RIPLEY, POWER LOADER, & ALIEN QUEEN

ALIENS REACTION FIGURES (FUNKO)

Alright, here we are!  It’s a new year and a new round of post-Christmas gift reviews!  As is tradition, the first review of this round is an Aliens review.  Heck, it’s even an Alien Queen review!  This marks three in a row.  Why do I have so many Alien Queens?  It’s like I like the movie a lot or something….

You may have thought I’d looked at every possible version of the Alien Queen and the Power Loader available, but you’d be wrong.  No, there’s always another out there somewhere.  This time around, it comes from Funko and their line of ReAction Figures.  Let’s see how this set turned out!

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

Ripley, the Power Loader, and the Queen were released as a three-pack, and are the first figures from the Aliens ReAction Figures line.  No follow-up figures have been announced as of yet, but here’s hoping that’ll change.

RIPLEY

You can’t do an Aliens line without Ellen Ripley.  Okay, that’s not true.  Several lines have been done without Ripley.  But they weren’t any good, so I call party foul on them.  Funko actually got us our first Ripley figure in a good long while when the released the ReAction version from the first movie, so it’s not a huge shock that their doing her second movie look as well.  Ripley is seen here in her “rescue” look that she sports for the last 45 minutes or so of the movie, which is easily her most distinctive look from the film and is the one that matches up with the Loader as well.  This figure stands about 3 3/4 inches tall and has the usual 5 points of articulation.  She’s an all-new sculpt and it’s definitely one of the strongest sculpts I’ve seen from this line.  In fact, I think she may be my favorite.  She captures the Kenner style pretty well, but also gets all of the important details from the movie down.  She also doesn’t suffer from the overly straight arms and flattened chest that plagued so many of the ReAction items.  The likeness on the head isn’t the spitting image of Sigourney Weaver, but it’s close enough to the general look of the character that you won’t be left scratching your head wondering who it’s supposed to be.  Similar to the sculpt, the paint on this particular figure is pretty good for this line.  It’s pretty basic color work for the most part, but it’s all pretty clean, and, once again, it does a nice job of aping the style that they’re going for.  Ripley doesn’t include any extras, but that’s mostly because this set also includes…

POWER LOADER

…the Power Loader.  It’s marked as being a “figure” on the package, but that seems like an iffy definition at best, if I’m honest.  That being said, it’s made of plastic, vaguely humanoid, and features a whole 4 points of articulation, so I guess that’s as good as anything.  This Power Loader is notably a bit more rigid than prior versions, largely due to being tailored to fit a Kenner-style figure inside.  It also does seem a bit skinnier than it usually is depicted.  That being said, the sculpt is actually pretty decent.  Obviously, this isn’t going to be competing with the NECA version for accuracy, but it’s certainly more accurate than the original Kenner Loader, and at least on par with the Minimates version.  I’ve looked at a lot of Loaders in the last year or so, so it’s gonna be hard to “wow” me, but this one’s certainly not bad.  The paintwork is pretty much what you’d expect.  Once again, closer to the Minimate version that the NECA one, but all the important colors are there, which I suppose is the most important piece.

ALIEN QUEEN

You know how I mentioned reviewing a lot of Power Loaders?  Well, the same holds true for the Alien Queen.  In fact, a bit more so.  Here’s another one, I guess.  This particular Alien Queen stands about 5 inches or so tall and is also about 5 inches wide, and she’s got 7 points of articulation.  The sculpt on this figure is…different.  It’s got the silhouette of the Queen down pretty well, but beyond that it takes more than a few liberties.  This kind of looks like the Queen if you squint, I guess.  It’s not bad, I suppose.  It looks somewhat similar to the basic Alien’s sculpt, so I guess there’s at least some consistency.  That being said, I don’t know that I’m getting the Kenner feel from this figure.  She just feels like she’s from another line entirely when compared to the included Ripley.  Not bad, but different enough to be noticeable.  The paint on the Queen is decent, but nothing particularly spectacular.  She’s mostly done up in this dark metallic grey.  Being somewhat nitpicky, the grey feels off for the Queen, who tends to be presented in bluish hues.  I feel I’d prefer the figure that way, but I don’t know.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

This set was given to me for Christmas by my Grandmother, who does her very best to support my collecting habits.  I knew of this set’s existence prior to getting it, but hadn’t gotten around to picking it up, since I’ve got no shortage of Power Loaders and Alien Queens.  The Queen is the definite weak link here.  NECA’s incredibly amazing version has probably colored my opinion there, but it also doesn’t help that the *actual* Kenner Queen is far more exciting figure.  However, this set is totally worth it for the Loader and Ripley alone.  Nothing particularly new or ground breaking, but just a solid, fun toy.  Now, here’s hoping Funko gets around to some of the other cast members!