Written by Jonathan Wojcik
ZOMLINGS (In the Town)
You might remember how much I loved
The Trash Pack during its heyday, but after
Junk Germs, it pretty much died out in popularity, with neither
Ugglies Pet Shop nor the newer
Grossery Gang taking off with kids to the same degree.
It's about time, then, that another line pick up the slack, and the strikingly similar
Zomlings, though available in Australia and the United Kingdom for a few years now, have apparently only
just started trickling into the United States, and a friend of mine (who also makes
amazing art!!) was cool enough to give me a whole selection of them!
As you might have guessed, Zomlings are entirely zombie-based rubber minifigures, the majority of them being adorable, bug-eyed little human corpses from every walk of life. Here we have a sleazy-looking camera man named
Clicker, a terrifyingly one-eyed clown named
Clownout and the cowboy,
Cowbob.
There are, of course, plenty of zomling animals, and in just my sample alone I wound up with easily the three best in series one: an octopus, an impossibly cute snake and, yes, a
zombie fly. A zombie fly with a bite taken out of its wing and a body at least as large as any of the other zombies. Their names, by the way, are Octozom, Akeem, and FOFLY!
I guess we're dealing with Umbrella corporation here, all their zombie viruses seem to make arthropods into giants.
The series isn't just called "Zomlings," though; it's
"Zomlings in the Town", because they also come with adorable, colorful little houses you can use to build a whole community of the undead with whatever kind of theme you're into.
Only invertebrates allowed in
my corpse village, thanks.
Series 1 also includes the "magic trick hotel," with a secret compartment allowing figures to "disappear." It includes both a dead belhop and a dead dog who looks a
lot like Frankenweenie, though the best thing about this is really just that it's
a hotel run by zombies that can make guests "disappear." Now we know where Zomling Town gets its food supply.
My friend also got me the Zomlings "adventure box," a collector's tin containing five exclusive, metallic "adventuring" themed Zomlings, the coolest of which is, of course, that pure red scorpion. I know the idea is probably that the scorpion and the yeti are "opponents" of the adventurers, but it's more fun to think they're a part of the adventuring team themselves.
An insert shows off not just these guy's names, but how well the figures hold up to their conceptual art. Some pull it off pretty well, certainly better than many of the more complex Trash Packs. Others, like poor Zala, come out looking like even more nondescript dead babies, but that's kind of exactly what we're paying for here, isn't it?
So I mentioned Zomlings had actually been out quite a while elsewhere in the world, and they're actually up to series
four everywhere else, featuring little cars and trucks instead of houses. Look at that shady, ghostly dead alligator guy.
Series
three included "ghost train" cars you could link up to one another, which is absolutely precious. Where do all these dead things even think they're going on their ghost train? Do they really have an infrastructure that widespread? I thought they only had a
town?
Finally, Zomlings series II apparently just offers houses in new colors, and....wait...
Who's THAT!!??
Oh my god. Is that a
human skull that's also a snail?!
I think my town has a mayor. Scratch that, I think my
life has a mayor, and I don't even know what that MEANS! That's how much I love this skullsnail!!
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