[jgawne]

I just got some of the new 2” Walking Dead (building set) figures. Here’s my initial impression of them. Now I have been a big zombie fan since Dawn of the Dead first came out, and I’ve been painting small zombies for years. In fact I used to actually make lead 25mm Roman Zombies, and done bunches of 25mm hard plastic fig conversions to zombies so I kind of know a little bit about them by now.

They are small. 2” small. Good thing they put a window on the main box so you can see how big they are or people would howl. They are tiny, but pretty detailed and the ones that represent people are damn good sculpts. This makes me wonder why a company like Reaction (which has just put out a line of 3.75 figs with headsculpts so crappy you think they were reused from some totally different toyline) can stay in business. Seriously the Reaction Aliens and Big Trouble in Little China sculpts are just horrible.
Anyway, the detail on these WD figs is pretty good. They look like the character with no problem. They come in small sealed clear envelopes, and no, you do not get extra parts as someone thought. Two main types, one with torso and legs as two prices: the other with torso, lower torso and two separate legs. There is a small amount of molding line on them, but nothing you will notice unless you get up close.

The parts all pop together with a little more force than some people seem to like. I think it is fine as I would prefer a tight fit that bits flying off all the time. Speaking of bits- these ARE NOT FOR SMALL KIDS! You can rotate the arms legs and heads some, but they are sculpted to generally look best in one specific way.

There are no bases. And with teeny feet they will not stand. So they added this clunky looking clip (like a letter C) to one foot to clip onto a post. Ugly. Bad. Stupid design.

Paint is OK but nothing special. Looks to me like one plastic color- one area maybe painted a second color, and then a dark wash over all. An example, legs- you have the thing molded in trouser color, shoes painted brown, and a dark wash. These are RIPE for repainting. At the very least a dry brush- but you can see open guts on some so you could go bloody red whole hog if you wanted to.

They are soft plastic, so there’s the whole paint adherence thing. I may try seeing how primer works on them, but there is another trick used for years by military modelers with soft plastic, and that is after a wash) paint the fig with thinned out coat of white glue. This provides a still base to paint on. Maybe not be needed but I figured I would mention it.

Now as to cost. The main box is $15 for Rick, Myrle, and three walkers. Then you can buy blind bags marked as either a H or W (figure it out). Those I have seen listed as about $5, but selling for About $3.50 a pop. Yikes. Two of those gets you a real 3.75 figure! You are paying a lot for the WD name I gather, and I suspect we will soon see some Chinese company make knock off zombies to flesh out your army (pun intended). Seeing as how I was involved in the design of zombie figs that used “zombie action arms” and “zombie action heads” (patt pending). If you are a Chinese toymaker wanting to do this I can give you great advice for some of your product.

A friend showed me his Daryl and walker from the blind bags. Darly looks great, except they really messed up his ability to hold the crossbow, so it looks like he will have to be glued or sticky puttied to keep it in place. The walker turned out to be “Female Herd Walker #1”, which surprised me as it was only on close inspection I realized it was a female. Yeah, looking at the back of the head of it I can see how it was sculpted so there’s no hair in the back, and it could be painted as bare skull.

So my 2 cents? Nice figs. EXPENSIVE! There will be much moaning about that (again a pun). As they really are not very possible I wish they were hard plastic, but I suspect we will see people collect them, and build massive armies of the dead. Which if you want them to look at all good in bulk you’ll have to repaint them. I spot a niche market in repaints.

I predict also that a sub market will pop up on ebay of people selling the blind bags as identified figs- with the walkers sold at a premium as you can always use more of them, but who needs 5 Governors?