Kevin's daughter Sydney said word of her dad's handiwork has made her somewhat famous at Butler High School.

"Kids are like 'Oh, wait, that's your house?' " She said. "That's my dad; he's kind of insane."

Kevin said setting up the characters takes some doing. Because they can be tossed about by wind, he uses lots of wood, 2-by-4s and 4-by-4s, to create a frame to stabilize the figures.

He's not done yet. Besides Yukon Cornelius, there's a Herbie the Dentist and a Charlie in the Box, both from "Rudolph," in the works, as well as a masked serial killer Michael Myers for a Halloween display. He added that he's offering versions of them for sale on eBay.

Email: fagan@northjersey.com