Subbuteo Zombies

Subbuteo was so popular in the late 70's late they looked into ways of painting the teams with machines - the zombie figure (designed to fit the machines) was introduced in order to meet demand.

History tells us it was an unpopular move, the figure being deemed ugly and featureless by collectors.  To be fair they had a point, it isn't as aesthetically pleasing as the Heavyweight figure it replaced.  The zombie's brief reign was over with the introduction of the lightweight figure in 1980.

Despite the move to machine printing during this period, many teams were still hand painted, in fact many teams were a mix of the two i.e. printed teams with trim being added later by hand.

A selection of zombie teams

Ref 11 - Queen's Park Rangers mp 

Ref 13 - Blackpool hp

Ref 16 - Arsenal mp 

Ref 18 - Bury mp

mp = machine painted
hp = hand painted