Joseph Toman – who prefers to go by the name "Jurassic Joe" – is a 9-year-old boy living Downtown with his mom, dad and cat. His mom, Kat Toman, is an art teacher, and when he was a baby, she dressed him up like The Calling (the orange sunburst sculpture in O'Donnell Park) and she dressed as the Milwaukee Art Museum.
The next year, she made a costume for herself as a city bus and Joseph, a toddler, was a bus driver.
By the next year, Joseph fully understood his Milwaukee-themed Halloween costumes, and asked his mother to make him a costume of the massive mug atop the Stone Creek Factory, his favorite coffee shop where he and his parents are regulars.
The next few years, he became very specific about what he wanted his mother to make, and he started helping her build them. They went in a family costume as The Hop, The Domes, The Marquette Interchange, Fiserv Forum and Miller Park.
"After the Fiserv Forum two years ago, he decided the following year was going to be his last Milwaukee-themed costume. He wanted to be a 3D map of Milwaukee as his grand finale," says Kat. "As last Halloween got closer, he changed his mind and asked to be Miller Park – with a game going on inside the costume. He told me he wanted to be something Milwaukee-themed indefinitely. I told him I'll help him make any costume he wants, and it's okay to change his mind."
This year, he dressed as the Milwaukee Public Museum.
"The one thing he wanted to change from his last few costumes, though, was to make it easier to run in so he could keep up with his friends while trick-or-treating. He wanted it to be from his shoulders to just above his waist," says Kat. "He also wanted it to open up so you could see the exhibits. He chose which exhibits he wanted, and he had lots of ideas about how to make them. As Nick, my husband, said, 'He gave you specs this year.'"
Joseph helped Kat shop for things for the exhibits and he drew the backgrounds. He made the plesiosaur skeleton, mummy, rattlesnake and rock (with rattlesnake button!) out of clay. He picked out a Lego for the rattlesnake button, and his dad made a shaker for him to shake when people "pushed" the button.
He drew a red dot on the planetarium background to represent the laser pointer and blood and guts on the triceratops.
"He drew a smiley face on the mummy because he wanted it to be less scary, since he thought the dinosaurs might already be scary enough for some people," says Kat.
Joseph wore the costume to the Milwaukee Public Museum trick-or-treat event on Saturday. "Everyone who saw it at the museum loved it," says Kat.
We're already curious what he'll pick for next year!
Molly Snyder started writing and publishing her work at the age 10, when her community newspaper printed her poem, "The Unicorn.” Since then, she's expanded beyond the subject of mythical creatures and written in many different mediums but, nearest and dearest to her heart, thousands of articles for OnMilwaukee.
Molly is a regular contributor to FOX6 News and numerous radio stations as well as the co-host of "Dandelions: A Podcast For Women.” She's received five Milwaukee Press Club Awards, served as the Pfister Narrator and is the Wisconsin State Fair’s Celebrity Cream Puff Eating Champion of 2019.
