Toy Fair News.  Diamond Comic Distributors and Alliance Game Distributors have secured exclusive hobby rights for Monopoly: The Walking Dead Survival Edition (MSRP $39.99) and Risk: The Walking Dead Survival Edition.  The zombie-themed editions of these perennially popular board games will be released in the fall of 2013.  These Monopoly and Risk Walking Dead editions are licensed directly from Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic book published by Image Comics and the graphics they utilize in packaging reflect the license’s comic book origins.
 
Alliance and Diamond have secured exclusives on these sorts of themed editions of mass market board games in the past.  For example in 2011, Diamond and Alliance had the hobby market exclusive on Risk: Legacy, a version of the game that allowed gameplay to "evolve" over multiple plays (see "'Risk: Legacy'").
With ratings for The Walking Dead TV series at all time highs (see "'Walking Dead' Midseason Premiere Sets Ratings Records") and Walking Dead graphic novel collections topping sales in both the direct and bookstore markets, it’s no surprise that merchandising for the series was very much in evidence at Toy Fair with Cryptozoic adding two new Walking Dead games (see "Cryptozoic Readies New 'Walking Dead Board Game' for September"), and McFarlane Toys showed off its Walking Dead Series 4 Action Figures and a grotesquely cool box for the The Walking Dead Season 3 Blu-ray release (see "McFarlane Shows Off 'Walking Dead Series 4' Figures").