What it is.

So, we all know what a zombie horde is, but this zombie horde is only four inches tall.

As a custom toy maker, I've been taking a Dremel to little plastic men for the past 20 years or so, and out the dozens and dozens of toys I've created- these are my first ever zombies.

And I'm a guy who likes his zombies. What flavor? Don't care. I like Romero zombies and 28 Days Later zombies and Stormtrooper zombies and... yeah, you get it.

In 2011, out of nowhere, toy giant Hasbro released an action figure in the G.I. Joe toy line called the Zombie Viper. For their purposes, it was an enemy soldier treated with a toxic goo that turned him into a super badass fighter. Eh, not so interested in that idea, but as I started to peel back the layers of G.I. Joe gear I found a fairly generic zombie dude hiding underneath! The wheels started to spin and I decided I was going to make at least a dozen or so zombies. I like taking pictures of these guys, and wanted a nice little horde to menace Spider-Man, Batman, even the A-Team wouldn't safe! Any toys made in the 4" scale could be victims of the horde.

I started in on the first 6 figures. It had been a while since I'd worked on this kind of project, so it was a disorganized assembly line at best! I was testing out a few new products and playing with some different techniques, and spent probably around 6 weeks on the wave. It was a few weeks away from being done when we had one of our local toy shows. It's called the Grand Rapids Toy and Comic Expo. The organizer of the show is a friend of mine who's been active in our local toy community for many decades and helped keep the scene alive over the years. (I will also be forever grateful to Russ for giving me the opportunity to meet Mr. Jeremy Bulloch, better known as Boba Fett from Star Wars.)

A few days before the show I had the (bright) idea that if the horde would be awesome at 15 zombies, how frikkin' amazing would it be if there were 50? And then, let's be honest, if there were 50 zombies, they'd have to shambling down some street, right? So streets mean cars, and storefronts, and rubble... oh my.

And that, my friends, is how the 6 custom zombies on my desk have turned into a 2 x 6 foot realistic diorama of a downtown street over-run by zombies. I showed the WIP zombies to Russ (the toy show guy), and explained the idea. He thought it sounded fun, and so the Decomposing Plastic diorama will be shown at the December 2012 show!

And that brings us to now. It's the beginning of April. I have just short of 8 months to design and build not only 40-odd more zombies, but the equivalent of a city block in 1/18 scale. Oh yeah, and there's always that handful of pesky survivors...
Over those months I'll be sharing the development of the horde project through this blog, so if ya like zombies, toys, idiots who bite off more than they can chew, or all of that stuff- check back from time to time.