Tag Archives: Alien Queen

#2312: Alien Queen

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

ALIEN QUEEN

ALIEN COLLECTION (LANARD TOYS)

An Alien Queen review?  Is it the post-Christmas reviews again already?  No, I’m throwing you for a loop dear readers, and doing something that’s not totally predictable.  Okay, that’s probably not true, because I’m reviewing an Aliens action figure, and that’s pretty darn on-brand for me.  Alas, there goes my plans for spontaneity.  So, in Aliens news, the license got picked up by a new and kind of surprising company: Lanard Toys.  Lanard previously made their name with their G.I. Joe knock-off The Corps!, but first got into the licensing game with Kong: Skull Island, and then followed up with Rampage and Jumanji.  So, while licensing isn’t a *new* thing for them, an R-rated movie from the ’80s does seem a little off for a company that sells exclusively in the toy aisle of Walmarts.  Whatever the case, I’m not going to complain if it means more toys from my favorite movie.  Plus, it’s been forever since I’ve reviewed an Alien Queen.  My skills are getting rusty.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Alien Queen is the central piece of Lanard’s new Alien Collection, which started hitting shelves right at the beginning of the year.  While much of the line is made up of Lanard re-purposing old tooling under a new branding (much like they’ve done with prior licensed lines), the Queen is a brand-new offering, designed solely for this line, and she doesn’t exactly have a lot of re-use potential after the Alien line is done.  The figure is roughly 12 inches tall (with her slight hunch) and has 20 points of articulation.  The articulation and its implementation is all fairly basic, but what’s there works and it works well.  In particular, the ball-joints on the ankles work surprisingly well to help keep the figure balanced in a variety of poses.  At first glance, I didn’t think much of them, but while taking the photos, they really stood out to me, especially in contrast to figures like the NECA Queen, who requires a stand to stay balanced (in their defense, so did the real thing; it’s one of the impossibilities of the design).  Some effort has been made by the figure’s sculpt to cartoonize or kidify the Queen’s design a little bit in order to make a slightly sturdier toy.  Most of this is in the legs, which now are more beefed up to support the rest of the figure.  By and large, though, the figure remains surprising faithful to the source material.  While it’s not got the screen accuracy of the NECA figure, it certainly lands closer than the Funko ReAction, or even the vintage Kenner attempts.  They’ve boiled down all of the important elements and crafted something that immediately captures that spirit of the original design, while not being too horribly terrifying for kids par-oozing the toy aisle.  In a lot of ways, I feel she would pair well with the Kenner Scorpion Alien in this respect.  Another change to the design in the effort of keeping things a little more kid-oriented: the colors.  While classically black with some blue highlights, the queen is now a rather vibrant purple…with some blue highlights.  There’s not actually much paint, just the whites of the teeth and the few traces of blue, but it looks pretty striking, and the purple honestly shows off the sculpt a little better than a straight black might have.  Though the Queen includes no accessories, she does get an action feature.  Pulling her head back will shoot her inner mouth outwards, a surprisingly effective feature.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

When I found out that Lanard picked up the Aliens license, I’ll admit I was somewhat perplexed.  However, the Queen was one of the first items to be shown, and I rather liked what I saw.  Thanks to Max, I got a heads up that this figure had hit, and was able to find one just after the new year.  I gotta say, I really love this figure, more than I’d anticipated, especially given the very low price tag.  For the same price as a Marvel Legend, you get a figure more than twice the size, and very, very playable.  I love my NECA Queen as much as the next Aliens fan, but if there’s one thing it was not, that’s playable.  Having a Queen I can feel free to pick up and mess with is really solid, and a great alternative for those not looking to drop over $100 on a Queen.  This is an absolutely fantastic piece for kids and collectors alike, and I hope Lanard can continue with such pieces.

#1167: Ripley, Power Loader, & Alien Queen

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

RIPLEY, POWER LOADER, & ALIEN QUEEN

ALIENS REACTION FIGURES (FUNKO)

ripleyloaderqueen1

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

ripleyloaderqueen3You 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

ripleyloaderqueen2You 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!

#1067: Queen Alien (w/ Bishop & Warrior Alien)

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

QUEEN ALIEN (W/ WARRIOR ALIEN & BATTLE-DAMAGED BISHOP)

ALIENS MINIMATES

alienqueenmm1

For everything else it gave us (and believe me, there was a lot it gave us), easily the most definitive thing to come out of 1986’s Aliens was the Alien Queen (or is it the Queen Alien?  No one seems to agree on that…)  Heck, she even transcends the movie itself.  She’s one of the most definitive things in the franchise!  Is she the most original concept ever?  Well, maybe not.  Compared to some of what we see in the first film, she’s a surprisingly straight-forward answer to just where all those eggs came from.  But she is pretty cool, which makes it pretty easy to over look the straight-forwardness.  She’s finally made her way into Minimates form, alongside the android synthetic artificial person Bishop, and one of the Queen’s drone-y underlings.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

The Queen and her compatriots make up the other half of the first deluxe series of Aliens Minimates, and act as a natural counterpoint to the Ripley and Power Loader set.

QUEEN ALIEN

alienqueenmm9Where the Power Loader was sort of a glorified vehicle, the Queen is a more straight figure.  Well, at her core, at least.  The figure is about 3 1/2 inches tall when stood at full height and has 16 points of articulation, counting the tail.  The Queen is built on the standard Minimate body, albeit with a unique set of upper legs, as well as a torso extender, upper arm additions and add-ons for her head, torso/neck/tail, hands, and feet.  If I’m being totally honest, it took some time for me to be sold on the Queen being built on the basic body.  For compatibility’s sake, I can understand the desire by DST to use the same basic parts here that they use for everyone else, and there’s no denying that *a lot* of work went into making her work as well as possible.  The Queen as seen in the film was quite spindly and lanky, so I think that using at least some of standard parts is reasonable.  The trouble seems to mostly lie with the arms and legs, and the lengths DST has gone to to make them longer than they actually are.  Simply put, the elbows and knees are just too close to the main body, which results in the articulation being a lot less useful than it would be normally.  It’s not as big a deal for the arms, but the legs can make keeping the Queen standing quite a mean feat.  Since DST was already re-sculpting the upper legs, it would have been nice if the new pieces were a little bit lengthened.  Ultimately, the final product isn’t bad at all, but it certainly takes some getting used to.  The paintwork on the Queen is ultimately pretty simple, even compared to the basic Aliens from the line.  For the most part, she just relies on the sculpted details, with a little bit of painted detailing on the lower legs, pelvis, and arms.  Fortunately, the sculpted detail is pretty great on its own, so it’s not really an issue.  The Queen includes four alien eggs (two opened, two closed), a chestburster, and a clear display stand.  She also has an extra tail to swap out with her normal one, which allows her to “impale” the included Bishop ‘mate, just like in the movie.  It’s by far the coolest of the included extras.

WARRIOR ALIEN

Apone&Xeno3Nothing to see here, move along.

You’re still here?  Review’s over!  Go home!  …Okay, fine, I’ll discuss briefly.  So, this ‘mate is the same as the Warrior Alien included with Sgt. Apone in Series1, which was itself the same as the Alien Warrior from the singles.  It’s a perfectly fine ‘mate (and far more versatile than the Battle-Damaged one included with the Loader), and I certainly won’t say to another.

BATTLE-DAMAGED BISHOP

alienqueenmm2Finally!  Bishop!  It’s about time!  Seriously, Bishop was like one of the only major missing characters from the film, so it’s great to finally have him here—Battle-Damaged you say?  Ah.  So, I guess we’ll just have to keep waiting on the normal one.  Well, half a Bishop is better than no Bishop, right?  In his damaged state, Bishop is really just the upper half of a Minimate, with add-ons for his hair and watch, as well as a piece that plugs into the bottom of the torso to simulate his guts seen in the movie.  While the guts aren’t as detailed as, say, the NECA version of this design, they’re still pretty cool.  I’m actually a little surprised DST didn’t just re-use alienqueenmm13one of the guts pieces from their Walking Dead line, but I’m certainly happy to see a character-specific piece in use here!  The paintwork on Bishop is quite impressive.  He’s got a full set of normal details, which are all clean and sharp, and then a bunch of milky-white paint in various splatters, depicting his “blood.”  It’s a pretty cool, quite unique look, and it does a reasonable job of capturing his look from the end of the movie.  Bishop includes a set of legs as well, for those wanting to display him bi-pedal.  It’s not enough to make him into a normal Bishop, mind you, but it does allow him to interact with the Queen’s extra tail piece, and appear as though he’s in the midst of being torn in two.  He also includes a clear display stand, should you wish to have him just standing about with a big stain on his front.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Like yesterday’s Power Loader set, I got these guys as a birthday present from my parents.  The Queen’s alright overall.  I have my issues with her, but the final product is better than I was expecting.  The Warrior Alien is a ‘mate we’ve seen before; no surprises there.  Bishop is, surprisingly, the set’s real star.  He’s just very well done, and makes me yearn all the more for that basic Bishop ‘mate.  Not quite as strong a set as the Loader, but still very cool.

alienqueenmm12

#0802: Alien Queen

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

ALIEN QUEEN

SCI-FI REVOLTECH

QueenRevol1

Alright, let’s get this party started! Christmas reviews officially kick off today! And it’s hardly a proper Christmas without some Aliens. It is, after all, the greatest film of all time (and required Christmas viewing in The FiQ household. No joke). As a fan of Aliens, I like to get as many of the figures as I can, and there have been more than a few different styles released over the years. Not too long ago, toy makers Revoltech had the license to the film. They released two figures from the movie, the second of which was the Alien Queen, which I’ll be reviewing today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

QueenRevol2The Alien Queen was released as figure #018 in the Sci-Fi Revoltech line. She’s based on her appearance in the second movie, which is the correct appearance to base a figure on. The figure stands approximately 7 inches tall when fully extended and has 86 points of articulation, plus a bendable tail. The vast majority of these joints are Revoltech’s signature revolver-style joints, which are some of the best designed joints in the industry. There are a few non revolver joints, used on the wrists and ankles. The ankle joints are fine, and they hold up pretty well, but the wrists, particularly the ones on the larger arms, are quite fragile. In fact, both of the larger wrists on my figure broke and had to be repaired, more than once, resulting in loss of movement on those joints. That’s quite a bit of a bummer, and really knocks this figure down in playablity. Regardless of stability, the sculpt of this figure is pretty darn impressive. The design has been made a bit more stylized, to better fit the rest of Revoltech’s stuff, but it’s a pretty good translation of the film design. The sculpt does a pretty great job of working in the joints, for the most part, anyway. Some, such as the hips, are a little more obvious, but not terribly so. The level of detail and texturing on the individual parts is pretty awesome, and there’s even detailing on the underside of the head! As an added bonus, the figure’s construction makes her compatible with prior Revoltech figures, such as their Assemble Borg line, which adds a pretty fun bit of customizability. The paint on the Queen is actually pretty cool, at least in theory. She’s molded in smokey-clear plastic, with a dark blue, semi-translucent paint over it. It gives her this really cool, otherworldly look. The paint is also somewhat metallic, which adds a nice polish, and there’s some pretty cool lighter highlight work to it. So, why “in theory”? Well, I got this figure a little while after its release, and upon opening, I discovered that the figure was quite tacky, which doesn’t make the figure super fun to play with long term. The Queen is a pretty intensive figure in her own right, so she isn’t jam-packed with accessories. However, she does get a few things, including a display stand that looks like the floor of the Sulaco, a name plate, and a standard Revoltech box.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The Queen was given to me by my boy Tim, who’s well aware just how much I love Aliens, and fairly consistently quizzes me on just which versions of the creatures I own. After introducing me to Revoltech earlier this year and getting me hooked on their Assemble Borg line, he decided that the Revoltech Aliens were the next appropriate step. The Queen is not without her flaws, and she doesn’t quite stand up to the majesty that is the NECA version. That said, this figure did come first, so I can cut it some slack, and truth be told, she’s really not bad. As long as you’re careful, this can be a pretty awesome figure. Oh, and did I mention the fighting fists?

Queenrevol4

#0438: The Alien Queen

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

ALIEN QUEEN

ALIENS (NECA)

After a bit of a pseudo start yesterday, the Christmas Reviews officially begin today! There was something of a theme to a lot of my Christmas gifts this year, and that them was Aliens. Let’s be honest, though, what better theme could there be? Aliens is, after all, the greatest movie ever made. Today, I’ll be looking at the center piece to all the wonderful Aliens stuff I got this year, the Alien Queen.

The Alien Queen is probably the most distinctive thing from Aliens. Ripley’s Power Loader-aided battle with the beast is one of the best parts of the film, and it’s the kind of thing that a toy collector like me might want to immortalize in plastic. However, the Queen hasn’t been the easiest thing to toy-ify. She’s a pretty massive creature, and she has lots of intricate little details. She’s had a few figures over the years that didn’t totally suck (I even reviewed one of them recently), but none of them quite lived up to the creature seen in the movie. Enter NECA.

NECA has already been killing it with their regular Aliens series based on the normal sized people and creatures from the movie. But if there’s one thing that NECA does well, it’s large scale figures. So, it’s not exactly a shock to see this figure pop up. Still, it took some time. You don’t just start with the Queen; you work your way there. After some waiting, the Queen is finally here! Let’s see how she turned out!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Alien Queen was released as a supplement to NECA’s main Aliens line. She found herself bridging the rather lengthy gap between Series 2 and 3 of the line (Although, as chance would have it, Series 3 is right behind her). Officially, the Queen is billed as a “Deluxe Set,” which is not surprising, given the size. Speaking of size, this sucker is big. She’s roughly 12 inches tall and a whopping 27 inches long (though about 15 inches of that is tail). The figure truly towers over the rest of the line, as she well should. The Queen has the sort of design that can be difficult to articulate, but NECA’s done a pretty amazing job. The figure has 57 points of articulation, as well as a wire armature tail that can bend all along its length. There’s quite a lot of posability, though most of the joints require some very particular positioning if you want the figure to have any sort of balance. The Alien Queen has appeared in three films, all of them based on the same basic design, but this one is very definitely based on the original Aliens design. The figure features an all new sculpt to replicate the design. It’s a little hard to tell, because the creature was generally shot in the shadows, but the sculpt appears to be incredibly faithful to the movie. All of the basics are definitely there, and the figure is definitely the Queen. In addition, the sculpt is loaded with lots of fine details and texturing, all done in a way that perfectly conveys the creature’s meld of biology and mechanics. The details continue on every side of the figure. I was particularly impressed by the volume of detail on the underside of the figure’s head, an area that could have easily been overlooked. Perhaps the only downside to the sculpt (which isn’t so much an issue with the sculpt as it is an issue with implementation) is that the Queen’s back spikes are separate pieces that have to be attached when the figure is taken out of the package. It’s a bit difficult to get them in place, and they have a tendency to pop out of place while the figure is being posed. That said, they’re just as well sculpted as the rest of the figure, and the match nicely when in place. Just like it’s difficult to get a 100% accurate view of the figure’s sculpt due to the film’s lighting, it’s also hard to get an accurate comparison of the paint. At first glance it seems like the figure may be too bright, but upon reviewing the film, it seems accurate to what she looks like when we see her properly lit in the airlock. Generally speaking, the paint is very well handled. The figure was originally black, with a fair share of blue highlights added. There are also a few touches of bronze, so that this figure should match okay with both colored varieties of Xeno Warriors. Perhaps my favorite touch, coloring-wise, is the transparent teeth, which are just plain cool! The Queen is a pretty massive figure, so little to no accessories is fairly acceptable. That said, the figure includes a few items. Since the design doesn’t allow for the sliding version of the inner mouth seen on the Warriors, the Queen includes two of them, of differing lengths, which can be swapped out for the desired look. They’re both very nicely sculpted, and help spruce up the figure well. The figure also includes a much needed display stand. It’s done in three parts, and the actually support piece comes in both short and long varieties, which allows for a nice selection of poses.

   

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The Queen was my main Christmas present from my truly amazing parents, given to me this past year. I have anxiously been waiting for this figure for quite some time. I was absolutely thrilled to open her on Christmas morning. This is a figure that could have turned out badly if it weren’t well handled, but I’m happy to say NECA truly hit it out of the park on this one. It makes for a wonderful centerpiece to my collection. Now I just need to figure out where to put it….

#0374: Flying Alien Queen

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

FLYING ALIEN QUEEN

ALIENS (KENNER)

Okay, just one more Kenner Aliens review (well, I still have Bishop and the original Hicks, but they’re a ways off). Yesterday, I looked at Kenner’s first stab at the Alien Queen. That figure was actually pretty faithful to the source material, and the few changes they made actually made it a better toy. Today, I’ll be looking at another version of the Queen, this time with a few more liberties taken. So, do they make for a good toy?

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Flying Alien Queen was released in the second series of Kenner’s Aliens line. Like the first Queen, she was a later addition to the assortment. This was Kenner’s second figure of the Alien Queen, and it’s a lot more out there than the first. The figure is about 6 inches tall and it features 7 points of articulation. As you can probably guess from the name, this figure’s shtick is that it’s aerial-based. One has to wonder what differences would have to be present in the host for this to come about. Did the Flying Queen hatch from a really large bird? Maybe an angel or something? I don’t know. What’s most interesting about this figure’s sculpt is the complete lack of overlap with the normal Queen. You’d think something like “flying Queen” would just be an excuse to re-use a bunch of parts from the original, but nope, Kenner went all new. For the Flying Queen, it seems Kenner has thrown out the movie Queen design entirely, and instead gone for something all their own. It’s almost as if the sculptor of the Flying Queen was given one of their other aliens as a reference and told “Make a queen.” So, this figure is much more basic alien inspired. The head has the regular Alien shape, and the tail is a bit shorter in length. It’s not bad, but it’s not quite as impressive as the first Queen. A lot of the details aren’t quite as sharp, and the proportions seem a bit sillier. The wings are decently done, but they honestly seem out of place with the rest of the Alien aesthetic. They feel like they’re from another toyline all-together. The paint on the Flying Queen is certainly unique. The figure is cast in a transparent greyish-purple plastic, with some silver airbrushing to bring out some of the details, and a little bit of red thrown in just for fun. The transparent look is actually pretty fun, but you have to wonder why the flying Queen would be transparent purple, while the regular Queen is an opaque black. Best not to think about it, I suppose. The Flying Queen included no accessories, but he does have a wing-flapping action feature, activated by pushing a button on her back. The claw on her left foot is also on a spring, but there doesn’t seem to be a clear way to activate it. It just goes off sporadically.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The Flying Alien Queen is the last piece of the lot of Kenner Aliens figures I won on ebay. Of all the figures in the lot, this is probably the one I was least interested in. My opinion of it hasn’t really changed much, to be honest, but my lackluster feelings towards the Hicks Vs. King Alien set does mean that this one moved up a peg by comparison. It’s not a bad figure, but it’s not one of my favorites. It’s a better figure than something like the King Alien or the Alien Arachnid, but those felt like part of the line, while this one seems sort of out of place. This figure seems to mark when the line really started to move away from the movies, which is where I really start to lose interest. And with that, I am done with my Kenner Aliens stuff for a while. The timing actually worked out quite nicely, as they served as a nice little lead-up to Halloween!

#0373: Alien Queen

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

ALIEN QUEEN

ALIENS (KENNER)

In the movie Aliens, the titular creatures all received a slight re-design from director James Cameron and legendary creature effects wizard Stan Winston. It was the first in a long line of tweaks to the Xenomorph design, and it happens to be my personal favorite, mostly due to the fact that it’s the one used in the Greatest Movie of All TimeTM. In addition to creating a new looks for the “drones,” they also introduced a whole new creature design, the Alien Queen! The Alien Queen takes the role of primary antagonist for the film’s final act, and has become one of the most memorable creature designs of all time, right up there with the original Alien. It’s no surprise that Kenner released an Alien Queen in their Aliens line from the early 90s, but what is a bit of a surprise is how close to the original design they stayed.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Alien Queen was released in the first series of Kenner Aliens figures. She was actually a slightly later release than the rest of the figures, mostly owing to her larger stature. The figure is about 6 inches in height and she features 10 points of articulation (those extra sets of arms really pull her up here!). There were three versions of the Alien Queen released in this line; this is the first. The final version of the Queen is generally seen as a near-perfect recreation of the Queen’s design, but this one’s not too far off either. They’ve given her an extra set of arms, and the figure is a little bit stockier than the movie version. Her inner mouth is more like that of the standard Xeno as well. None of these things really hurt the figure, so it’s not too bad. The actual sculpt is really very nice. There’s tons of detail work all throughout the figure, with lots and lots of layers and texture. The figure also had a rather large tail that attached to the back of the figure. In theory, I think it’s supposed to be bendable, but I had no such luck with it. The entire figure has been painted with an iridescent black paint, which is a great match for the coloring of the Aliens. She also has proper silver detailing on both sets of teeth, all of which is applied cleanly. The Queen included one accessory: a “Deadly” Chest Hatchling. Obviously, this is meant to be a chestburster, and it’s done rather well, but why exactly is “Deadly” in quotes? Is it not really deadly? Because I feel like John Hurt would like to disagree. Anyway, in addition to that, the Queen also features two action features. The first is an “attacking double jaw” which sends the inner mouth forward. It’s activated by squeezing the back of the Queen’s head. The second is a tail whipping feature, which is activated by pressing a button on the figure’s left leg.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The Alien Queen is another piece of the lot of Kenner Aliens figures I won on ebay. I had mostly wanted the lot for the two-packs, but I was more than happy to get this figure as well. In hand, I think this may be my favorite of the Aliens I received. It’s not a perfect recreation of the movie Queen, but this is a pretty neat amalgam of the Queen and the basic drone, almost like a junior Queen or something. I think the thing that shocks me the most is the total lack of re-releases of this particular mold. A Ripley Vs. Queen two-pack feels like it would have been a natural fit for the Aliens Vs. Marine line.