Kenner released their nefarious ALIEN action figure in 1979. Inside the bright blue box the toy itself attached via laddered zip ties to a red insert card that kept it stable within the package. Also inside the box was a paper inclusion. This double sided printed item served both as a rudimentary black and white instruction sheet with the reverse side serving as a poster. Today, these loose items can fetch upwards of over US$100 apiece when sold on eBay. It’s also been emulated multiple times by companies who have since created their own versions of the poster as inclusions within their own ALIEN products.
This blue version of the poster can be found in Super7’s more recent iterations of the older Kenner Products toy. Printed blue on white paper, it’s a modern recreation of the older inclusion. One side featuring the instruction sheet closely resembles the original 1979 publication in all critical design elements but given a 1986 update. It is a neat inclusion and can be found in all of Super7’s SuperSize ALIENS tribute figures, excepting their very first ‘prototype’ figure which contains no such inclusion. As such, you’ll find one in each of their ‘Classic Toy Edition’ (2017), ‘Acid Green Edition’ (2017) and ‘Marine Ambush Edition’ (2019) ALIENS action figures.
The Kenner ALIEN poster also appeared as a black on white inclusion in all 4 Gentle Giant tribute releases of the toy in 2014 and 2015. It’s more or less a straight up reproduction of the older Kenner poster except printed 25% larger to match the oversized Gentle Giant figure and box along with Kenner’s manufacturing and copyright details on the lower right corner of these posters being replaced with those relevant to Gentle Giant. You can see this informational change in the image of the Gentle Giant poster in the gallery below.
Another version of the poster is also known to exist. It was distributed with the bilingual box Canadian/International version of the Kenner toy released in late 1979. This was a double sided printing of the instruction side of the inclusion only. One side of the sheet was printed in English and the reverse side was printed entirely in French. These Canadian posters are also printed on a wider paper stock than the US version of the poster of the same era. These bilingual English/French posters are exceptionally rare and are seldom seen.
-Windebieste.
