The figure also features a ball-jointed neck with an interesting accommodation; one of the dorsal fins pops out (presumably on purpose!) to allow for deeper neck poses. That’s a nice little touch. The middle torso also features a nice ball-joint and the bendy tail. I love the bendy tail –it’s absolutely essential to making this figure work, but I do worry about the wear & tear on where it connects to the body. I feel like that glue is going to give out. Oh, and there’s that nasty little slide-out inner jaw.
And then there are the legs. The legs have a ton of articulation which both over joys and annoys me. There’s a ton here: ball-jointed hips, hidden thigh swivels, double-hinged knees, one-piece ball-joint ankles, and hinged toes. The articulation itself is fantastic, but I occasionally have a hard time keeping the figure standing. Some of it may be me – maybe I don’t know the right poses for an Alien, or where the figure’s center of gravity is, but some of it is the figure too. It’s mostly the knees I think. The middle piece is a very soft plastic and has just a little too much give in deep poses where it tends to give out on my figure. The whole lower half of the leg is a softer plastic, in fact, which is my only real concern with the figure. As a Mattel buyer, I’ve had some bad experience with softer plastic on the lower legs.
The ankle joint is also an oddity. It’s most similar to Mattel’s Tytus shoulders – a one-piece post with a bumpy texture that goes up into the leg. It’s a little more restrictive than I’d like, but I imagine this type of joint was needed to keep the figure upright. It does its job, you’ll just have to work a little to get the poses you want out of the figure – which is really true for the whole leg, I think.
I had no real quality control issues with the figure other than the paint missing on the teeth. I’ve read some about stuck or frozen joints, but I had no issues with that. Yay!
No accessories were included. And while it might be nice to get some face huggers or eggs as prop accessories, you won’t miss them one bit if you pick up the figure. You’ll feel that you got your money’s worth on the figure itself.
Overall, I don’t have every Alien figure released or even most of them, but if I had to have one I’m pretty sure this is the one to have. I’d like the legs to be a little stronger, but the sculpt & articulation are fantastic. I sat down and watched Alien & Aliens last night and caught sight of my figure sitting over on the counter in the dark kitchen having a stare down with Extraction Dutch. You could really only see the silhouette at that distance, but the figure looked great even then. It was obvious right away what it was and it look really imposing as it towered over that little Arnold silhouette.
I’ve been saying it all week, particularly for recent releases like Dutch & the Xenomorph, but NECA is smashing these out of the park. I love this Xenomorph – so much so that I’ll have a couple repaints of him in different colors in a few weeks. And that’s not to mention what other new colors (I kinda want an all-blue one) or new parts NECA can use to stretch this mold. I’m ready for it.
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Argh! I have to wait until my vacation next week to pick up this guy from out of town! The annoying part is I passed him up last time I saw it!
Which Predator is that in your pics? The basic Jungle Hunter?
*adds to list*
I remember my cousin had the original ’79 18″ Xenomorph with the retractable inner mouth and that was the epitome of cool back then. The 90s Alien line was funky in it’s variations, so I don’t know what variants you’re taking about, simple color decos or more in line with that previous series?
LOL at last gag.
and KC has *four* TRUs? when I was up there about two years ago, my gps only hit on the one on I-70, just east of town? Westphalia? nothing else until Col/Jeff.
Yeah, NECA is really starting to seperate themselves from the pack. They just need to stay consistent with these recent offerings, & all will be good in the Toy World.
Excellent review, pics, and hilarious comics!
I keep having to tell myself “You can’t start another line. You can’t start another line. You can’t start another line.” And then this site goes and tempts me even more.
Man, NECA is making me SO happy lately. That mud-Dutch is just a work of art, too. Looking forward to the review. Still haven’t picked up the Alien, but I might just wait for the two-pack. That red Alien looks awesome to me.
I love that last pic, too.
As for Prometheus… you.. aren’t… missing… anything……..
Noisy, imagine astronauts landing on an alien planet, encountering the mysterious space jockeys from Alien, and becoming infected with proto-Xenomorphs.
Whatever you’re picturing in your head is better than the actual film.
I wish I could go back to the time when I could only speculate about what the movie was about…
I never really cared about getting any Alien or Predator toys until NECA stepped up their game with these recent additions of the movie characters and am glad (my wallet saying otherwise) to see how great these figures have become now with all the articulation.
It’s like you’re almost buying something from the late 90s/early 00s when Toy Biz was around, or buying import Figuarts for how many possibility options they give you now.
I got two w fused left hips that tore off almost immediately out of the box 🙁 TRU hasn’t restocked and while NECA’s twitter said CS would get me a replacement, the actual CS department has been ignoring me for 2 weeks now 🙁
From speaking to others apparently NECA’s Customer Service is near non-existent and I shouldn’t expect to ever hear from them. Such a shame. I really want to like NECA but this experience has soured my enthusiasm. I’d still really like to get a good QC alien. It’s seem like it would be such a nice plaything unbroken. :/
NECA CS has never gotten back to me from when I had my Kratos figures and various Gears figures break on me due to the fragile plastic they used on the joints.
The aliens look great!
The fan term “xenomorph” always gets me though. “foreign body” = “alien”. Same difference!