Zombies got weird. Then they got funny. Then they got plushies. Today’s sketch from the Random Object Randomogrifier was a Big Zombie. Probably the boss of whatever post-apocalyptic toy set he came from.
Sketch and Coffee Live at 5:30am Texas time
The details on this model are fantastic and it was fun to draw. He’s got muscle under the mush and denim detailed down to the stitch marks. But the real story today wasn’t just the toy. It was how we got from “zombies are boring” to “zombies are lunchbox mascots.”
I went down the rabbit hole last night and realized there weren’t any real zombie toys before the 1990s. None. Zombies were too slow, too vague, and just not fun for kids. But the rise of gross-out culture like Creepy Crawlers, slime, Garbage Pail Kids… All that primed us for weird and squishy play. Add in latchkey kids, home game consoles, and VHS horror movies playing on unsupervised TVs, and suddenly, zombies were cool. Resident Evil, Army of Darkness, and later I Am Legend and Warm Bodies turned zombies into main characters with feelings, goals, and even romantic arcs. By the time the Hotel Transylvania staff were groaning their way through shift work, the undead were fully alive in the toy aisle.
Click here to watch the sketch in real time and listen to the talk of zombie toys.
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