Kenner Alien Queen

Oh, boy. Kenner has either gone insane or realised something we haven’t.

Where do I begin? This is another figure from Kenner’s Aliens, which are actually from a cancelled cartoon called ‘Operation: Aliens’. This particular figure is the queen alien, although you might not be able to tell at first glance. This was not actually the only queen that Kenner produced: There was this one, a winged one and a movie-accurate queen that came only in the queen’s egg chamber playset.

This queen looks like the movie queen and five other xenomorphs blended together and re-constructed by Dr. Frankenstein. It has six (!) arms, a tail sprouting out from her back, strange, torn feet and what I can only describe as claws instead of tubes on her back. Why they chose to give her an extra pair of tiny arms sticking out from her chest goes past me, as it certainly seems useless- too small to hold figures, yet too big to hold facehuggers and other accessories.

Talking of accessories, this figure comes with a huge black chestburster, or as the packaging describes it, a ‘deadly’ chest hatchling. Why is deadly in quotation marks? Maybe it just has a mean nature. I don’t know, it certainly seems deadly as it crawls through your ribs! Unfortunately, I don’t have mine. It must have run off.

This figure has two action features- squeeze an airbag on the back of her head to extend her inner jaw (and, depending on how far it is extended, you can suck it back in when you let go.) or press a button on her hip to swing her entire upper body her right, knocking over any figures near her with her tail. These are really fun features, and really make sense considering that’s standard xenomorph attacks. I’m surprised none of the other figures do this!

All in all, this figure is not at all accurate, but super fun! If you had only one xenomorph figure from Kenner, I would make it this one.

RATING: FIVE OUT OF FIVE ‘DEADLY’ CHEST HATCHLINGS.

Kenner Mantis Alien

Back in 1993, Kenner decided to release a bunch of aliens toys based on their cancelled cartoon, ‘Operation: Aliens’. Because of course kids love facehugging impregnating parasites that come free with a rib-cracking prize. And, as it turns out, they actually did. The toys were a big hit (at least to start off with; the line soon fizzled away.) The Mantis Alien is one of the best ones from the line. To start off with, it looks gorgeous. It looks like it would be lemon and lime flavoured, too, or is that just me? (By the way, if you were wondering, it tastes of plastic. Oh.) The concept never really made sense to me, though: Did a facehugger impregnate a gigantic mantis, or was there a really tiny facehugger?

Anyway, like all the alien toys, it comes with an action feature:

When you squeeze the two tubes or fins on the back of the mantis alien, the arms pull on any figure, in this case Obi Wan Kenobi. Sorry, Obi, not even the force can save you now. What? You die anyway!

You can also pull or push the tubes left or right to move both arms in the chosen direction and shake your unfortunate prey figure all around. It’s really fun, but the Gorilla alien from the line does this too. (Plus it squirts water. But I bet it doesn’t have a distinct ‘lemon and lime’ feel. Probably liquorice. I don’t like liquorice.)

The one I have is the UK version- all we got is repaints of US versions. The US version of this alien has gold teeth and green tubes, so beware if you like one colour over the other.

Overall, This figure is out of this world! (I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I needed to write that pun.)

CONCLUSION: FIVE ALIEN EGGS OUT OF FIVE