Retail catalogues featuring images and details of the 1979 Kenner ALIEN toy sold outside of the US are also known to exist. Here are a pair of excerpts from two catalogues distributed throughout Australia. These items would have been printed in either late 1979 or sometime in 1980.
Yes. I live in Australia. No. I don’t own either of these print media items. Anyone will be severely hard pressed to locate either of these promotional publications today. Please let me know if you have either of these catalogues. I’d love some fresh, complete and hi-res scans of these rare print items. Anyway, on with the “Show and Tell” session, Kiddies.
Below is the 1980 TOLTOYS catalogue cover and Kenner ALIEN toy as it appears on a full page. The ALIEN toy promotion was placed in among a host of Star Wars toys presumably to assist stimulate sales as both movies were distributed by 20th Century Fox. Note the ALIEN board game was also featured in this catalogue. The blue boxed board game differs from US and Canadian bilingual pressings in various ways, including the uncensored head of the action figure used on the box top.
To be clear, the sample toy used in both product promotion items is a prototype often featured on similar print material for Kenner’s 1979 range of ALIEN toys elsewhere in the world. Significantly, the board game was licenced to sell within Australia by local toy company, TOLTOYS. All Kenner brandings present on the box are replaced by TOLTOYS. The image of the boxed action figure appearing in the promotion appears to be a Kenner import from the US.
More information about the ALIEN board game can be found here.
Below is the advertisement for the Kenner ALIEN as it appeared in Australian Venture Stores catalogues. This item appears to be one of the few examples known where an actual sample of the mass market toy is used to represent the product for sale rather than a prototype. Excepting this case, most promotions of Kenner’s ALIEN action figure frequently used a prototype rather than the actual toy itself and a prototype is commonly featured in all of Kenner’s promotional media including toy industry media, printed retail catalogues, the actual box in which the figure was distributed and the original 1979 TV commercial. All of these items feature prototypes of the toy. The item appearing on this page appears to be an actual retail production sample
Again, the uncensored TOLTOYS version of the ALIEN board game is featured in the Venture Stores catalogue. Again, it was part of promoting the sales of the ALIEN product line made available in Australia four decades ago.
-Windebieste.
