If you feel like you’ve been seeing more and more giant skeletons lately, it’s not just your imagination.
What started as a popular novelty just six years ago has become a Halloween staple and a growing business as major retailers expand their lineups of towering monsters each fall to meet demand.
“Skelly’s debut in 2020 was truly the genesis of…a fully formed structure that people can place in their yards,” said Tyler Pelfrey, brand communications manager for Home Depot.
What followed was a retail arms race of increasingly elaborate creatures, including an undead horse and a zombie velociraptor, with shoppers taking home 85-pound boxes containing bones so large they might not fit in the trunk of a car.
It’s not just the decorations that are being expanded. As shoppers spend more on Halloween, retailers are creating more leeway into the holiday season by stocking seasonal displays earlier and taking up larger sections of stores.
Americans are expected to spend a record $13.5 billion on Halloween this year, up from $8.8 billion in 2019, according to the National Retail Federation. Over this period, spending on ornaments alone increased from $2.6 billion to $4.3 billion.
A giant Halloween decoration arms race
Home Depot released a 12-foot skeleton in 2020 for $299. Nicknamed “Skelly,” the product sold out quickly and fetched about $1,000 on the resale market at the time.
Retailers responded by making more of them and more like them. By 2024, Home Depot has quadrupled its Skelly production from its first year and increased its giant Halloween decoration assortment fivefold, according to Fast Company. Pelfrey said the company has introduced at least one new giant every year since 2021.
Other major retailers have followed suit. Sam’s Club is now selling oversized animatronics that reach 12 feet tall, and Lowe’s is selling a 15-foot-tall headless skeleton watcher that holds a severed skull aloft and projects spotlight beams from its glowing eyes. Meanwhile, Home Depot has upgraded Skelly with a new trick. An app-controlled version now allows its head and mouth to move, allowing its owner to speak to it in real time and display an American flag eyeball.
Oversized Halloween animatronics are proliferating with an almost Darwinian biodiversity. A 12-foot motion-activated pumpkin king, a three-headed carnivorous plant studded with human bones, and a 5-foot undead parrot that answers yes or no questions are all on sale this fall.
At Sam’s Club, the 11-foot-tall Towering Reaper is among this year’s top 10 best-selling Halloween items, selling better than expected and selling out in some stores. According to Business Insider, online visits to retailers’ Halloween decorations listings increased 67% in July compared to the same month last year.
This growth is also reflected in our stores. In 2013, Home Depot’s Halloween merchandise occupied one end cap, a display at the end of the store’s aisles. By 2026, its displays will occupy more than 800 square feet of floor space.
Halloween shopping starts early. Nearly half of shoppers plan to start their Halloween shopping by September or earlier this year, compared with about a third a decade ago, according to the National Retail Federation.
“Halloween has evolved from a discrete event to a long-term consumption season,” said Ross Steinman, a professor of consumer psychology at Widener University.
Why did giant skeletons become so popular?
One reason for the appeal of oversized monsters is obvious. It’s really big.
And size always mattered. When they started developing Skelly in 2019, the Home Depot team wanted something that would be overwhelming and “larger than life,” Lance Allen, the retailer’s senior product merchant, recalled in a 2024 Vice oral history.
“It used to be, ‘Oh, 10 feet would be huge. It would be powerful. Everyone would want 10 feet!'” Allen said. “And it’s like, let’s not set limits and try everything. Let’s go further than anyone thought possible.”
The result was the 12-foot Skelly. And when it debuted in 2020, its visibility was perfect for our times. The first Halloween since the start of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, people practiced social distancing and spent far more time at home.
Rachel Little, a former Home Depot product engineer who helped develop Skelly, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2023, “I think what made it so popular was that everyone was at home and[Skelly]was so huge and could be seen from far away.”
Its popularity continues today, with owners sharing their creations on social media, often featuring tableaux such as a skeletal family or a giant skeleton walking a skeletal dog. However, when the first Skelly appeared, it was designed only for the Halloween season.
“One of the things we weren’t prepared for was that we didn’t know people were going to keep this up year-round,” Allen told Vice.
In fact, owners have found reasons to keep Skelly on the lawn and dress her up for Christmas and the Fourth of July. Home Depot eventually added UV protection and even changed the resin to make it better able to withstand summer heat. The dress-up trend has even captivated brands, with Arby’s this year launching a $46.66 “Meat Sweat” tracksuit specifically designed to fit a 12-foot frame.
Some owners go a step further and purchase articulated elbows and other replacement joints designed and sold by independent sellers to give Skelly more flexibility in precise poses.
Of course, you don’t dress a 12-foot skeleton in a Hawaiian shirt and pose just for yourself. It is meant to be seen.
“Halloween giant displays are directed outward to the public, with front lawns as the stage, homeowners as producers, and neighbors and passersby as spectators,” said Timothy Malefit, a marketing professor and business anthropologist at Fordham University.
Also, if you put something noticeable in your front yard, it can be a talking point for the neighbors. As more of our lives move online, the opportunity to share real-world experiences becomes more meaningful, and Halloween decorations provide that experience without requiring too much formal social interaction, Malefito says.
“Large-scale displays transform a home from a private space to part of a shared neighborhood experience,” Steinman says. “In that sense, consumers are buying an experience as much as a decorative item.”
