Toy Review: Diamond Select The Walking Dead Figures

Rick and Michonne bring the comic to life in 7-inch scale

May 07, 2025

The Walking Dead has gotten a lot of action figures over the years, mostly from McFarlane, in multiple scales, but Diamond Select has found the one angle Todd did not cover — 7-inch figures based on the comics. They’re in black and white, mimicking the comics themselves, sort of — most “black and white” figures are actually grayscale, like the effect of a black and white movie, rather than black linework on white plastic, as most comics are. That said, as a movie-style effect, it’s pretty perfect. The image below, for example, is technically in color. No digital color-stripping or filters involved. Does it look it?

Now, let me backtrack for a second, and use the soapbox of my own site to peel back the curtain a bit. I’ve done toy reviews for a long time, and at times, I’ve had some really difficult editors who knew nothing about what they were talking about. Okay, maybe said editors were actually all at the same publication, and acted like they knew everything about everything, assigning me toy articles because of my “expertise” but then telling me how to do them. One actual paraphrase, as close to the original quote as I can remember: “It’s not about what collectors want. It’s about every article mentioning Avengers Endgame doing good numbers.”

Oh, and then there was, “Our readers don’t want to see other toys in your picture. Just the one being reviewed.” This for a review of that notoriously isolationist toy called LEGO, that’s totally not meant to play with other sets, right?

I used to include funny speech bubbles in some of my review images, and then one editor told me to stop. I think I offended her by either making a joke about women loving Bed, Bath and Beyond (They fucking DO! Ask my wife!) or mocking Andrew Lincoln’s fake Southern accent in The Walking Dead. Now that I’m back in control, my favorite speech-bubble-adding site no longer exists. Ironically, I came close to running a revived ToyFare magazine at one point, if Wizard had had their shit together.

Anyhow, because I can, and because I found a way, I now proudly present…

Not the most elegant speech bubbles, like those the old site created, and they’re harder to do, but the joke still works. I hope.

The first series of Diamond’s Walking Dead features “Richonne,” which is smart, as they’re the two most popular characters (Daryl isn’t in the comics), so even if the line doesn’t go any further, fans might still buy these. Series 2, due in June, includes Negan and a walker, for $29.99 each plus whatever the tariff surcharge might be by then. (That’s already a price hike: Rick and Michonne should still be available for $24.99 apiece.)

The figures come in the box-card packaging that’s become standard for Diamond’s Lord of the Rings and some of their other figures like Captain Jack Sparrow. The photos on the back of both boxes are the same, but the characters have different bios.

Inside, the figures are held together in sandwich trays that are held together on the sides with tape, and in other places with plastic shirt-ties. It’s not 100% collector friendly, but if you clip the shirt ties off it’s close.

The backdrop card adds a hint of color, and a dynamic flash.

Not sure exactly what that’s meant to be, but it evokes peeling paint and a photography flash. If you want to pose your figures against it, it evokes the old joke about “black and white and red all over.”

Rick is the fancier of the two figures, with two different heads, duffel bag to carry his guns (a rifle and a shotgun), a holster for his pistol, axe, and multiple hands. The hands are a little big, proportionately, but they are also bandaged, which would make them larger for real. The duffel bag is contoured to bend around his back.

Michonne has fewer alternate hands, and unlike Rick’s, which are disc-and-pin, they’re limited ball joints. She includes a handbag the same rifle as Rick, and her katana with sheath. There’s a minor issue with this figure in that her hands are loose around the sword, a problem that can be ameliorated slightly if you give her a two-hand pose. It’s still looser than one might want, however.

It’s also a touch looser in the sheath — after I finished this review, I examined the figure to find the sword had departed its holster. It took a bit of looking around the couch with my phone flashlight to find it.

The likenesses are pretty dead-on to the art, with only Rick’s five o’clock shadow looking like a shading effect. That aside, these do not skimp on the details, and don’t simplify the sculpt downward using “comic” as an excuse, like so many other toys do. If you wanted these to be “realistic,” all that would need to change are the heads, and maybe not even those with the right paint job.

Rick holds all his guns and weapons, no problem, Michonne is better with the gun than her sword, the latter of which may be more for aesthetics anyway.

As far as articulation goes, aside from the wrists, they have ball necks, shoulders, and hips (Michonne’s are restricted by her skirt), ball mid-torso, cut waist, hinge and swivel ankles, cut upper thighs on Rick but not Michonne, and disc-and-pin ball joints at the elbows and knees, which are better concealed by Rick’s sculpt than Michonne’s — because she’s thinner, her elbows look a bit like the ball joints on some McFarlane figures’ wrists, or Revoltechs, which does give her more range of motion there, admittedly. Michonne is probably not going to do radical ninja poses, but for the most part, these figures will do most conceivable poses you’d want them to do.

That said, once the walker comes out in series 2, we’ll be able to put that to a better test.

Check out the full galleries below: