How Home Depot’s 12-foot skeleton became a viral TikTok star

Home Depot’s 12-foot tall skeletons have replaced white picket fencing.

Even if you’re from an urban area devoid of lawns, it’s still likely you’ve seen the 12-foot skeleton in question, which has become the center of viral internet fame time and time again. Videos starring the bony lawn fixture, which can garner as many as 16.4 million views, aren’t all that complicated; a lot of times, people just share the different ways they use the skeleton, whether dressing it up or driving it around town. The skeleton is large enough that it lends a sense of humor to even the most simple videos. As time has passed, the skeleton seems to have taken on its own life.

But every icon has an origin story — and in this case, a pair of creators. On the occasion of Halloween and the 12-foot skeleton’s renewed fame, Polygon sat down with Lance Allen, senior merchant of decorative holiday at Home Depot, and Rachel Little, senior project engineer, to tell the story of the towering internet star known as “Skelly.”

Home Depot used a lot of little skeletons in order to create a 12 foot skeleton

Allen and Little, between them, have created hundreds of skeletons. Not every skeleton designed at Home Depot R&D makes it to store shelves, but when one does, they’ve likely had a hand in it. Skelly, as we know it today with its metal piping and LED eyes was once a simple dream. It was a human instinct to make the skeleton bigger that inspired Skelly.

“Originally, when we sat down, we started throwing out 10 feet. And it was like, ‘Nah, that just doesn’t seem tall enough,’” Allen told Polygon via video chat. “‘Everybody knows how tall a basketball hoop is.’ And then it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s make it 12 feet. Let’s think of two 6-foot guys standing on top of each other, where they could be looking down at a basketball hoop. That seems like an impactful height.’”

Teams had to think about factors such as size and price during the designing process. The team needed to make sure Home Depot could sell it at a reasonable price point and that it wouldn’t be too difficult for buyers to transport. The team also had to think about how the giant size would affect certain features. To accommodate Skelly’s large size, the design team made it less anatomically accurate.

“The neck looked so goofy. You don’t know how long your actual neck is. So we actually had to remove vertebrae out of the neck, just because people wouldn’t believe it was anatomically correct, because the neck was so long,” Allen said.

The team worked on the design for a while before settling upon a final product. The team worked hard to create this lawn sculpture, but seeing it was a completely different experience. Allen described to Polygon the moment he first saw Skelly.

“12 feet was the number in our head, but you never realized how big it was until we saw it printed out and rolled out on blueprint for the first time. And it’s like, Wow, this thing’s impressive! And I still remember, we kind of had it as a secret project, we weren’t telling a lot of people about it. When we brought the whole team into the room and showed them the product for the very first time, everyone’s mouth dropped. We knew we’d invented one of the coolest items ever to hit the market.”

Skelly is a 12-foot tall viral skeleton

Home Depot released the first version of Skelly, in 2020. It quickly rose to fame on TikTok. Simple video-recording setups at the time easily brought in millions of views. The skeleton, which was initially virally popular during the COVID-19 epidemic, has had a long-lasting influence on viral internet culture. It is now the subject of both parody videos and fan videos. A video of a skeleton setup with a new head has been viewed over 16,4 million times on TikTok this year.

Other people have been able to cash in since then. It’s been used to make clothes, embellished with bling, and, in one case, even as an accessory on a car. At time of publication, the hashtag “12footskeleton” has over 89 million views. Little’s career highlight was designing the skeleton.

“He’s my biggest icebreaker. Everyone knows him when I say his name. I’ve worked in medical devices and it’s stuff that everyone has to use, but that doesn’t excite anyone. They’re like, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’ But Skelly is always a big hot topic. Everyone always loves to talk about Skelly,” Little said.

Will Home Depot make a higher skeleton in the future?

Polygon, in light of all that was said above, had to ask a 12-foot tall question: Can Home Depot make a skull? More about the AuthorDo you want to be taller than 12 foot? Skelly has been out of stocks in the U.S. but costs normally $298. If you want a bigger one, what would it cost? What if 12 feet wasn’t enough? (You can buy a 13-foot Jack Skellington, but he’s a bit lanky.) Allen responded with a rational response, taking into account the price as well other constraints.

“The sky’s the limit. “We can reach as high as you want.” A lot of it’s just having that value, that price for where we can have it available to everybody. I mean, we could go out there make a 20-foot skeleton tomorrow, but it’s going to cost so much more because of the shipping and everything.”

Anyone looking to surpass Skelly’s 20-foot height will need to be creative… Imagine: [in the voice of Mr. Beast] “I STACKED TWO 12-FOOT SKELETONS ON TOP OF EACH OTHER.”