Vault Review: The Walking Dead’s
Rick Grimes and Lurker Zombie

Vault

I don’t pay much attention to McFarlane toys anymore.  I’m not interested in sports, and, back when I did buy their figures, they were more statue than toy and had a tendency to break.  So I was shocked to see how cool The Walking Dead figures turned out to be.

I’m a little behind on The Walking Dead.  I’ve been watching the TV show, which I love, but I haven’t gone back and started reading the comics yet.  This is another reason why I didn’t pay much attention to the early pics of this toyline.  Not only did I assume they wouldn’t move, but that these versions of the characters wouldn’t matter to me.  I realized just how wrong I was, standing in that TRU aisle.

I decided to have a rare outburst of self-control and decided to only pick up two of the figures instead of all four.  Rick Grimes and the Zombie Lurker would have to do.  It was easy leaving Michonne since I didn’t know who she was, although I really did like her accessories.  But that Zombie Roamer was hard to put back.  He had a cool action feature, plus we all know you can never have enough zombies in your horde.

The sculpting on these two figures is excellent and reminds me of the days when the Four Horsemen still worked for McFarlane.  Even though Rick isn’t as visually striking as the Zombie, he’s still got multiple textures on his various layers of clothing.  From the soles of his shoes, the folds in his pants and shirt, to the leathery look of his gun belt, Rick looks like a perfectly normal cop.

On the other hand, the Zombie Lurker looks fantastically morbid.  Rick just has a few layers of clothing, but this zombie has clothing, rotting flesh, muscle, tissue, bone, organs, and various pieces of unidentifiable gore.  It seems like every time I study him I discover something new.  Just a few minutes ago I noticed that the pinky finger on his left hand is half flesh and half bone.

The paint job on both figures really adds to the details of the sculpt.  Although Rick’s clothing is mostly a drab brown, there are still plenty of light and dark highlights to add depth.  There’s also the bloody rag around his right hand and the amount of scruff/dirt on his face.  Each figure I saw had different their own unique application.  I picked one out that had a bit more scruff, dirt, and blood because I thought it fit the character better.  But I could just have easily picked out a cleaner cut Rick.  I really like these types of variations.

Something I’m not as big a fan of is how Ricks eyes are painted looking to his left.  It looks really great from certain angles, but terrible from other.  I would have preferred a straight gaze which wouldn’t have limited his other poses.  Continue to page 2…

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21 thoughts on “Vault Review: The Walking Dead’s
Rick Grimes and Lurker Zombie”

  2. It’s a Doctor Who figure, I think the episode name is Library of Fear.

    It’s the first time we meet River Song, if you follow Doctor Who at all

    1. true, It was familiar to me… I didn’t recall that episode until now, when the shadows use the chips of the corpses to speak with the Doctor.

  3. I saw these just the other day and thought about it (there seems to be a ‘zombie Rick’ variant, or does he represent a B&W comic look? I dunno) but no, I just couldn’t pull the trigger on $18 for that. Grief, I can’t even justify $15 for OMAC (yet, but rays from Mother Eye are clearly trying to work on me) and paying $18 for a small-ish figure from a show I don’t even watch? I can’t reward that, because voting with my Dollars just encourages more of this, right?

    But I *do* need to get off my butt and start buying up the Real Steel figures. Pity there’s no ‘in scale’ human characters in the line.

    1. no steve, don’t do it!!! i beg of you.

      i got lured into the real steel figures, and it still hurts. the problem is, they LOOK like they’re very articulated… it’s a LIE! an insidious, psychotic, sadistic lie. i bought the two pack, zeus and atom, and they look great in the box. you can see, for example, ball jointed shoulders on them both. BUT the sculpt allows for atom’s shoulders to move only up and down, the sculpt of the “collar bones” basically mean the elbows can’t move away from the body at all. zeus has what appears to be ball jointed shoulders, but the right shoulder doesn’t move easily, there are basically two positions on a ratcheted joint. the left shoulder is a lie, it only moves up and down because of the action feature. they both have spring loaded waists, and they both have ball jointed hips. only zeus’ hips actually work, atom’s hips are anchored in the bottom of the hip joint, so the “ball” essentially only turns, it does move forward or back at all. the knees and ball ankle sections do work like proper joints, but they hardly get what would considered useful range of motion.

      they are functional play toys, in that if you’re doing all the work, they can bash and crash, and they feel very solid. but for an adult collector, they don’t pose for shit. zeus looks ok standing still on a shelf, but atom just looks like a dirty lie taunting you from a perch of deceit like a poeian raven.

      1. Wow, really? Which size of the Real Steel figs, or robots, did you pick up? The small ones (roughly 4 inch) looked like the lies you say they are (should be but aren’t very posable) but the big expensive ones seem better. But only seem, then?

        Wow what a waste. You’d think that, being robots they could go all-out for the joints.

        OTOH SOMEBODY is buying the hell out of these because brother, the pegs are sparse suddenly.

        I may still ‘bite’ and get the large Atom just to have it. I really liked the movie. Still wish there were human characters in scale with the ‘bots.

        Thanks for the heads-up, DR!

    1. He’s been silent about this for a day so I’m gonna’ answer it.
      There are certain toys that can’t be thoroughly reviewed and have the site maintain its mostly PG rating. Since the Queen’s Blade figures have extra clothing that makes them semi-naked (or, in the case of Echidna’s extra snake armor, just plain old naked…) and “echi” hands, Vault feels that reviewing them in such a limited capacity would not do them justice.

  5. dude, really… i suppose the zombie looks fine, for a zombie, but rick? if it weren’t for the big obvious joint lines, he looks like the kind of toy you find at deal’s for 2 dollars. that face sculpt just screams knockoff. and then, the scale is all wonky. they are essentially in scale w/ the halo figs, and the only other toys in scale w/ those are… wait, are there other toys in that scale? mcf is making toys in this weird vacuum where nothing they make lines up w/ anything anyone else is making. the weapons look like they’re better sculpted than the figure they come w/.

    and who do we have to blow to get that poor zombie some hips?

  6. Great review, thanks. I think these will go great with the Japanese figures such as D-Arts, Revoltech, and so on.

    I can’t help but think the less lively zombie would make a great teenager zombie for Marvel Legends, particularly if you only use the upper half, but without any supporting zombie figures, it’d be kind of incongruent in a display.

  7. Dang, that Rick is awful, the paint (especially the face/eyes) is absolutely unacceptable at this price point, and the articulation joints that have him in an awkward static pose appears really feminine, just not good. (Sorry for the rambling nonsensentence. 🙂 )

    The zombie is pretty cool, but the scale kind of kills most opportunities for people to get the zombies to go with other stuff.

  8. No thanks. When these were announced I was intrigued, but I don’t care, not at this scale. The real deal breaker is Grimes… is he supposed to be based on the TV show or Comic character? Either way, it just screams cheep, so I will pass. If these were 2 for $20, I’d think about it tho.

  9. Oh McFarlane Toys, it’s nice to see you somewhat relevant, but why do you, the father of all 6-inch action figures, work in this weird little scale now? First all your toys were too big to fit with the scale you introduced, now they’re too small.

    These was a time when McF was pushing the boundaries of sculpt, paint and articulation, believe it or not. It’s nice to see somearticulated toys, but the odd choice to design the toy for one pose kills the viability of the toy as a possums plaything. They’ve beendoing that since The Scarlett Edge and it blows. Lord know they can do super-articulated toys well if they want to, Samurai Spawn and Viking Age proved that, I just with they would.

    I’ve never seen the show but I love the comics and trust me, Michone is an awesome character, and I’d love to get her and Grimes if they were only in scale with the first 14 series of Spawn toys.

  11. These figures are listed as the comic series figures. The TV show ones come out later this year I believe.

  12. I think I want these two… Can’t decide if I want the color or BW though… hrmmm… Wish they were 6″ though. Lame scales are lame.

  13. These look great, but the scale just does not fit with anything but Halo figures. Seems like it would have been nice to see these in 6 inch or 3 3/4 inch. This middle scale does not work with any other toys. Its a shame cause it would have been nice for some ML or MU displays with maybe Blade or something.

  14. Wow. There’s a lot of hate on here for these figures. Sure the scale is odd, but the entire line is very close to the Tony Moore art from the comics– minus Rick having dark hair. I assume they gave him brown instead of blonde in order to suck in TV viewers who wouldn’t know the difference. Maybe I like them more since I have such a love for the monthly comic.

    The TV Series figures come out in November, but that Rick has horrible v-hips.

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