Bishop to King Alien...

... ah, good, toys.
One of my favourite things in life, along with y'know, breathing... a functioning central nervous system, dat stuff.
Let us focus on the luxuries though.

Actually gots a big bunch of Kenner's '92 Aliens stuff back home, never opened them for some reason or another. So it's a first for me. In most ways, you open one early nineties Kenner fig, you open them all. Mind blowing stuff it ain't.

Alright, anyone that paid attention to the movie Aliens probably noticed Lance Henriksen didn't sport super-imposed sunglasses or a cybernetic scalp. Perhaps Kenner sent Mr. Henriksen a letter of apology stating they just didn't believe his face could support an action-figure on it's own.

That's just this line for you, they played around with the Aliens characters and universe - no holds barred. It's an absolute crack up.

Okay, Bish-man wasn't really designed for carting around heavy ordnance either, but let's not have the facts stand in the way of pure cool. Not hard to see at this point that Aliens Marine figures weren't built for busting into kung fu poses and the like, they're pretty much set to stand around in pre-posed form with maybe a single 'action feature' purpose.
We get a bit more of a kicker for this synthetic human though...

Ah, joyousness. I love figures with snap-off-injury/blast apart designs.

"I get knocked down but I get up again"

Bonus - gatling gun arm replacement, can't scoff at that.
So yeh, he does what a figure needs to do. Nuthin'more. Just watch Bishies grip on that brittle plastic gat-gun handle. My unopened one is broke in packet.

Y'know, in an ideal world every figure's playability would be enhanced by incorporating spilt milk.

Apone In The Dark...

While I'm coating action-figures in breakfast foods its tempting to pour cereal over my next figure and leave it at that, but I ain't wasting Coco-pops. It's the only damn cereal I have!
I'm a grown-up.

Oh, brother - this one gez me every time. They mention - "right arm now bio-mechanical".

Weeell, considering Apones dead he might kinda' need a bio-mechanical everything.

Ut oh, there's more...

Teehee. Lovin' the shirt. No Bugs, huh? Yep, Sgt. Apone's first encounter with the 'Bugs' was also his last encounter with 'em. He wasn't too well informed on the Xenomorph front either, so there's a heckuva coincidence. Maybe that shirt was just to tell the ladies he's free of pubic lice and doesn't have the flu... or he ran off to have it printed seconds prior to getting fragged. Your call.

Sarge's action-feature pales in comparison to Bishop's pretty seriously. He has a meek swivel spring-waist, and the idea is that this be utilized to throw his wibbly-wubber grenades around. Actually they're 'Mega Grenades', but 'wibbly-wubber' describes they're soft composition infinitely better. I can't pretend to know what Kenner was doing with the soft rubber grenade thing. After all Corporal Hicks has a hard plastic missile launcher, so I'm sure it wasn't safety concerns.

No. It wasn't safety concerns. Good luck injuring anything with this one. Apone doesn't just throw like a girl, he throws like a girl T-rex. The grenades, if they don't casually fall over the back of Apone's arm, don't leave his hand at all.
Wow. THE two worst scenarios in any grenade throwing situation.
BANG. "Medic, we're gonna' need a whole lot more bio-mechanical arms over here!!"

Mmm, difficult to select a fave. Apone's just such a great character even if his figure features don't hold up next to synthy-poo. I think it's nice the designers didn't let a little death or movie accuracy stand in the way of embellishing the legend but good. Portraying the Marines as the authority on Xenomorph smack-down.

Hail to the King Alien...

Awright, one more, I'll be quick aboot it.

Aha, King Alien. See? There we are with some tale telling liberties. The Xenomorphs survive on a hive structured scheme, Queens, drones, workers whatever... Kings - not so much. Apparently a King Alien does exist in early Aliens role-playing games though, but let's not completely geek out here.

Maybe it just assimilated Elvis Presley's DNA.

It's one rather straight forward figure - cuts a pretty silhouette, and there is a variant version with bright green paint applications (I prefer w/out). One thing noticeably absent is the presence of a nasty-ass spiky tail.

Yay! Head-grabby-action feature thing, neat. The lack of tail does serve a purpose, basically there's a squishy rubber thorax in place, so Kingy can have acid squirty cuddles with his selected prey. Functions like a very basic squirt gun, so you can fill it with water, or cola, or urine, or an even mixture of the three. Boy, am I fulla' quality advice today.

It sorta' boggles the brain to reflect on HR Giger's initial material, and then how that dribbles thru the cracks to allow Kenner to poop out this material for the kids. Some folks was downright disgusted by the lack of movie accuracy associated with this line, but hey, it was play time. Children probably shouldn't be scoping out Aliens flicks in the first place.
Maybe we should just be grateful Kenner didn't go wild with fleuroescent paint jobs and cannisters of goo everywhere. (actually the goo woulda' worked superbly here).

Hoookay - my rambles reminded me I should check out 'Prometheus' one o' these days.
And while its completely unrelated to anything on this blog today, YOU should check out a film called 'Beasts of the Southern Wild', the only good piece of advice I'm likely to share this year. Stunning film.

Righto, as Private Hudson says, "Game over, man. Game over!"

"Running out of luck is okay sometimes. Helps build initiative." - Rihia2k.

AWA With The Faeries...

Eyuggh, what's this all over my hands? Oh... it's just time. Well if I've gotten that on my hands, I guess updating the blog can be justified.

I promised myself this post would involve at least one action-figure. As per usual, selected random as.

It's hard not to deviate - with a spontaneous recent round trip to New Zealand's North and South Islands, back to Queensland, and with ventures into marshland and native parks, it's been a mildly hectic month. Mildly hectic? Whatever.
I'm back in Eversummerland however, so I'll do what I intended in putting up a post on the plastic frontier.

I dig around op-shops from time to time, but I can't help thinking the face of thrift-shop hunting has changed in the last few years. Guess this depends on what you're panning for, but when I see trousers that retail new for $29 going for $60 in the charity store, well I get a little grizzly.

So I was stoked when I saw a pair of little black legs that hail from a better era in toy making poking through the endless rainbow mountain of contaminated toddler toys and McDonalds figures (damn you Kung Fu Panda! yer everywhere).


I'll buy that for halfa dollar

I didn't know who it was until fully exhumed, only had legs to go by... so was pretty happy on revealing the regal head of one half of The Road Warriors. Courtesy of Remco, 1985.
I never intend to cover a whole figure line on here... ever, so if you need more info on AWA Wrestlers click the greatest gosh darn link you're likely to find today -

http://www.action-figures.ca/

Done? Good, I'm proud. To be honest I'm not much for wrestling since, ooh 1992 or so. WWF to be precise. I don't think AWA was even screened in New Zealand, but when WWF hit it was met with fevered enthusiasm by every man-child around. Suddenly Hulk Hogan was every boy's secret father, the Ultimate Warrior was, well THE Ultimate Warrior, school corridors were ringing to the tune of bullies 'clotheslining' dweebs, older brothers were now suplex and DDT machines, and putting a friend into Jake the Snake's Sleeper Hold was simply the new "hello".

WWF trading cards were quickly banned from my school, and children would enter into lengthy negotiations with parents mid-week to ensure they could stay up past 9pm on Saturday to watch the televised destruction.

Originally Hawk here would have come with, like a cloth tunic, booties and a belt (or some such) AWA Wrestlers generally did, but I'm content with my 'nude' version. Seeing as i don't collec' wrestler toys, I'll soon get Hawk sporting a weapon, and once I tack a generic helmet on him he'll make good army fodder for going up against Remco's Conan.
(Remco's fantasy lines and wrestler lines generally share the same body type)

Actually Road Warrior's Hawk here provided more food for thought than I'd anticipated. Specifically, he was a real person. I  stopped to consider it, and basically very few of my action figures are. Steve Irwin, MC Hammer... think that's it.
Hawk, I discovered after a little research, like too many wrestlers, passed over at a young age (46 years). Heart failure in 2003 if memory serves correctly. So y'know, I gotta' respect the guy for jumping around like a psychopathic rockstar maniac. I get a cool figure for his efforts.

Let's face it, pop wrestlers get bagged a little by the bulk of society. They don't always get sufficient credit as athletes or actors, although they maintain a rather precarious balance between the two. Part stunt person, part long-term-health-sacrificing gladiator. Hey, if you look up a little info on our recently departed Macho Man then, uh, musician can be added to the mix of wrestler's talents. C'mon, who else is gonna' release a rap song to honour the death of Mr. Perfect?

So yah, thanks Michael 'Hawk' Hegstrand man, you and Animal did your part to slake the blood-thirst of the masses, meaning we can avoid cruelty to lions and save matchsticks otherwise wasted on 'illuminating' christians.

"They say just be yourself, so, what if you're a copy-cat by nature?" - Rihia2k.