[windebieste]

Hoopy New Year to you All!!!

Oh yes, this figure definitely has a following and those prices are what this figure is actually pulling. Even poor quality b0rked figures with missing parts can easily pull upwards of $100 without any effort. For boxed figures you can add $400 to the price... Unopened boxes, yeah, you can start at about $1000 and keep piling on the ca$h. This is a serious collectible we are talking about here.

Anyhow I'll talk more about that later. For now, let's move into the weird territory that surrounds this grotesque action figure as we move away from 1979 and fast forward to 1984.

1984 was the year to see the next release of any 'ALIEN' action figure - and Kenner was nowhere in sight. Well, at least not in terms of being actively involved as a participating company. Over a decade would pass before Kenner would return to licence merchandise for this property in 1992 but their contribution remains important in 1984. Significantly, 1984 saw Tsukuda Hobby release their iteration of the Big Chap. It's true that MPC did release a model kit of the Alien in 1979 alongside Kenner's big chap but strictly speaking the MPC item wasn't an action figure. It was a kit that required complete assembly.

The figure looks almost exactly like it does on the box! Nice. Too bad it's a rubbish figure.

Tsukuda's 'ALIEN' figure was an unremarkable attempt at grasping a foothold in a market that had been left wide open by Kenner's failed marketing strategy. It's unfortunate that Tsukuda's attempt to fill this void resulted in a product of poor quality and did little to grab anyone's attention. It would easily have been forgotten and completely disappear into obscurity had it not been for one significant detail. In order to produce their figure, Tsukuda repurposed the moulds that Kenner used on their original 1979 release.

It's obvious when comparing both figures side by side that the 1984 Japanese pressing of the figure uses the old Kenner moulds. While some changes were made to various parts of the body of the figure, it clearly demonstrates its origins without debate. It possesses many small changes throughout but the relationship is undeniable. The tongue is no longer operated via a trigger mechanism, the head has various small changes including the removal and filling in of the trigger mechanism. An abundance of minor changes are also present but the figure fails to conceal its origin.

1984 Tsukuda (Left) and 1979 Kenner (Right). The 1984 pressing is slightly smaller but shares obvious common traits with the older figure.

Overall, the 1984 Tsukuda figure is inferior to the original Kenner item in just about every way. It feels cheaply made and among other modified features it lacks articulation in the mouth and tongue areas. The arms which were originally ball and socket arrangements that afforded a decent range of movement were reduced to rotating spindle joints. There's no glow in the dark features present on the head and the carapace was even more ill-fitting (as is observable in the top image.) than how it appeared on the original figure. It was derided by fans as a 'Fake!' and a 'cheap knock off' of the original Kenner figure. It was also frequently accused of being a bootleg. Yet it was a genuinely licenced item from 20th Century Fox. Such authenticity does little to change the fact that it's an ugly embarrassment to the original figure and a woeful blatant unsatisfying copy of the same. It's shorter, too. By about an inch. Which is quite surprising when the box declares that the figure is over 18 inches tall. At full height, the figure measures less than that. About 17 3/4", actually.

The 1984 iteration of the figure wasn't the last time the Kenner Products moulds were reissued by Fox - and certainly not Tsukuda's final entry into this licence. During the next dozen years or so, the moulds were passed around between companies. Each time the molds were modified slightly but still strongly retained an obvious ancestry and direct connection with the original Kenner figure. None of them were particularly any good and only added to the growing disreputable history of an already nefarious action figure.

Poor old Kenner Alien. Nobody loves you. Even people on this forum (of all places!) don't know about you.

Don't worry, KA'79, I love you; and so do many others!

-Windebieste.