Eureka Toxic Zombies in Barrels

Earlier this year I was gifted a set of four Eureka 28mm scale Toxic Zombies emerging from barrels by my good friend Fran, aka The Angry Lurker. Once again, many thanks, Fran. There are six figures in this range and I already had one of them. Fortunately for me, the one I had was not amongst the ones sent to me by Fran. That was a nice stroke of luck! Having just painted them, I thought you'd like to see these very unusual zombies.

I'd guess that the inspiration for these figures came from the "Tar Zombie" who features in The Return of the Living Dead film. He is so called because he emerges from a barrel that should have been left closed and is covered in a dark, slimy liquid gunk. I toyed with the idea of painting these in a similar fashion and tried out what I hoped was a similar looking colour scheme but the results were not very pleasing. So I went back to plan A and painted them as I paint all of my toxic zombies, which is with a greenish tint to their flesh (Citadel Rotting Flesh, appropriately enough). The one thing I did add to these figures was a couple of thick coats of Citadel Water Effects to give them that glossy wet look. You can see this much better if you left click on the photos to blow them up to full screen size.

I won't describe each one individually like I normally do, because they are all very similar. The first zombie in line, moving from left to right, is the one that I already had. The other four are the ones I received from Fran. Some of them have flesh sloughing off their bodies (one and four especially). Two of them (four and five) have got one leg out of the barrel. A nice touch on number five is his shoe, which has a sole that is coming apart at the seams to reveal his toes. Incidentally, the figure that I'm missing from this set is in a very similar pose to zombie number two but his head is in a different position.

The sculpting on these figures is very good. None of them look like fresh corpses. They all look very cadaverous, almost skeletal like. Most are bald but zombie number five has a patchy head of hair.

These are not the kind of zombies you're going to find wandering the streets. They should be assigned to a specific location, like a warehouse, a research laboratory, a storeroom in a military or corporate building or in the trailer of an articulated lorry. You could designate them as Smart Zombies or Ragers if you're playing ATZ. I'd be tempted to make them Ragers if I ever use them in a scenario.

They cost £1.90 each from the Eureka website but be warned they are supplied randomly. However, it has been my experience with the good folks at Eureka that if you specifically ask for no swaps, or as few swaps as possible if ordering more than one of each, they will comply. Each figure comes in two parts - the bottom two thirds of the barrel and the top third of the barrel with the zombie. They are not supplied with bases and will stand up very well without a base. I stuck mine to circular plastic slottabases purely to make them compatible with the rest of my 28mm scale figure collection.