I got an exclusive look at Home Depot's 'Skelly' refresh for Halloween 2025, and it'll turn your house into the neighborhood's hottest attraction

News
By published

Ultra Skelly is 6.5-feet tall and features animatronics

Ultra Skelly The Home Depot Skeleton for Halloween 2025
(Image credit: Future)

Home Depot’s 12-foot yard skeleton, better known as Skelly, is easily the internet’s favorite Halloween decoration. For 2025, The Home Depot is adding to the Skelly collection with Ultra Skelly, a smaller but tech-packed version that I already know is going to be spooky season’s must-have decoration.

I got an early look at Ultra Skelly at The Home Depot’s Store Managers Meeting (SMM), the company’s annual conference where some upcoming products are previewed, primarily for internal purposes. The show floor had a staged space celebrating the halfway mark to Halloween, with this new spin on Skelly front-and-center.

At 6.5 feet, Ultra Skelly isn’t going to tower over your house like its comically-large $300 counterpart, but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in animatronics.

The Home Depot turned this Skelly into a fully interactive experience complete with moving arms, LED lighting, a Bluetooth speaker, and support for app-controlled interactions.

Ultra Skelly comes with five preset recordings and the ability to create up to 30-second custom recordings through the compatible app. Whether you want it to bark menacingly at kids or crack terrible, yet Halloween-appropriate dad jokes, the choice is yours.

Since you can stream music through Ultra Skelly’s built-in speaker, I would personally dress it up as a creepy DJ for my front yard to blast all the best Halloween hits.

But it’s not just Halloween that Ultra Skelly is good for. One of the best things of the original Skelly (which, I’ll clarify is also returning for 2025) is the recessed LCD LifeEyes that squint and blink. Ultra Skelly continues LifeEyes, including seasonal eye themes such as birthday confetti, St. Patrick’s Day clovers, dragons, and even the American flag.

Ultra Skelly

(Image credit: Future)

Translation: you can make an excuse to keep Ultra Skelly out all year round. I fully expect to see Ultra Skelly in Santa hats, 4th of July sunglasses, and maybe even a leprechaun outfit across social media once it’s out.

The Home Depot hasn’t revealed pricing or availability for Ultra Skelly yet, but given how hard it is to get your hands on the OG Skelly, this new one is probably going to sell out fast. Even with all the added features, I’m guessing it’ll be priced lower than the 12-foot version, maybe in the $150-$200 ballpark.

Besides being more affordable, Ultra Skelly is way more practical for more people given its reasonable height. Plus, it's a fun way to make Halloween setups of any size feel less static and more interactive.

So if you love Halloween and take your decor planning seriously, keep an eye out for more information on when Ultra Skelly will hit stores.

More from Tom's Guide

Kate Kozuch
Kate Kozuch

Kate Kozuch is the managing editor of social and video at Tom’s Guide. She writes about smartwatches, TVs, audio devices, and some cooking appliances, too. Kate appears on Fox News to talk tech trends and runs the Tom's Guide TikTok account, which you should be following if you don't already. When she’s not filming tech videos, you can find her taking up a new sport, mastering the NYT Crossword or channeling her inner celebrity chef.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.