The Shelf Life of a 12-Foot Home Depot Skeleton

Inside the Brick store, near the plumbing aisle, Skelly stood in front of a cluster of 5-foot skeletons that barely grazed its kneecaps. The larger skeleton’s eyes — two LCD screens with motion sensors — appeared to follow customers as they passed, with several shoppers stopping to curl their hands around its index finger like infants exercising their grasp reflex.

“You can see it from a mile away,” said George Baskinger, 39, a business developer at a biotech company, who bought the skeleton hoping it would draw more trick-or-treaters to his house in Franklin Lakes, N.J. Driving home from the store, he and his wife, Robin Baskinger, 35, a middle school vice principal, got pulled over on the Garden State Parkway, she said. “We have all these bones in our car,” Ms. Baskinger said, recalling the incident in a phone interview in October. “A couple of arms and legs lying across the floor of the back seat.” But the officer did not ask questions, and they got the skeleton home without further delays.

Jon Bodi, 57, the manager at the Home Depot in Brick, said he had never witnessed such a frenzy for an item in his 13 years of working there. “If they find out someone has it, they will track it down,” he said.

When asked why it is so big, Mr. Bodi replied, “That’s the great question.” He added, “Everybody stops and looks, that I can tell you.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/style/home-depot-12-foot-skeleton.html