The Walking Dead Building Review: The Governor’s Room

McFarlane Toys brings The Governor’s infamous lair to life, brick by brick.

The Walking Dead building toys are available now at Toys R Us stores, and the coolest set we’ve seen so far has to be The Governor’s Room, a medium-size playset depicting the lair of the sociopathic leader of Woodbury, complete with The Governor himself, his zombie daughter Penny and his notorious fish tank display filled with Walker heads.

The set consists of 292 pieces and works exactly like Legos and other building toys– the individual bricks link together firmly and snugly to create the room and the fish tank display… but unlike other brick building toys, the Walking Dead pieces feature a sculpted veneer on the outer side, giving a more fully detailed and sculpted finish to the set.

This realistic tone actually works quite well, especially taking into consideration the similarly detailed sculpts of the mini figures and various accessories (in this case a lamp and end table, Penny’s bucket of guts and the Governor’s recliner).  The overall effect is very cool, leaving a set that is as fun to assemble as any Lego kit, but with a final display that feels more like a model or small scale figure playset than a building toy.  Even with the unique sculpting, the brick based nature of the set means you can still do some minor customization with this set, specifically changing the layout of things like the foot pegs in the floor, the arrangement of the fish tanks and even the door to Penny’s closet.

Paint is another factor which plays into the Walking Dead building sets.  Whereas most building sets sport colored plastic and decals, McFarlane’s parts are all fully painted, meaning the wood panels of the floor, the rough marble finish of the walls and even the figures themselves feel very unique among brick based toys, a feature which is sure to appeal to more adult-oriented fans of the AMC TV series, while still offering them the fun of putting these things together.

It’s obvious that McFarlane Toys is new to this format, so there’s going to be a little bit of a learning curve.  The mini figures are being touted as customizable, but this is only half-true, especially in regards to extremely pre-posed figures like the reclining Governor, whose parts are posed in such a way as to remain unique to his body.  And the individual bricks aren’t always perfect– I wound up with a few floor panels with quite a bit of flash plastic on the edges.  Normally, this isn’t a huge deal, but when each piece is required to sit flush to the next, a misshapen part doesn’t really work.  Fortunately, McFarlane thought ahead, packing in a few extra bricks of each type, so even with a few duds I had more than enough bricks to complete my build.

The Governor’s Room was totally fun to put together– all total, I spent just under an hour assembling the whole 292 piece set.  And the takeaway is great– a very cool, atmospheric playset which looks both screen accurate and remains totally fun to play around with, from the cool mini figures it includes to the light-up fish tanks, illuminating the Governor’s disturbing collection in a perfectly creepy manner.

You can find this playset and more Walking Dead building toys now at Toys R Us.  I’d totally suggest giving this cool new toy line a look– they’re great to display and lots of fun to put together!