The Zombies of The Walking Dead Invade Your Shelf

We’re still celebrating The Walking Dead week, in anticipation of this weekend’s premiere of The Walking Dead season 2 on AMC this Sunday at 10pm! Yesterday we took a look at Rick Grimes and Michonne from McFarlane Toys’ The Walking Dead Comic Series One, but what would survivors of the zombie apocalypse be without some undead creatures to fight? Series One of the excellent new toy line has us covered with two zombies, each with some totally nasty (and completely FUN) action features! Let’s take a look at the Zombie Roamer and Zombie Lurker…

We get two zombies in Comic Series One, dubbed the “Roamer” and the “Lurker.” I’m glad McFarlane is going down the road of doing generic zombies in this series, rather than focus on the “character” zombies like Bicycle Girl right away. The walkers are more about mass presence than character-specific traits, and this pair of “Geeks” look great together. In many ways these zombie figures capture the best of classic and modern McFarlane Toys, combining tons of grisly, nasty detail with a sting sense of design and playability.
Both zombies are as gruesome as you could hope for, with excellent levels of detail from the torn, ragged clothing to the rotting lifeless skin and grisly open wounds that cover their bodies. They’re very well-painted with a very dirty, rotting look that is perfect for an undead zombie.

The real treat for these two zombies are the action features– a new playing field for McFarlane, but one that works surprisingly well here. The Roamer features the more “gimmicky” feature– if you push the button on the figure’s back, his head “explodes.” The feature works incredibly well, and it’s very fun to keep doing over and over (I think I spent about 20 minutes messing with him when I opened him)… The push button activates a soft plastic “blood spurt” to pop up from the neck which splits the jointed head in half. It’s a great effect, a more fun version of what we’ve seen NECA do with their “exploding head” variants in the Gears of War series, and it’s perfectly suited for a zombie toy.

Not to be outdone, the lurker also sports a great action feature. The figure can be split in half at the waist, and the top half of the torso os connected to a nasty rib cage full of guts, which can pull out of the stomach along with the top half of the figure! It’s pretty grotesque, but very well-executed, with the guts plugging in snugly to the lower body when he’s in one piece. The tear-apart action can also change your Lurker to a “Crawler,” as a still-functional legless zombie who can drag his guts along the ground using his arms. Whether a Lurker or a Crawler, this zombie can still be ensured to meet his end, as the top half of his head is removable to simulate either a headshot or taking Michonne’s katana across the face.

Both zombies also feature removable limbs, which serve as articulation cuts when the zombie is in one piece, but instead of standard plugs, the limbs are held together with sculpted bones which are exposed when the appendages are removed. It’s another case of great detail and design being applied to these figures, and it adds worlds to the customizability and fun factor of these creatures.

The zombies are a little less articulated than Rick and Michonne, but each features at least ten points of articulation (who really needs a super-poseable zombie anyway?), and the joints all work very well here, especially the great neck joint on the Lurker, which allows him to still look forward in Crawler mode. I’m hoping McFarlane follows suit with their Halo line for The Walking Dead, making minor variants to these zombies (new headsculpts, different coloration) to help us build a zombie horde. After having a pair of zombie figures this great, I want more!!

I had high hopes for McFarlane Toys’ Walking Dead series, and the final figures are so cool they surpassed my expectations– this seems to be the perfect subject for McFarlane, where they can combine their excellent attention to grisly and morbid detail with their newer talents with design, engineering and action features in a logical– and just cool– way. Bring on the next series, I cannot wait!!

Thanks again to McFarlane Toys for giving us the chance to get an early look at The Walking Dead Comic Series One… and stay tuned all week for more Walking Dead coverage!

THE WALKING DEAD: COMIC WAVE ONE — FULL GALLERY