Friday, June 21, 2013

Alien action figures, or if you will, toys....

hi there

Star Wars is responsible for this. no ifs, no buts. the huge success of toys from the original Star Wars film saw people tale movie merchandising seriously as big business. that meant that any film released was looked at as a possible inspiration for a series of toys.

one can only imagine that someone sat and looked at the details of the film Alien without watching the film itself and clocked "this will be a good way to sell toys to kids". whoever that person was saw the film at some point after designing the toys but well before they were ever manufactured and released. they never saw the shelves of a toy store in the 70s, but soon you will be able to own them!



someone called Super 7 Store are selling them, presumably on behalf of ReAction. they will be available, if i have read their web thing right, in October 2013. i would be very, very interested in getting them!

you will have, no doubt, like me noticed that Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto are missing. ho hum, nothing is perfect. as and when you or i get this set of figures, we will just have to pretend that they are already dead. or maybe just use some Star Wars figures as replacements for them.

the idea of making toys based on a film truly meant for adults only is bonkers. i know these days they make all sorts of similar things to these (except more artistic and accurate, i suppose) based on more mature audience films for collectors, but no such market existed in the 70s. or for much of the 80s, for that matter.

that the Alien toys idea existed will no doubt give a new lease on life to one of the great urban legends around this sort of thing. for years now there's been a story that He Man (and the Masters Of The Universe entire) was actually a "quick fix" to toys made for the film Conan The Barbarian but unusable due to the content of the film. as in, Conan knocks a camel out with one punch in it is considered one of the tamest moments. whereas it would be nice if true, i am led to believe that story is utter nonsense.



i wonder if they had been bonkers enough to go ahead and sell these if my Mum & Dad might have bought them for me for Christmas at the time? they would no doubt have spotted them and assumed they were something to do with Star Wars, so i might have got lucky!

awesome things like this, alas, tend to be for sale "in the USA only". i hope it's not the case here, as i would imagine the world is full of Alien fans, many of whom (like me) would not hesitate in buying these! excellent to you if you managed to get your hands on this impressive set!



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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