GG Alien said he had enough of this “Lockdown bullshit” and decided to go outside and get drunk, freak out some birds and scare the neighbour’s cat so it won’t set foot in my back yard for a month. Let’s talk about this curiosity for a bit, his name is GG Alien. “GG Alien” is a custom built figure using discared parts from multiple 1979 Kenner ALIEN toys. The custom made piece is inspired by the notorious American punk performer, GG Allin, along with numerous other punk bands of the 1970s and 1980s. This build was made about four years ago.

GG Alien isn’t solely a custom made figure, though. That would be ignoring significant  work done elsewhere. He’s the result of a much larger effort of restoring many other Kenner ALIEN toys. GG Alien isn’t the end goal of the exercise, he’s more of a byproduct of other extensive activities.

Along with the Kenner ALIEN’s unique history; and one that cannot be repeated, it is also an ideal item to restore. Two – or more – of these figures can be disassembled, parts swapped out and a better sample rebuilt from those parts. Inevitably, it means leftovers.

Something I have enjoyed doing during the past decade or so is restoring these old toys. I’ve messed around and rebuilt several dozen of these things, bringing them up to display worthy standards. This activity has meant a box full of leftovers was assured. GG Alien is the result of the reassembly of those leftovers.

typically, these leftovers are broken, melted or otherwise mis-shapen. GG Alien is cobbled together from a selection of those unfortunate parts. The broken nature of each of these items makes them unattractive to use in other rebuilds of the toy but are far from worthless and simply too good to dispose of. When enough wrecked parts are collected, much more can be done with them. In this regard, they are perfect for further embellishment and a punk theme is ideal. GG Alien wouldn’t have been possible without a series of rebuilds being done first. Here’s some of them.Each one of these items was a wreck when it came into my possession but judicious “cannibalisation” of recovered high quality parts from previous tear downs means these re-assembled old toys now display like a Boss! Mind you, I will openly declare some reproduction parts have been used here but I regard their presence, that is the use of tools and materials,  is no different to the many improvised techniques utilised to internally repair these figures. For example, each figure holds their arms in an upright position and this pose would not be possible without additional internal work and the use of improvised components created in order to achieve this goal. I simply regard it to be responsible to declare the presence of such facsimile parts when used.

Anyway, GG Alien is the end result of all these restored forty year old toys. Without all of his additional anti-social embellishments, he’d simply be an assemblage of wrecked parts. Besides, the elongated Alien head is perfect for adding a mohawk and I’ve always wanted to create an Alien with a mohawk.

Now he’s an art object.

-Windebieste.