The Work of Giant Yard Skeletons
"Can't we just enjoy things?" asks the neighbor with the huge Home Depot skeleton in their yard
In July 2020, as America locked down during the first wave of COVID-19, Home Depot released a 12-foot skeleton that would go down in the annals of marketing history as something far greater than just a hideous Halloween decoration. Four years later, as these must-have statues despoil lawns all across the Pittsburgh suburbs (and every other suburban Anytown on the map), they provide us with a memento mori of how never-say-die American consumerism adapts, persists, and metastasizes during crisis. Priced at $299 upon launch and nicknamed “Skelly,” this plastic disasterpiece sold out long before Halloween 2020 arrived, spawning secondary markets where it traded for $1,500, inspiring nationwide hunting expeditions, and creating a cultural moment that crystallized troubling patterns in contemporary consumption.1
The giant skeleton phenomenon sheds at least some light on what a more pretentious academic might call “the antinomies (not a misspelling of antimony, broham) of late-stage capitalism.”2 Americans spend record amounts on frivolous luxuries during economic uncertainty, justify purchases with appeals to “whimsy,” leave decorations up year-round as seasonal boundaries dissolve, and generate massive environmental waste, all while social media amplifies the cycle.
In one stupid trend and its accompanying trend pieces, we can see the convergence of post-recession “doom spending,” social media performance culture, Chinese fast-fashion manufacturing, and the commercialization playbook Coca-Cola and other zone-flooding, holiday-secularizing brands pioneered more than a century ago. Understanding this phenomenon requires examining not just one viral product, but the entire system of consumer psychology, economic incentives, and cultural shifts that made spending hundreds of dollars on an 85-pound plastic skeleton feel not just acceptable, but a matter of life and death (or L AN D, LAND if you will, because these things sure occupy a lot of prime real estate here in the suburbs). Buckle up for one heck of a Mr. Toad’s wild ride, buckeroos!
