JCPenney was a string of department stores across the US and each year it published Christmas catalogs featuring hundreds of pages of consumables ready for shoppers to peruse and buy.  The 1979 Christmas edition featured an ad for the Kenner Products ALIEN toy.  This composite image is excerpted from page 481 of the catalog.

Also on the page is the ALIEN Blaster Target Set, which is a rare and collectible item in its own right and is worth significantly more than the retail price of US$9.98 listed here.  If you want one now, in any condition, you can expect to pay hundreds of dollars for it.  Our interest is more focused on the Kenner toy on the right.  Give or take a few cents, at US$14.88, this was the recommended retail price for one of these toys in 1979.

Of particular interest is the age rating for both of these items. The action figure was deemed appropriate for children ages 5 and up while the target set was promoted to an even younger age of 4.  How something like this can be considered appropriate to 4 year olds is intriguing but it wasn’t the last time Kenner would market toys at this age group.  Much of their 1990s range of ALIENS toys were also considered to be perfectly fine for 4 year olds.

Also of note here is the figure used in the action figure advertisement.  Once again, a prototype has been utilised to promote the toy.  The glow in the dark paint pattern on the head differs from the mass market version released onto store shelves. The sample on display here is probably a hard copy of what would eventually become the serial run production version of the toy available for purchase.

As to the fate of this prototype?  No one knows but the likelihood is high it was disposed of and destroyed during Kenner’s purge of their factory space of all things relating to the ALIEN range of products when they cancelled the entire production run of all extant and proposed merchandise in late 1979.

Below is the front page of the 40 year old JCPenney Christmas catalog and page 481 where both of these items appeared in their original page layout.

-Windebieste.