EMCE Toys' Zombies vs Zombie Hunters....'army-men' style!

First found this earlier in the month and I've had many debates with my inner geek-self whether to grab it for myself or not since then. Sure, it was a wee bit expensive than your normal green army-men. One thing about classic green army men is that they're practically cheap and can be found almost anywhere but the sheer excitement of lining these tiny soldiers to re-create your most favourite battles of yesteryears is priceless! I had hours and hours of fun playing with my army men (at one point it was cowboys and Indians too!) with my childhood buddies and those will forever be etched in my memory bank as one of the most 'fun'-est toy ever created for boys growing up adoring war heroes and such. My buddy Adrian can vouch this for me I'm sure.

Now, combine THAT with this one popular pop-culture element....and you'd get.....ZOMBIE ARMY MEN! Being an ardent zombie fan (my 4-year old son is too ya know.....that little geek!) I was soon haunted by the fact that there's a good chance that I'd never see this again, you know, being an exclusive item and all. The fact that only ONE store carries them thus far here in Malaysia gave me enough horrors to finally cave in and buy the figure set. One can only imagine my heartbeat while I made my way back to that 'bookstore' where I first saw the figure set a couple of weeks ago.....*Oh God, let it still be there!*......LOL.

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The packaging is a straight up 'in yer-face' style of packaging. With this bag with header type of packaging, you can clearly see what you're getting. It does the job well. I had fears that some of the figures inside might be warped and stuff but they turned out fine anyways. When I first saw these a couple of weeks ago, there were 6 in total. The moment I came back for them again, I was only left with 3 to choose from so obviously I was thankful that there was still some for me to choose over. I spent about probably a few minutes going through the 3 sets left for me to see whether figures inside were all okay. Not much you can see unless you get the store clerk to open these up for you to check the contents....which I strongly doubt they will.

Anyway, back to the packaging, I think EMCE Toys did a fine job by giving us such cool retro-style packaging art on the card below. Check out both sides. I totally dig the human/hunter art.....they look like some mob trying to get a piece of the zombies for themselves! Simple yet effective comicbook-like art, works like a charm.

In case you wanna check out EMCE Toys, you can head over to their official website or alternatively you can also check out their facebook page. They produce a lot of zombie-themed action figures and some other obscure toys too. Worth checking out.

Here they are, finally unleased from their plastic containment chamber (or plastic bag for short). To tell ya the truth, I wasn't so eager to get the 'humans' in this figure set. They're just 'so-so' and.....meh, a 'bunch of humans'. It's the zombies everyone is REALLY looking for now ain't it?

We get 5 type of zombies in total. All 5 are unique and when grouped together, they will surely put shivers down anyone's spine! More into them later. Let's take a look at the hunters now, shall we?

The BLUE army men are the 'zombie hunters' or the human characters. The 'hunters' are great too.....you get a Sheriff-like character (Rick Grimes anyone?), a crowbow-carrying dude (Daryl Dixon y'all!), a SWAT member armed with a semi-Auromatic rifle, an axe-wielding dude and a female character in a trench coat wielding a....stick(?) or some blunt object to bash them zombie-heads in.

My wife said that the ultra-bright 'green fluorescent' is pretty hurtful to the eyes.....LOL. I tend to agree a bit with her. They do make these zombies almost 'radioactive-like'. For the record, there is also a 'slimed-up' version of these zombies...and they're suppose to glow in the dark or something. I haven't seen that one so I won't be able to comment further. But yeah, agreeing with my wife, I too feel that these zombies could've been in a more 'soft' coloured tone rather than fluoresent green....but that's just us.

The individual zombies....let's start off with this one, a freaky-lookin' female zombie!

Can you see that 'severed' head at the base of that figure? Gruesome!!!

This one must be an office worker or something....he comes in a suit complete with a tie!

These gotta be my favourite' zombies among them all. I mean, come on.....they're walking around carrying human limbs! One is even munching down a human arm! Can't ask for more than that now, can we? Pretty awesome stuff.

One thing cool about these army men is that they're small and easy to carry anywhere.....here's a group shot of 'em accompanying me on my early morning McBreakfast run the other day. The early zombie gets the early...errr....'flesh'?

My son absolutely loves these....even mixed and matched with his green army men! He had fun re-creating the war between the last remaining/surviving humans (coincidently they're from the army and some redneck weapon wielding civilians!) and the zombies! Pure geek bliss!

As a fan of the 'Dead movies by George A. Romero and a hardcore follower of Robert Kirman's The Walking Dead universe, I was enthralled to snag this figure set as part of my zombie-related stuff collection. Hey, it's cheap and I can't believe I passed this on when I first saw them! Now I wish EMCE Toys can give us 3.75" scale zombies too.....wishful thinking eh?

THE REBEL'S VERDICT: What else can I say, if you're into zombies and a devout follower of Romero's and Kirkman's universe, then this army-figure set is a no-brainer! They're relatively cheaper than most action figures out there in the market, although they're definitely more expensive than your regular green army men. But even at USD9, these are TOTALLY worth it. The level of intricate details put into these tiny undead figures will blow you away. I'll definitely check out any of EMCE Toys' future releases, that I can tell ya. Until then, this is The Rebel signing off!