When I was a kid, in my family, we made our Hallowe'en costumes. That was partly because most of the costumes for sale (other than the really, really high-end ones) were pretty pitiful - sort of a vinyl "apron" and a plastic mask of Casper or Batman or whatever.

Even in high school - the whole point was to make the costume and be creative. (I remember one year one guy put on a red tracksuit stuffed with newspaper to make it lumpy - he was a hemerhhoid - and another guy dressed as a tube of Preparation H. Tasteless, maybe, but no more tasteless than Bill Maher dressing up as Steve Irwin with a stingray barb in his chest).

My most memorable costume was the year I went as Opus the penguin - I found an old tux at a rummage sale that fit me, and I made "feet" out of felt and built a "head" with eyes and a beak on a baseball cap.

So I take a particular joy in seeing good homemade costumes - ones that are clever and make me laugh, that have something unexpected about them. (I didn't really see any costumes like that last night, sadly).

But: here is a video (Warning: loud music.) of a guy who made a Transformers costume. Yes, Transformers - the 80s cartoon about robot-cars that would transform between both morphologies.

The guy's costume transforms. It makes me laugh with delight that someone took the time to figure this out and do it. (He also added a - well, not factory-standard for Transformers - decal to the front of the car.)

(I'm sorry, folks on dialup - it is a video and there's no good way to show its transforming awesomeness other than in a video).