Looking for a unique Valentine's Day gift?
You'd better hope your significant other has a strong stomach if you choose one of Phillip Blackman's gruesome zombie bear designs.
The artist's 'Undead Teds' have been selling so fast, he has been struggling to keep up with the demand.
Most frequently requested is the £59 ($92) Valentine's Day teddy, which holds its ripped-out heart in its paw.
Mr Blackman, who creates his gory designs by transforming old toys using the same type of special effects make-up used on film sets, says that he has been overwhelmed by their popularity.
"The demand is astonishing," he told the Mail Online. "As soon as I make them, they're gone.
"I put up three new bears on my website this week and they were all sold within 90 seconds."
Mr Blackman, a long-term fan of Night of the Living Dead creator George Romero, hit on the idea for making zombie bears after a bizarre conversation with his fiancee.
"She had a terrible cold at the time and we'd been talking about a gift for a friend's baby," he told the paper.
"With a very stuffy nose "teddy-bear" kept coming out as "deady-bear", and we joked about zombie teddies that creep from under your bed at night to feast on your brains while you sleep."
The bears, which each take Mr Blackman in excess of eight hours to create, not including drying time, are available on his online Etsy store.
Customers can even send in their own bears and request specific customized injuries.
Mr Blackman added, "They've all been great fun to make, but of all the ones I've made so far my favourites are the Valentine ones, holding their torn-out hearts aloft as a grisly gift to their lovers. Horrible."
Comments