UPDATE: Sold for US$310.48 (Allowing for currency conversion and sold in UK.)
This item has been listed for sale on eBay for a few months now. It’s an average condition Kenner ALIEN action figure. It’s a little knocked around, the left arm has broken off, the dorsal crest is missing, the dome is cracked and warped; and all four dorsal spines are internally damaged, twisted out of their correction orientation. So the big question here, what makes it so special? And is it really worth the asking price of over US$300?
There are always about a dozen Kenner ALIEN toys for sale on eBay. It’s testimony to the large number of these things Kenner made back in 1979. An item like this should be rare after 40 years yet it is not. eBay is constantly stocked with them. Most of them are the same common version that endlessly populate the service but this one is different. Why is this item so different from the other ‘common’ versions? The fact it is for sale in the UK goes some way to explaining why this is the case.
Most of these toys were manufactured and sold in the US. Samples like this one were probably made in Canada – under licence of the Irwin Toy company, a leading toy manufacturer in Canada who often manufactured and distributed Kenner merchandise locally. ALIEN toys made in Canada would have been produced in much lesser numbers than those south of the border. They were also more likely to have been distributed to other parts of the globe, particularly the UK and Europe where samples of these figures outnumber those that were made in the US.
There are some telltale signs this is indeed the rare Canadian variant. The dome has yellowed differently and while these loose parts can be easily migrated across samples, it’s unusual for that to occur. Especially when other indicators are present that belie this figure’s origin. Excess glue present on the arms and chin are signs this item was made outside of the US. The figure itself is also a lighter shade of grey when compared to its US counterparts. All these details provide a very strong case this item was made in Canada. There’s a high likelihood manufacturing details are absent from the jaw’s activation trigger but no information is available from the vendor and photos fail to document this fact. The absence of such details are critical in verifying the figure’s origin. Lacking these details means it was made in Canada.
How rare is this version of the figure, though? It was made in considerably smaller numbers than the US variant, that is for certain. Of all the 1979 Kenner ALIEN figures currently available on eBay, this is the only sample of its type. Given the banged up condition and missing the dorsal crest, is it worth US$300? On those grounds alone, probably not. The scarcity of these items isn’t very well recognised outside of very knowledgeable people who are few in number. Most purchasers interested in buying a Kenner ALIEN toy would pass this one up simply because of its degraded condition. Alas, the perception is justified as over US$300 is a lot to pay for an incomplete, mangled old toy.
This item has been available for sale for months, now. It should have sold. There probably isn’t enough of a market for old Kenner ALIEN toys in the UK to justify the price. Nonetheless, even at this price, it’s still a worthy addition to a welcoming collection. This item is rare. It is not the same as other, more commonly found US samples of the toy. This might not be a great sample of this variant – but it’s a variant you don’t see too often and in any condition it deserves some attention.
…and that makes it special.
-Windebieste.
