Review – Screaming Pumpkin Skull Zombi

Released in 2007 by Vinyl Junkies, this Screaming Pumpkin Skull Zombi vinyl toy is 100% scarylishiousness that has to be held to be really appreciated. It’s not huge — about 5-inches tall and roughly 5-inches from tip of hand to tip of hand — but it feels fantastic. And the sculpt and colors come together to make me ask myself: Why didn’t I buy any Vinyl Junkies toys before this one?

That’s One Twisted Halloween Monstrosity

With a skeletal body wrapped in bandages and a jack ‘o lantern head, the Screaming Pumpkin Skull Zombi makes a great Halloween-themed toy that proves that Ministry was right when they released Everyday is Halloween. My Screaming Pumpkin Skull Zombi is a translucent pinkish-purple, but if you check out Toy Tokyo you’ll also find a translucent yellow and a solid orange . . . and I want them all!

So Let’s Take a Look at This Guy

With just three points of articulation — the head swivels and each arm swivels at the shoulders — this isn’t a highly poseable toy, but he’s got enough articulation that you can position him in kinda menacing positions with arms raised, one arm raised, or maybe just looking back over one shoulder. But it’s not the articulation that makes this toy so much fun. Nope, as you can tell by the pics it’s clearly the sculpt.

Sharp Teeth and a Textured Mouth

About the first thing I did when I started playing with the Screaming Pumpkin Skull Zombi was to run my fingers along the edge of his mouth. It’s not a horribly deep undercut that creates the mouth, but those teeth are significantly sharper than I expect to find on vinyl toys. Most vinyl toys are fairly soft and round, and even when one has “points” they’re usually rounded at the point; but the teeth on this guy actually feel sharp to the touch. Impressive, and it makes me wonder just what else vinyl can be forced to do.

The Pumpkin’s Head

But it’s not just the teeth that make this jack ‘o lantern guy so damned cool. The eyes may be doll eyes, but their set into jack ‘o lantern-like impressions in the pumpkin-styled surface of the face. If you expand the first photo and look closely at the face you’ll see what I mean. And one of the eyes even goes slightly behind the plastic; some real effort was put into the design and assembly of this toy and it’s these details that help make me love it so much.

Wipe that Paint!

The Screaming Pumpkin Skull Zombi isn’t painted using airbrushing or detail work, but (I think) was painted by covering the toy with black paint and then wiping off the excess paint. This gets black paint down into the cracks and crevices of the toy’s “skin,” and the wiping smears the paint a bit in those deeper areas which gives the entire toy a more organic feel than if the details had been perfectly painted. I’ve used this trick a few times myself — and you see it a lot on Real X Head releases — and the Screaming Pumpkin Skull Zombi is one of the best examples of this technique that I’ve held in my hands. Take a really close look at some of the photos and notice how the paint fades away in spots. Very cool.

Closing Thoughts

This is my first Vinyl Junkies toy, but I promise you that it won’t be my last. I’ve looked at their toys online before — the Skull Viking (see toybot studios) has caught my attention a few times — but now that I own one I am sure I’ll be keeping a closer eye on the sale threads at Skullbrain. This is one toy that is even better in person than it is in photos.

And it would be wrong for this guy to not have any friends.

Philip Reed is now thinking that the next time he gets paid he’ll have to grab the yellow Screaming Pumpkin that’s over at Toy Tokyo. Then this pink-purple guy will have a buddy . . . but who knows what sort of trouble they’ll cause with the other toys in Phil’s collection?