Whatever Happened to the Original Line of Alien (1979) Toys?
“Stop the growing Alien before it becomes the ultimate terror!”
The story of this article goes back a few days where the boss man here at Dread Central, Mr. Steve Barton, asked me if I could make a photo gallery of some cool retro horror toys.
I’m not too into old school toys, to be honest, but I knew that something was bound to catch my attention. And sure enough, after about two minutes worth of searching, I came across this classic merchandising mix-up.
We’ll call it the “Alien Oops” of 1979.
The story goes that after George Lucas’s Star Wars hit it big with merchandising back in the summer of 1979, Fox was all about seizing the opportunity for boatloads of cash and made plans to license toys for their next upcoming space flick.
This film ended up being Ridley Scott’s masterpiece of space terror Alien.
You see, the Fox execs were (somehow) unaware that Alien was a straight-up R-rated horror film, so they thought they had another kid-friendly space opera on their hands. Oh, boy.
20th Century Fox licensed Alien to mass market toy companies like Kenner and before anyone realized the film was as horror as horror can get, Toys R’ Us and other major toy outlets had their products on shelves. Much to the horror of parents around the country.
The licensed toys included:
Alien Blaster Target Set, Alien Chase Target Set, Alien Movie Viewer, Alien Action Figure, Alien Jigsaw Puzzles, and the Alien Board Game.
Years later there was the Alien Atari Game (1982) but this was after the fact. All the same, you can check out the retro commercial for the game below. It’s beautiful.
Basically, this 1979 “Alien Oops” kerfuffle equates to a studio exec nowadays thinking Stephen King’s IT, aka “that new movie with the cute little kids and the giggling clown”, is surely for children and mass marketing Pennywise toys to the youth of America.
I know. That would have been awesome.
Anyhow, along with the above-mentioned Atari commercial, below you can find a gallery of images from the brief Alien toy collection of 1979.
Enjoy!
Categorized:Last Toys on the Left News
