The tradition of glow in the dark Alien toys and action figures has a long history dating back four decades to when the original Kenner ALIEN toy was released in October 1979, just in time for Christmas. The 18 inch action figure boasted multiple points of articulation, including a unique trigger operated jaw and tongue assembly along with a glow in the dark paint pattern feature on its head.
The design of this luminous feature closely resembles the skull that is clearly visible in the Alien suit as designed by HR Giger. Taking This obviously concerning feature and making it a prominent part of their ALIEN toy doesn’t appear to have troubled Kenner Products at the time of its design. On the contrary, it’s clear the bare skull face was intended to be highlighted as a distinct feature and selling point of the children’s toy.
The shape and contours of the paint pattern delineate this prominent gruesome feature with deliberate intent to emulate it and when charged with a bright light the result is a death’s head seen glowing in the dark. This feature was not solely an attempt to serve the toy with a sense of accuracy, it also lends it with nothing short of an intimidating and creepy ambience. Kenner clearly wanted to ensure this toy had the desired affect.
Upon release of the toy, this glow in the dark feature is known to have been distressing to some children as young as five years old, whose age group this toy was intended for. Youngsters are known to have refused keeping the toy in their room, keeping it in a closet or simply refused to have it present at all due to the glowing death’s head visible in their rooms at night. Subsequently, an unknown number of Kenner ALIEN toys were returned to their place of purchase by less than impressed parents whose distressed children failed to sleep at night.
As a counterpoint to this response, it is also known some children loved the toy with several accounts expressed by owners for their childhood enthusiasm for it included actually sleeping with this ungainly plaything with it in their bed. Regardless of this necrotic feature and the obvious discomfort the largely styrene constructed toy such children must have tolerated in bed with them, such anecdotes are not unknown.
During the 1990s, Kenner Products would again revisit the ALIEN property with a series of more child friendly toys, this time targeting children as young as four years old. During this decade, Kenner would produce multiple lines of toys but none of these ALIENS lines of figures and toys possessed any glow in the dark ability or features.
Kenner would eventually be closed down by their parent company, Hasbro, in 2000 and any chance the company would return to make more ALIEN toys that glowed in the dark were dashed. Nonetheless, the old 1979 Kenner ALIEN would be revisited multiple times during the 2nd decade of the 21st century by other companies wanting to pick up on this tradition.
2014 saw the first of Gentle Giant’s immense 25% re-scaling of the toy. This San Diego Comic Con exclusive was not only 24 inches tall – and substantially larger than Kenner’s original release – it was a complete glow in the dark figure. It’s an enormous and outlandish celebration of the of the old toy, limited to just 250 pieces. Made all the more impressive by being cast in glow in the dark material from head to toe.
Gentle Giant would follow this large and lurid action figure with an equally large tribute version of the Kenner Products toy in 2015. This version matched Gentle Giant’s immediate predecessor in size but was more of a conventional 24 inch tall tribute with all features intact. This included the painted features of the head, emulating those present in the original Kenner Products toy with the only deviation being the paint pattern extending to the full length of the head. It also glowed in the dark.
Kenner Products manufactured no toys or action figures to accompany the release of ALIENS in 1986, no doubt due to the uproar and poor sales of their 1979 ALIEN product line faux pas. Nonetheless, collectible toy manufacturer, Super7, stepped in to fill this void in 2016 with a series of SuperSize ALIENS toys and commenced this line with a celebratory 30th Anniversary “prototype” figure cast in pale blue, mimicking what a possible test shot could look like.
Their second release in the series, the Classic Toy Edition, in 2017 was a more conventional tribute version speculating on what a mass market variant would actually look like. This release duplicted the look and feel of the original Kenner Products toy but was modified to suggest it being based on the creatures seen in the 1986 sequel. This figure boasted all the features present in the vintage toy along with a glow in the dark paint pattern along the top of the head. It differs in this regard only in the shape of the head modified to match the creatures appearing in the movie and it was painted accordingly. The luminous paint pattern on the Super7 tribute figure is restricted to both sides of the head. As the creatures in this movie possess no skull face, this feature remained unpainted.
Super7’s 2017 iteration of their ALIENS Classic Toy edition is the most recent interpretation of the Kenner Products toy to possess a glow in the dark feature. Nonetheless, it’s worthy to note other glow in the dark ALIEN figures owe a debt of existence to the vintage Kenner Products ALIEN item.
Super7’s popular ReAction figure lineup boasts a number of items in the 3.75 format with glow in the dark features. Of significant note are the Carry Case exclusive Alien (2016) and blind box SPACE VILLAIN Wave 2 “Blood Moon” figure (2018). Both of these pocket size figures are fully cast in glow in the dark material and boast variant paint applications. The ReAction line ALIEN series are importantly linked to the original Kenner ALIEN toy due to their original cancellation in 1979. After the 18 inch toy proved to be problematical at retail and the entire ALIEN product line was hastily abandoned by the company towards the end of 1979, original prototypes were the source material on which Super7 manufactured these collectible ALIEN toys.
Of course, there are many other glow in the dark ALIEN action figures available to eager customers who may want them. Nonetheless, this article was intended to solely identify and describe those merchandise items that have a clear and intimate relationship with the original ALIEN vintage toy manufactured by Kenner forty years ago. In one way or another, celebrating the long lasting legacy embraced by multiple manufacturers who have emulated the toy, its features and contributed its heritage to varying degrees.
As to whether or not we have witnessed the last of this onerous albeit classic children’s toy being celebrated with either complete or partial glow in the dark features in this manner remains to be seen. This is a legacy that may yet have another chapter to tell.
For a greater understand of how the 18 & 24 inch action figures mentioned in this article relate to the original 1979 Kenner Products ALIEN toy, check out this link.
Thank you Todd Aaron Smith for kind use of ALIEN ReAction figure images used in this article.
-Windebieste.
