Man Who Lost Leg to Cancer Debuts Creative New Halloween Costume — an Inflatable Tube Man! (Exclusive)

Josh Sundquist tells PEOPLE he believes this is “one of the funniest” Halloween costumes he has ever created

• Josh Sundquist, who lost his leg to cancer when he was 9, is revealing his newest Halloween costume creation exclusively to PEOPLE

• Sundquist is also behind the new Emmy award-winning Apple+ series Best Foot Forward

• The motivational speaker and author feels this year's costume is "one of the funniest" he's ever done

Josh Sundquist is back with another creative costume for Halloween, and he hopes it will be something that makes everybody smile.

The motivational speaker and author exclusively tells PEOPLE that this year, he'll be dressing up as an inflatable tube man, a costume he has longed to do “for many, many years.”

Sundquist, who lost his leg to cancer at age 9, believes this is “one of the funniest” costumes he has created. “This year, I was just kind of thinking … people just really need funny things, particularly at this time of year, every four years,” Sundquist says. “So I just thought, this is hilarious.”

Each year, with each costume, Sundquist’s goal is to “make it visually clear that it would be impossible for a two-legged person to wear the costume” he created.

The process typically begins in May, or about six months before Halloween. In the past, Sundquist has dressed up as a firefighter sliding down a pole, Tigger from Winnie the Pooh, the leg lamp from A Christmas Story, the Pixar lamp and more.

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Sundquist has been working with the same costume maker, Calen Hoffman, since 2020. The two have only met in person one time, but have found a creative way for Hoffman to design a costume specifically tailored to Sundquist.

“He has a duct tape mannequin of my body,” says Sundquist, who created the mold by wrapping his body in duct tape, cutting it off, and mailing it to Hoffman, who then “reconstructed it” on his own.

After drawing up plans, Sundquist will typically send them off to Hoffman by June. The two then trade ideas for the next few months, and the costume is usually delivered by the end of the summer so Sundquist can practice wearing it.

“I feel like I need to kind of learn how the character moves, so I like to have a couple of weeks before Halloween in which to do it,” he tells PEOPLE.

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It has been more than a decade since Sundquist first went viral with two of his costumes, a partially eaten gingerbread man from 2010 and the leg lamp costume from 2012.

As a stand-up comedian, Sundquist is aware of how rare it is to come up with a funny concept that is broadly appreciated by the masses. “It's like winning the lottery as a creator,” he says.

Sundquist hopes his costumes are empowering to others with a physical disability, especially amputees. He has similar hopes for the Emmy award-winning Apple+ series Best Foot Forward about his life that features Logan Marmino, “an actor who wears a prosthesis.”

“To have the chance to create a show like this and to hopefully set precedent for more entertainment programming that can be representative of disability, I think is … just a cool legacy to be a part of.”

Related: See the Adorable Dogs in Costumes Who Attended the New York City Halloween Dog Parade

Sundquist is also excited about his new motorized prosthetic knee called Power Knee from the Icelandic company Össur, which allows him to do more than he’s ever been able to do before. He hopes this will encourage other amputees to seek out motorized lower-body prosthetics, which are less common than upper-body prosthetics.

“I could never walk more than about a block without having to rest if I was outside,” the paralympic athlete says. “But once I figured out how to use Power Knee, the first time I took it out, I walked a mile without needing to rest.”

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