When Star Wars revolutionized movie merchandising, a lot of films tried to follow suit. The toys turned into a huge bonanza for George Lucas and became a big additional revenue stream.
Not to mention the old Star Wars toys were just really cool, and I had enormous fun playing with them, like everyone else who fell under the spell of Luke Skywalker and company.
Recentlyt, I stumbled upon something pretty mind boggling I had forgotten about long ago. You see, in the wake of Star Wars, Fox also made toys for Alien with Kenner. Part of the reason Alien got the green-light at Fox was because Star Wars an unexpected hit, and they needed another sci-fi film in the pipeline, fast.
If you were around back then, you may recall having to wait for your Star Wars action figures to come in, because the demand was so huge. As the site Toyzine notess, no other movie would have made sense to do merchandising other than Alien, because Kenner couldn’t keep up with the Star Wars demand, and something had to fill the void for space creature action figures.
But as Toyzine also recalls, the big glaring problems here were as follows. Alien was a damn scary movie, and where Star Wars was rated PG for the whole family, Alien was rated R, and definitely not for little kids. Second, the creature was very scary to look at. Darth Vader was clearly a villain, but he was a cool villain with a great sleek look. He also had the wonderful voice of James Earl Jones, along with the heavy breathing that every kid loved to imitate until they were hyperventilating.
The alien was designed by H.R. Gigier, and as cool as the design looks, young kids back then didn’t want to play with something that looked like a bad acid nightmare. While Alien did very well at the box office, the toys didn’t fly, and at one point Alien action figures were going for the mark down price of $10 at some department stores. Today, the Alien action figure “is one of the most coveted action figure collectibles of all time.” The Alien action figure also predated the adult action figures we see all the time from companies like Macfarlane.
If the Alien toys of yesteryear weren’t for kids, the next Alien item you’re about to read about certainly isn’t, not that it’s an authorized item. According to the site Giantfreakinrobot, someone has created an Alien facehugger bong, and as clever as it looks, I certainly wouldn’t want it strapped to my face while getting high.
Apparently this contraption is made of glass, like any other bong would be, and as Brent McKnight writes:
“This just proves that stoners are endlessly creative when it comes to finding new ways to ingest their drug of choice.”
Echoing my sentiments, McKnight also wrote, “I don’t know if I would want this thing attached to my face though…I don’t like having my mouth covered like that.”
Neither we or Giantfreakinrobot have any information on where you could buy one of these things, and who knows what the powers that be at Fox or Ridley Scott would think of this. Well, probably bemusement more than anything.
As for me, it looks very cool, but I still would be wary about having it strapped to my face as well, even if I was inhaling the finest sensimilla around.
