By Nick Venable | 7 years ago

When you consider that the Ghostbusters franchise has existed for almost 30 years now, it seems somewhat dated. I mean, 1984 is completely different from 2013 in almost every conceivable way. (aside from meta references to George Orwell and the NSA.) But this group of innovative geeks, said with all due respect, have brought this beloved clan back to the Victorian era with their steampunk Ghostbusters costumes, seen at this year’s GenCon gaming convention in Indiana. They ain’t afraid of no ghosts, nor power outages.

Wisely not trying to look like the original Ghostbusters themselves, as whoever wore blackface for Winston would have earned a few evil eyes, this group manages to rock out all of the equipment with absolute perfection. The clock dial meters and woods ‘n’ metal aesthetic for the proton packs makes them look like old-timey telephones. Only that actually is an old-timey telephone on faux-Janine’s hip. The one guy has a giant vacuum-looking thing on his back that I’m just going to assume is a portable containment unit/trap wrapped up in one.

But as cool as everyone else looks — and I think it’s absolutely amazing that someone is dressed as Gozer — nothing can possibly top that monocled Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, who looks like Mr. Peanut after he completely gave up caring about his health. And since sailors aren’t the most prevalent characters in steampunk, gone is the sailor’s collar and on goes the fashionable vest. He looks like every other story he’d tell would be in the vein of, “In my day, we had to walk fifteen miles through crowded New York streets just to find the Ghostbusters.”

While there’s no sign of Slimer, we’ll just assume he’s at the buffet table. Take a look at a couple more pictures below.

The steampunk way of life looks to the past for inspiration, but artist and designer Jerry Bennett looked back even farther, and to a galaxy far, far away. Taking one of the most used phrases from the Star Wars universe, he seamlessly integrated Admiral Ackbar into the Ghostbusters‘ world for an snazzy new T-shirt design.

What’s even more amazing than the shirt itself is that, for the rest of the day, you can purchase it for just ten bucks — five dollars for each sci-fi reference. After today, the price will go up one dollar each day, so you can still nab it on the cheap for the next few days.

Incidentally, you guys remember that story we ran on a possible Ghostbusters LEGO set? Well, it exceeded the amount of votes it needed, so now it’s in the hands of the toy company to decide whether their 30th anniversary will include a lot of colorful blocks.