ALIEN Day is now less than a week away. I love ALIEN Day. The event is a global celebration of all things related to 20th Century Studio’s property, ALIEN. It is an official 20th Century Studios and fan oriented celebration around the world. We will see some announcements for sure, be they official or simply just the fans expressing their joy at humanity reaching the stars and our fragile interstellar civilisation being in danger of destruction by a deadly torso breeding parasitoid organism; along with Humanity’s response to combat the potential devastation it may unleash upon us. 
ALIEN Day has been celebrated ever since it was inspired by fan Alaric Hahn who proposed the date 4/26 (April 26) back in 2015. The date is inspired by the planet appearing in the ALIEN series, designated as “LV-426”. In following years, Fox adopted it as the date to be an opportunity to promote various official and licenced announcements. Typical announcements in the past included comics, books, action figures and a plethora of other merchandise items on (or around) this date. Recent years have seen declining involvement and support from Fox/20CS but fans around the world have increasingly adopted the day as one of celebration.
Nonetheless the date remains a potentially perfect opportunity for some official promotional content. Notably, for the upcoming movie, ALIEN Romulus. ALIEN Romulus will be released on August 16 (August 15 in Australia, where I live). The chance of new content relating to ALIEN Romulus being made public is good. Last year’s ALIEN Day saw director Fede Alvarez release a promotional image of the movie. This year, it’s reasonable to expect more information given the release of the movie in less than four months. Hey, if no such announcements are made, fans will go about their own celebrations. There’s always a cinema showing the original Ridley Scott ALIEN movie on this date, somewhere at least. Let’s go watch that!
-windebieste.
This figure does look clean but a significant number of parts are missing. A dome is included in the sale but it’s a reproduction part, a post market fabrication by a third party. Along with the absence of the original dome the following items are also missing: both arms, the dorsal crest between the shoulders and all four quad appendages immediately below that crest. A set of seven obvious holes penetrating the upper torso are testimony to these pieces having gone astray, leaving the figure in a dramatically incomplete condition. To offset these blatant deficiencies, both halves of the tongue are present and the mouth activation trigger appears to work as intended. This appears to be a standard US version of the toy and not one of the rarer Canadian samples. Both versions of Kenner’s ALIEN toy were distributed in Australia. A great item if its condition is of no problem to you if you live in Australia want to add one to your collection without having to pay (at least) another AU$100 for postage from the US.
Bucket leak or just a leaky bucket? We don’t know. Nothing public has been announced or released regarding this item nor any verification this leak is legitimate. Leaks of this nature can fall either side of the truth. Nonetheless, there’s some interesting features to be queried here. The head design appears to be inspired by the Protomorphs appearing in ALIEN Covenant. Maybe, the creatures in ALIEN Romulus share some design elements with that iteration of the Alien? We’ll have to wait and see.
This is a wonderful item and my very grateful thanks for permission to use these images of this sample go to 
One important feature part still extant on this vintage toy is the presence of the dorsal crest mounted between the shoulders. The fact this toy possesses this much sought after piece in place gives him value. While this is a good thing for this frequently missing part in situ, the dome and both tongue parts are absent. As is the left arm. Oddly enough, if an arm goes missing, it’s usually the left limb. Why so many of these vintage Kenner ALIEN figures lack the left arm rather than the right is a peculiar oddity I don’t understand. Nonetheless, loose limbs do become available for figure in this condition and when they do, the left arm commonly sells before any right arm also offered for sale. There’s been a few sales recently of loose items and this has been consistently the case. The left arm sells first. This imperfect figure is an ideal restoration piece. It is also equally perfect for tearing down and salvaging parts to be used in another build that may itself be missing a right arm and dorsal crest. Then sell the carcass – or remaining parts individually – on eBay. You might even get your money back.
This sample does look great. The box is showing some signs of age and light creases but is otherwise decent looking piece for a four decades old piece of packaging. The figure appears to be as good as it gets having never been removed from the insert it is mounted on. The poster is likewise present and completes the item for sale. Starting at such a low auction price of only US$0.99, this item will definitely attract a lot of interest. It will also demonstrate the value of these items when the final bid is placed. I expect it will take little to no time to reach US$100. That should happen without any bets placed. As to how much higher this item will sell for? The end value will be determined by the final bidder. At least US$600 would be expected. More than that is not out of the question. This auction can potentially break the US$1,000 ceiling. This is definitely a worthy item to watch, that’s for certain! A four figure sale for a nasty looking old toy that didn’t sell well back in 1979, though? Sure. Why not? This is in no way setting any precedents. Mind you, back in 1980, these old toys were heavily discounted. All the way down to, you know… US$7.50.
He’s lacking three pieces commonly missing from these old toys. The head dome and both pieces of the two-part tongue are absent. Other than those errant parts, he’s all there. The notorious crest between the figure’s shoulders which is frequently absent is present here. Both arms are included in the sale but they will need to be re-attached. Not a difficult task. Aside from this basically assembly, he just needs a good bath with a toothbrush in hand to knock all the dust and dirt off of him. The only real concern with this sample is the possibility of the functionality of the lever operated mouth not working.
It’s a wonderful backhanded celebration of Kenner’s ALIEN toys of yesteryear, ranging from their original nefarious release of 1979 and through the decade of the 1990s. Kenner released several product lines of toys inspired by all of the ALIEN movies during the late 20th Century. All of those toy lines featuring implacable hostile space creatures marketed towards children based on movies children were not recommended to be exposed. It’s a fabulous piece of single panel art and commentary.
Here’s more of what NECA has to say. THE NECA VAULT HAS OPENED! We’re unlocking the NECA Vault for the next 4 weeks to bring back limited quantities of some of your past favorites! Skip those aftermarket prices and treat yourself to the rare figures you missed out on with flat rate bundle shipping for all in-stock NECA Vault items! As a bonus, you can also get some of these rare finds for their original retail price! Also, don’t forget to read their
When I first read about this item, I was sure it was a gag; but no. Here’s the description direct from the publisher, “Follow Ripley and the rest of the Nostromo crew on a space adventure that introduces the alphabet from A to Z. With fun illustrations, this light-hearted re-imagining of the iconic movie ALIEN will delight fans young and old, as well as Little Golden Book collectors through(ou)t the universe.” I know people who are already speculating how this is going to work. They are wanting “C is for Chestburster”, “F is for Facehugger” and “H is for Headbite that leaves large chunks of your brains hanging out of your skull”. It’s a safe bet the usually difficult letter to assign, “X is for Xenomorph”, will be present.
So I placed my order with AliExpress, expecting an incredible piece of junk to be delivered and hoo-boy! I was not disappointed. Mind you, I would have had a completely different response had I not known the level of junk I was about to receive. It only matches the advertised sample by a significant stretch of the imagination. I sure would have been sorely disappointed had I not known exactly what was heading my way. This tragic “bait and switch” item now has a new home, it has been added to HIDEOUS PLASTIC’s lengthy examination of 
This past year has been a little scant on the ALIEN merchandise front. I’m guessing official licence holders are currently tooling up, preparing to be dedicated and committed to manufacturing tie-in goodies for that aforementioned new ALIEN movie when it is finally released. Those companies won’t be ready to make any announcements until sometime next year. Making tie-in merchandise is a lot of work but I’m guessing next year’s ALIEN Day (April 26) will be an opportunity to showcase and reveal content for us to eagerly gobble up. Such major announcements have been lacking in recent years on ALIEN Day but I’ll be covering as much as I can here on HIDEOUS PLASTIC when it happens. Good times ahead, for sure! Get Excited!
If they’re not rare, as clearly and obviously indicated here, then what is the driving factor for the high price on these old toys? A lot of it does come to to “cool” factor, for sure but there’s more than that at play here. Importantly, it’s the toy’s reputation that drives these high prices. These toys were intended for children “AGES 5 AND UP” and failed miserably at retail due to the movie ALIEN being released with an R rating in the US. The Kenner ALIEN was the first mass market toy released to retail with an adult movie rating and it happened accidentally. It also caused conservative parents to respond to its release in an extremely unfavorable way. Some claiming it was “demonic”, “offensive” or just downright inappropriate for children.
This item would have been purchased via the JCPenny catalog and accordingly posted to the purchaser via mail inside the corrugated cardboard mailer box included in the listing. Such mailer boxes are very rare. This one is in great condition but the high starting bid is difficult to justify. If you are looking for a perfect condition and unopened sample of the nefarious Kenner toy at this price, this item will not satisfy your expectations. The blue themed package has been opened and the front window is loosening around the bottom of its frame. The figure itself is in fantastic condition, true; and the presence of the ratchet zip ties continuing to fasten it to the red insert card is testimony to this fact. There’s also a poster included but it’s seen better days with multiple undesirable creases though it. This item is far from being a pristine and unopened sample that such prices can command and the presence of the third party mailer box is a great inclusion in the sale; but it hardly warrants the 