Contest: Win Your Own Box O Zombies

We're always on the lookout for zombie items and recently spoke with Shawn Recinto at Box O Zombies. Here's our interview, where we asked Shawn all about his zombie figures and we are also giving Daily Dead readers a chance to win their own Box O Zombies:

Thank you for taking the time to talk with Daily Dead. Can you tell our readers about what Box O Zombies is and how the idea came about?

Thanks Jonathan, basically I peeked in on my sons while they were playing in their play room and I noticed them playing with their little green army men in my daughter's doll house.  I asked them what they were doing with their sister's doll house and they replied "defending it from a zombie attack". I asked them where the zombies were and they pointed to some lego guys that were in front of the doll house.  I thought to myself, "Those don't look like good zombies" and I began searching the web for little plastic zombies on the internet.

This was back in 2010 and there really were no reasonable zombie figures on the market that looked scary and the one that were on the market were either ridiculously expensive or too cutesie/cartooney for zombies, so that is when I got the idea to make my own zombies.  I wanted them as realistic as possible so they were based off the Zombie Survival Guide zombies.

There is some interesting zombie artwork on your website and we like the design of the individual figures as well. Who was responsible for the artwork?

The original zombie designer is Ryan Anthony Blake (http://ryananthonyblake.com/) and he designed and digitally sculpted the 6 zombies for the first series.  We also have Anthony Sixto (http://www.sixtoart.com/) who did all the illustrations for the zombie figure origins as seen on our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/boxozombies

Can you tell us about the development process for these figures?

Here comes the Mr. Rogers part :)

When I started doing this, I had no idea ho to make toy figures.  My full time job is being a tech consultant / programmer.  The closest experience I had with manufacturing was having a company make promotional plush toys for a mobile game I created back in 2004, so I started there.

First, I had Ryan model the 6 zombies in 3D (we originally had 13 zombies but that was too expensive for their level of detail to make on my budget). Then I sent a sample figure to a few US companies that specialized in making toys. I wanted to put a "Made in USA" stamp on them, but they were way too expensive.  I then looked to go the traditional manufacturing route.  Virtually no US company would do it and the ones that had the capability to would end up shipping it off to China, so I eliminated the middle man and went directly to China myself.  We picked a company to prototype the figures via 3D printer then had them run some test by hand casting and molding the figures to see ho they would turn out. We liked the results so much that we had them do all the manufacturing for us: from the creation of the molds, to the labor and assembling of the figures (the Box O Zombies are not solid pieces), as well as the packaging.  We just provided all the designs and they implemented them for us.  That is pretty much what we did to get the figures from idea to final product.

You currently offer green and purple zombies. Are there plans for additional colors and new zombie figures?

Ah a very good question.  Green is currently the best seller but purple is not far behind in terms of sales.  Basically we picked green and purple because he had trouble just picking just one color: The bright green really help to show the details and the pale purple looked closest to dead skin.  As far as other colors, I am not sure.  If enough people ask for other colors, we will probably make them :)  We like to make our customers/fans happy :)

I see that you have a limited edition Samurai Zombie statue. Where did the idea come from and why did you decide to expand into larger statues from smaller figures?

The original idea came from Ryan and Anthony.  It is a bit of a diversion from our main line of Box O Zombies but the idea they had was cool as heck:  Anthony wanted to create a Samurai Zombie and Ryan wanted to create a female steam punk zombie, so we decided we will make them in small, limited quantities to see how it goes.  They are not a part of the story line to the Box O Zombies figures, but they do have their own mini stories that go with them.

What are some of your favorite zombie movies? What obscure zombie movie would you suggest to our readers?

The mainstream ones I liked were Zombieland and Romero's zombie films.  We also like Shaun of the Dead and 28 days later... probably the most obscure zombie flick I liked was Fido.

Do you prefer slow zombies or fast zombies in your movies? How about in real life?

In movies, I kind of like both because they both can fill a purpose.  In real life I would prefer your every day shambling zombies because they are easy to manage in small groups.  The adrenaline pumped up runner zombies scare the living hell out of me.  I also think bathsalts might be the initial start to real zombies, its only a matter of time before they perfect the formula ;)

What three living (non fictional) people would you pick to be on your zombie survival team?

First, I'll have to eliminate all hotties because if my wife reads this interview I'll get in trouble ;)  I'd probably take one of the guys from Sons of Guns/Red Jacket Firearms because of their expertise and innovation with firearms.  I'd also like Les Stroud from Survivor Man because of his survival expertise.  And finally Kari Byron from the Mythbusters because (hotness aside)  she is a whiz with making things that could greatly increase our chances at survival.  If I were to switch one person out, I'd probably switch out the firearms guy for D.r Oz because I think having a medical expert would give us a major survival boost.

Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Do you have anything else you'd like to share with our readers?

Not a problem Jonathan. If your readers would like their very own set of Box O Zombies, they can check out www.boxozombies.com and keep an eye out for more cool zombie things we have on the way :)