Post #10 - Walking Dead TV Series 2 Action Figure Bicycle Girl Zombie w/Crawling Action! by McFarlane Toys

Hey, everyone.  Mark here again, bringing you another new and very exciting way cool review.  This time around, we're going to be taking a look at the Bicycle Girl Zombie from series two of AMC's Walking Dead toy line by McFarlane Toys.

The Bicycle Girl zombie was originally featured during Episode 1 in the 1st Season of AMC's Walking Dead TV Series.

She is discovered in a field by Rick Grimes, but he is able to flee from her.  Hungry, the bicycle girl crawls away in search for food.  The next day, Rick returns for her, looking on in horror and sympathy.  As the bicycle girl begins to notice him, he apologizes for what has become of her.  As Rick's emotional conversation with the woman concludes, he shoots her, bringing her postmortem suffering to an end.

Packaging - The Bicycle Girl Zombie comes housed inside the traditional clear plastic clamshell/blister card packaging.  The artwork on the blister card features Hershel's farmhouse in the background, as well as the beaten road and grassy farm land that surrounds it.  The Walking Dead TV Title text also appears as an insert alongside the Bicycle Girl Zombie figure.  The nameplate sticker on the front of the packaging provides us with the character name of the Bicycle Girl Zombie.  The sticker also makes sure to mention of the crawling action feature. The included damaged cell phone accessory is visible just off to the right side of clamshell, but I find it odd that the packaging really doesn't make any mention of it or the story behind it.

 Packaging Score - 2 out of 5


Sculpting - The sculpt of bicycle girl looks especially great on this figure.  There is a lot of intricately detailed bits of decay to be seen throughout.  The skin texture looks dry and almost leathery.  The skin around the gnawing teeth look great.  The starved, sunken in expression carefully emulates the emotion derived from the bicycle girl character as seen on the show.  There's a certain longing & despair to it.  

The hair might be the most flattering article on the Bicycle Girl. It's relatively tame and fuller than it might should have been, but it still nicely contours to the neck and shoulder area.

 Looking very thin and frail now, the body of Bicycle Girl is in a state of rapid decomposition.   Her once alive body is now a road map of a horror.  Large portions of flesh torn from her arms, chest, stomach and back reveal Bicycle Girl's bare skeletal remains.

The Bicycle Girl's lower half is almost non-existent.  There is one small piece of intestine and an upper thigh bone left to remain.  I would have liked to have seen a bit more entrails, making it just a tad bit closer to her TV show counterpart.

 The removable pair of pants are okay but they're not exactly perfect.  The seem to provide a little more emphasis and shape for what little remains underneath.  The buttocks area of the pants just seem a little too full to me.  

There is an amount of tearing and weathering on the legs of the jeans.  I only wish that the rest of the pants had been given some sort of a distressed treatment as well.  The bottom half of the jeans are okay, but the top still looks a little too new for my taste.  After all, this woman has been dragging herself across the ground night and day.  The initial prototype images of this figure managed to create that look.  I only wish it had made it to production.

Sculpting Score - 4 out of 5

Paint - The paint on Bicycle Girl is considerably well done.  There are only a few areas that I believe the color wash might be a little too heavy.  I would have liked to have seen a little more consistency between the skin tones.  The arms look a little more putrid and yellow, while her back seems to be an entirely different shade of brown.

The use of various hues of brown, black and red really add a good amount of diversity to the bloody sections.  This helps provide several different stages of gore, from the dark congealed matter to the more recent carnage.  The added gloss really makes the blood pop, giving it that reflective nature of liquid.

 The base doesn't look too bad.  I'm a little sad that the figure isn't really removable from this base, as it sort of destroys a possible setup for a diorama.  Especially when some of the figures in this line may or may not come with bases.

The color wash on the grass is a little too dark, and I wish there had been more variations of green used.  I don't think the base adds points, but it doesn't necessarily take away any either.

Paint Score - 4 out of 5

Articulation - Bicycle Girl doesn't come with much articulation, but she has never had the need to stand either.

She comes with a ball jointed neck which is slightly restricted by her hair.  She has a pin/disc ball jointed shoulder, which comes as somewhat of an eye-sore.  It breaks up the organic look of the figure in my opinion.  I really wish they could use a suitable alternative for these types of joints.  Bicycle Girl also comes with pin elbows and a cut at the wrists allowing for a basic swivel.  The thigh bone, attached at the hip is a pin joint, acting as a simple socket.  The same goes for the piece of single dragging piece of intestine.  

 Her articulation is sort of designed to work in conjunction with the included action feature, which is sort of a let down in my opinion.  When untouched the figure is left in an the outstretched pose across the grassy base, but my pressing the lever located on the bottom of the base - bicycle girl pushes herself up onto her right arm, her left arm extended with a hungry grasp. 

While I did have some fun with this action feature… It would have been just as easy to pose it in the same manner if the figure had been removable from the base.  The articulation is sufficient enough to pull off the reaching grasp pose, and so this action feature consequently creates more restrictions than uses.

I believe McFarlane toys likes to add these action features as huge marketable selling points, and while they may look good in prospect on the store shelves.. it can only hurt their reputation in the long run.  Additionally, I believe these added action features drive up manufacture costs and price point, but if the end product from these action features continuously leave more to be desired, then maybe it's time to leave them out.

In my opinion, I'd rather go without and see a lower price tag.  

But on the not so monetary front, there is definitely room to meet in the middle.  If McFarlane toys had chose not to attach the right arm to the base and allow the figure to instead be removable, then we might have had an acceptable compromise.

Articulation Score - 1.5 out of 5

Accessories - Bicycle Girl comes with a broken blackberry phone, but I can't seem to find the relevance behind it.  I thought perhaps I missed something in the Walking Dead Spin-off Web Series that featured the origin of the Bicycle Girl, but despite my research, I came up with nothing.

It also seems like a pointless accessory as it doesn't really provide any sort of interactivity between it and the figure.  What is the supposed to be for?  It will more than likely end up as an accessory to another figure of mine, but even then I'd be hard pressed to find a figure that needs a cracked phone...

Accessories Score - 1 out of 5

Conclusion - While I do think Bicycle Girl Zombie is pretty cool, I find it hard to validate a price point of around 16 dollars.  While some of the humans characters in the line possess a less than accurate likeness of the actors from the show, the zombie characters seem to be worth picking up.  Even though this figure is offered at a higher price point, I find it forgivable to shell out for it.. to feed my ravenous zombie obsession.

Overall Score - 2.5 out of 5