Shaun Of The Dead “Winchester 2-Pack” action figures
As a child I always enjoyed horror films. I remember watching Freddy and Jason far before it was probably age appropriate for me. But I think it was okay because even at a young age I got the humor behind it. I wasn’t scared of Chucky because I was too busy laughing at his quips and one-liners. I thought Freddy should have been a stand-up comedian, I’d go see that. Humor and horror are two things that have always gone together. Laughing breaks the tension in a stressful life and death situation. Out of this necessity to “keep it light” amongst all the death and gore the genre of Horror-Comedy was born. Films like Creepshow and Return Of The Living Dead mixed comedy in with the scares and thrills. My all-time personal favorite from this genre is Shaun Of The Dead, Edgar Wright’s brilliant mix of zombie apocalypse and love story. I’ll admit I was a little late to the party on Shaun Of The Dead. I missed out on seeing it in the theaters when it was originally released but found it on DVD and have been obsessed ever since.
I’ve always collected toys. I guess as a kid I didn’t think of it as collecting as much as just “acquiring to play with”. But I had my G.I. Joes and my WWF Wrestlers, my DC Superfriends and my A-Team. So when I got a job about 10 years ago at a toy store it re-opened the flood gates to this particular addiction. I started collecting hard-core and could always be found trying to track down some hard to find action figure. One of the first series of figures I started collecting was the McFarlane Movie Maniacs. The first series had Freddy, Jason, and Leatherface; the un-holy trinity of horror movie characters. I subsequently collected almost all of the figures from the first 5 series of Maniacs. But my obsession eventually cooled and now I collect toys on a much less frequent basis. It’s now a much bigger deal if I decide to plop down the funds and purchase a figure (maybe it’d be different if I had money to burn, who knows?).
A definite must-have for me though was the Shaun Of The Dead figures. As soon as I heard that there would be a Shaun figure included in the upcoming Cult Classic’s series from NECA I had to have it. It was about as cool as I could have hoped for in terms of a sculpt and the accessories. I no longer open my toys and have chose to leave them MIB (mint in box, in case you didn’t know the term). I don’t get the fun of opening them and displaying them the way I used to. But I still enjoy having them and collecting.
After the successful sales of the Shaun figure, NECA decided to do more by releasing a 2-Pack that included a figure of Shaun’s best friend Ed as well. They changed up the Shaun figure slightly and set them in the Winchester stand-off from a later part in the film. Both sculpts look excellent and as before the accessories are spot on, from Ed’s video game controller to Shaun’s molotov cocktail. I highly suggest picking them up if you’re a fan of SOTD. They look cool set up a shelf next to the TV or displayed on a wall. Mine are currently gracing my “Halloween” theme table in my apartment. They are relatively easy to find online. There are lots of toy and collector websites, not to mention the usual eBay and such. I bought mine at the fantastic collectibles shop Blast From The Past in Burbank for about $30.