Home Depot’s 12-foot-tall skeleton decoration first took social media by storm. Now it’s taking over front lawns for the holiday season. Back in 2020, when the big-boned decoration first took to TikTok, the $299 lawn item gave the company its “most successful Halloween event” of the year, chief operating officer Ted Decker told CNBC. The skeleton proved to be a hot item, selling out in numerous stores.
Even now, two years later, the skeleton can be hard to come by during the holiday season. But while the decoration is designed for Halloween, owners have begun using it for other holidays as well.
Social media-lovers have been buying up the 12-foot lawn ornaments in droves to decorate for Christmas. University of Wyoming sociology professor Jenni Tabler offered CNN some insight on the trend.
“I think for me as a sociologist, I find it very heartening that we can all rally over some of the small joys in life,” she told CNN. “And the enormous skeleton is one of those fascinating small joys.”
“Home Depot’s singular positive mark on American society is thanks to the unknown hero on some product committee who was like ‘the people don’t know what they want, we will show them’ and then gifted us the 12 ft tall skeleton,” she added on Twitter. “Happy enormous skeleton season to all who celebrate.”
Lance Allen is responsible for the creation of Home Depot’s now famous skeleton prop. According to Home Depot, its design began at a trade show back in 2019. After drawing inspiration from a massive skeleton torso featured at the show, Allen and his team were inspired.
“Once we got back to the office, we started to collaborate,” Allen told Home Depot. “Originally, we were going to target 10 feet, but decided to shoot for the stars and design it at 12-foot.”
In 2021, Allen debuted his new pumpkin skeleton design.
“This year’s 12-Foot Inferno Pumpkin Skeleton is the king of our Rotten Patch collection, influenced by Midwest farms with a haunted twist,” he said in 2021. “What’s great about the screens is that we can fully program whatever image or scene we want on them. That’s what gives Skelly his realistic blue eyes.”
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