Zombie and Dog

NECA Toys, having seen significant success with their toyline based on Resident Evil 4, has released a four-figure wave to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the original Resident Evil (I have to say, I'm surprised it's only 10 years... I thought that franchise was older than that. Anyway...). The line includes franchise stalwarts Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, HUNK, and the subject of this review, a classic RE zombie. In fact, this is the classic RE zombie - it's the first one you see in the game, when you leave the dining room and wander into a cutscene. A man is lying on the floor, with another man hunched over him. There's a crunching sound, and a pool of blood spreads beneath them. Suddenly, the crouching man raises his head. He turns to look at you, slowly, and you see that he's eating one of your teammates. It's pretty much downhill from there. They were once human but were infected and consequently resurrected by the T-Virus. A zombie will continue it’s search for food even with severed limbs or when missing the lower half of its body. Occasionally NECA has some trouble in the sculpt category, but not recently, and certainly not in this case. The Zombie features a fantastic and very realistic sculpt. We're especially fond of the textures, such as the rough undead flesh and the smooth suit. The suit was a stroke of genius, ensuring this was a purely generic zombie; NECA's only mistake was not offering a few variants so you could build a zombie army. I like the Zombie's lack of a tie; for some reason, it makes me think of an undead Luke Wilson. Or just Luke Wilson. Of course, the sculpt would be worthless if the paint applications weren't dead-on. And they are. This was one area where NECA used to have some issues, but not in this case. Everything's flawless, especially the work on the zombie's pallid, wrinkled flesh. The articulation is interesting. His neck and shoulders are balljoints, and his left wrist and waist are swivels. That's it. Ordinarily, that would be an annoyingly small amount of articulation, but the Zombie makes up for this with his pull-apart features: the right forearm, left hand, and left arm (just below the shoulder) are all removable. Rather than just popping off at the articulation joint, a la Mezco's Jake and Earl, the limbs feature nubs of sculpted flesh and bone that lock into the socket, just like on Steve the Victim. This is the best implementation of a pull-apart feature we've seen on an action figure, and better than anything Mezco attempted with their Goon or Attack of the Living Dead lines. The Zombie comes with no accessories, but he does include a black oval display base, and a fnu pack-in: a zombie Doberman Pinscher. Like its master, the dog is well-sculpted and features a balljointed head and a working jaw to bite at the humans in the line. He also stands surprisingly well on his own, despite being sculpted with only three legs on the ground. The ribs on his left side are exposed, as is a bit of his spine, the tip of his shoulderblade, just a bit of hip bone, and a portion of socket immediately around his blank left eye. There are other bites and tears in his skin that allow us to see the red muscle beneath. While many NECA figures lose playability points for their lack of articulation, the Zombie's removable limbs largely make up for that deficiency. At a $12 pricepoint, it's hard to find fault with an action figure this cool. And even if you're not particularly interested in Resident Evil as a franchise, it's always exciting to get a new zombie action figure, and this one is a worthy addition. -- 12/19/06

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