Out of the Toybox (69): Aliens and Predators

 

So here is the saga of Aliens and Predators, as far as I can piece a brief outline of it together. In 1979 the movie Alien comes out, and it had this one piece of merchandising by Kenner, an 18-inch-tall figure of the Alien, well-modelled, but pretty much out of scale to other action figures, maybe even the original 12-inch G. I. Joe. It didn’t matter, as parents’ groups soon shut down production in protest; they did not want a children’s toy connected to an R-rated movie. We bought ours at a garage sale. It was complete except for the tail. The figure played a small part in a family haunted house once on a time. It suffered further dismemberment through the years and now the leftover pieces … are in the Big Toybox?

The Predator movie came out in 1984 and Aliens (a sequel to Alien) in 1986. The franchises were brought together in 1989 by Dark Horse in the Aliens vs. Predator comic book series. Aliens having proved less R-rated and more action adventure-like, Kenner starts bringing a related figure line out in 1992, followed by a Predators line in 1993. Both bring figures from non-canonical ‘expanded universes’: Aliens produced by infesting different animals, Predators of different clans and castes. The Alien and Predators franchises keep producing movies throughout the years, including a couple of crossover films.

Meanwhile, notable productions by Kenner include the Aliens vs. Predators Two-Pack and the Alien Queen Hive Playset, both in 1994, and the larger Alien: Resurrection figures in 1997. McFarlane and NECA have also made several contributions to Alien figures, some of which may well be mixed in with this lot, but I don’t feel inclined to search much deeper into that.

Some personal notes: lots of the toys came with smaller face-huggers of various kinds which I don’t show here. That Alien figure held together by rubber bands has the unfortunate ‘action feature’ of exploding apart when you press a button. Because I had been saving the ‘cards’ (backs of the packaging) for a while before the offer began, we had enough proofs-of-purchase to send off for multiples of the exclusive ‘Invisible Predator’. Don’t know what happened to the head of that red translucent ‘Lava Predator’. I don’t think that green armored figure at the end of that one line is a Predator at all; it has a tail. The ‘dreadlocks’ on the Predator Clan Leaders are very flimsy; one is totally lacking them and on the other they are barely hanging on. That pale figure in the middle of the 'Warriors’ line-up at the end looks like a cross between a Predator and an Alien; is it even in the line? The human figures in the line are in a different bin. I have a lot of doubles from Kenny.

Coming Up: Disney!