Home Depot’s Infamous Skelly Finds a Voice With New App for Halloween

Spooky season is drawing closer, and the latest version of Home Depot’s popular skeleton decoration is half the size but has animated features and can talk.

Tiffany Connors Former Staff Editor

Tiffany Wendeln Connors was a senior editor for CNET Money with a focus on credit cards. Previously, she covered personal finance topics as a writer and editor at The Penny Hoarder. She is passionate about helping people make the best money decisions for themselves and their families. She graduated from Bowling Green State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and has been a writer and editor for publications including the New York Post, Women’s Running magazine and Soap Opera Digest. When she isn’t working, you can find her enjoying life in St. Petersburg, Florida, with her husband, daughter and a very needy dog.

Make no bones about it: Skelly’s going high tech. Home Depot’s popular 12-foot-tall skeleton decoration is coming back to life this Halloween with an app that lets you give the new Ultra Skelly a voice and new moves to scare the trick-or-treaters. The new animatronic version is shorter than the original, at 6.5 feet tall, but you can freak out your whole neighborhood with this skeleton’s rotating upper torso, moving mouth and 18 LCD eye variations (ew).

Skelly can now chat with visitors through five preset recordings and up to 30 seconds of custom recording, plus Bluetooth capabilities that let you interact in real time. And you can modulate your voice to make everything sound extra spooky.

Skelly was originally launched in 2020, when the pandemic forced people to celebrate Halloween at a distance. Perhaps because of its giant stature — it’s easy to spot, even when social distancing — the skeleton became a hit and has been resurrected every year since with upgrades and friends. This year those friends include dragons, trolls, scarecrows and a Skelly Cat (not to be confused with Smelly Cat).

You can order Skelly and co now on the Home Depot website or app for $279.