Aliens Toy Commercials (Dioramas Pt.3)

 They're Unstoppable!

So continuing on the topic of dioramas and backdrops for the Aliens line, today we're examining the television commercials.

The backgrounds/sets were awesome to say the least. It's one thing to see the background featured on the back of the packaging. But now we're seeing it live! Moving! In action!

Again, these were wonderful sets, kudos to these creatives. You know they had fun building & lighting these ads (I'm sure there was one person on the team who couldn't care less, it was a job like any other). Man, I would've loved that job. I was born 15 years too late.

An interesting fact is that Kenner originally planned to do the ads with animation. The character sheets & studies that exist on the internet are from this abandoned concept. These animations were NOT from a cancelled animated cartoon. Never happened. Fox shot the idea down from the very beginning.

As Kenner explored integrating live action footage of the figures with animated segments, they ultimately decided to go 100% live action. 

There were these initial 5 ads. The later 2 did not feature cool space colony backgrounds but rather nature/jungle settings, fitting for the newly introduced Predator figures at that time.

The commercial featuring series 2 figures is the craziest; a live-action Apone confronts a "full size" flying queen! Who made that puppet? Where is it now? That would be an awesome piece to own.

It's a great special effect too. Very high production value for a toy ad. 

My favorite ad when I was younger was the one that featured the Queen Hive playset. I remember the day, where I was. I remember seeing it and just being floored. At 10, at that very moment, I knew that my purpose on this Earth was to obtain that toy. I had to have it (and I did that following February!) That figure was spot-on in movie likeness. My absolute favorite figure of all time.

Thank you for reading. Here's the link to all the videos, check them out!

All Kenner Aliens commercials

"Yo Hicks!"