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Ah man, if only this chick had been Irish instead of English, we could have opened this review with a Cranberries reference!
In life, Paige's alabaster skin helped her stand
out from the rest of the Divas. As a zombie, she looks right at home among the undead masses.
Hey! They stole our joke! We were going to say that Paige was the only wrestler whose skin would be darker when they turned into a zombie (because the fact that she's super pale is the only thing I know about her), but the text on the back of the card beat me to it. You know what that means: research montage!
Paige was born Saraya-Jade Bevis, and had her first professional wrestling match at the ripe old age of 13 (filling in when another wrestler couldn't make it to the show). That wasn't her first time participating in a match, though, because her mother, "Sweet Saraya Knight," didn't realize she was pregnant and was still taking bumps at seven months. Paige eventually signed with the WWE, becoming both NXT Women's champ and WWE Divas champ simultaneously.
As seen in the Triple H review, most of the WWE Zombies are a minty green color - Paige, meanwhile, is pure white like a member of The Endless (thus undermining our planned joke in a second way). Other than the red blood and some dirt on her left leg, the only color on the figure are the dark purple circles around her blank eyes.
Zombie Paige is based on the Elite Collection figure, though there are a few noteworthy sculptural differences. Between the neck and the thighs, nothing is changed: she's wearing a bikini top with wide straps that cross over her chest and her back, a studded belt, and booty shorts that lace up the sides. They're black here rather than purple on the previous figure, again adding to the Endless vibe.
There are small cuts on her chin and on her temple,
but most of her wounds are on her legs (though if Mattel were creating this figure right now, she'd probably have something going on with her neck). A bite seems to have been taken out of her right knee, and there are lots of cuts and tears on her left thigh. The biggest injury is a simply massive chunk taken out of her left calf. Is that where she was initially infected? Did it happen in the ring? Protip: don't get into a physical confrontation with a zombie. The smudgy brown paint around the gash is distracting and
poorly done, but credit to Mattel's sculptors: Paige usually wears kneesocks or leggings or something, but on this figure they've fallen down, crumpling to the tops of her boots. That's nice attention to detail!
Since this mold originated in the Elite Collection, the articulation is good. Paige has a balljointed head, swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel biceps, hinged elbows, swivel wrists, a balljointed torso, swivel waist, balljointed hips, swivel thighs, hinged knees, swivel boot tops and hinged ankles. The right bicep on mine was stuck, but a dip in some boiling water allowed it to be separated and reattached, and now it works just fine.
The packaging is just as moody and
creepy as previously described, with the ragged edges, the hands clawing at a wrestling ring, and a zombified drawing of Paige on the side. It's a nice drawing, similar to the toy in that it has dark circles around the eyes and a cut on the mouth, but it's also slightly more damaged than the toy, because her fingers appear to be bloodied and broken, and there's something going on with her pants, too. Has she got a rash? The blister on the card isn't as uniquely fun as HHH's was - it's just a rectangle with some slashes in the corners.
Before beginning this review, I knew nothing about Paige other than that Martin of The Mark Remark thinks she's dreamy. And while it turns out she's apparently pretty impressive, her in-ring skills have nothing to do with why this figure is fun. She'd be better (for our purposes) if she were a bit more wounded and torn to pieces, but a white-skinned zombie girl is a nice thing to have handy.
-- 10/26/16
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