[windebieste]

OK. Back again. Sorry, but real life nonsense has been keeping me away from tending to my much more fun nonsense. ...but we're getting there.

I'm not going to spend too much time exploring this not so mighty entry into the strange history of the 1979 Kenner Alien, just a brief outlline of it's notorious existence. Anyway, on with the show. 12 years after the release of Kenner's original Alien action figure, model company Halcyon released their iteration in 1991. This was in the form of a vinyl assembly kit.

The fully assembled 1991 Halcyon kit and box.

Unlike the earlier MPC model kit of the Alien that was released alongside the Kenner figure in 1979, there were no fresh sculpt made to generate the Halcyon kit. Instead, Halcyon re-purposed the moulds created by Tsukuda earlier in 1984. As a result, the kit bears a striking resemblance to both it and the original Kenner toy with which they both share common ancestry. However, of all the representations of the Alien derived from the old Kenner item, this Halcyon kit is arguably the weakest.

Standing at a solid 16 inches tall, the figure is also the shortest. This kit also possessed its own share of notoriety when it was initially released. This was a generally poor quality kit and its origin as derived from the original Kenner toy was obvious. Considering the box art depicts the Alien in a distinctly different dramatic stance, it came as no surprise that modellers were very disappointed that the kit did not match the box cover art when it was fully constructed.

What modellers ended up with instead was another version of the old Kenner toy, roughly disassembled and then repackaged into kit form. The ugly kit did little to conceal this fact. What purchasers had received instead was a modified repressing of a decade old toy that nobody loved; except it was more expensive, was 2 inches shorter, arrived in more pieces and required glue to fully assemble. (Alternatively, you could assemble it by immersing the pieces in hot water and working them into place.)

On top of that, it was an officially licenced Fox item as well.

The original 1979 Kenner Alien (Left) next to the 1991 Halcyon kit(Right).

As you can imagine, fans and modelling enthusiasts at the time were not impressed. At least in this regard, the model kit adds another curious chapter to the lamentable History of the original 1979 Kenner Alien action figure.

...and so we continue to explore the amazing history of this old toy and its evolution through various marketed kits and action figures. There's still more to come so needless to say, we aint done yet.

-Windebieste.