Toys Tough Enough to Terrorize Your Pet Beagle

Why didn’t the recent DirecTV commercial, featuring Sigourney Weaver as “Ellen Ripley” in James Cameron’s 1986 movie, Aliens, get more amore?

You’ve seen the original: At the film’s geekalicious climax, Ripley takes on the villainous Alien Queen with an “anthropomorphic exoskeletal” Caterpillar P-5000 Powered Work Loader. (Weaver got a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her performance.)

DirecTV, as they’d done with well-known flicks from the ‘80s and ‘90s (Star Trek: Generations, Major League, Back to the Future), remixed the scene into an ad pitching the virtues of satellite over cable. Their digital fx hoo-haa even lip-synced Ripley’s 22-year-old footage to new script. (Hey: If we all yell and stamp our feet loud enough, maybe they’ll sign Pacino to remake the climactic “Sigh ay-low to mah lee’l frah!” bloodbath from Scarface.)

Yet, if you’re even a tiny bit like me, even a quarter-century in, there’s still no such thing as too much Aliens. If so, wrap your head around this: Hot Toys‘ 1/6-scale, 21″ high, fully articulated Power Loader model kit.

This thing is massive. Its shipping weight is ten pounds. Its fully decked-out Ripley figure, included, is a foot high, but looks small in comparison. It has a working warning signal light. As you can see from clicking on the link, the detail is incredible.

At $249.99 from most retailers, Hot Toys seems to be aiming their pointed lance straight into the heart of Kotobukiya, the renowned Japanese manufacturer whose large-scale, scarily detailed statuettes define the craft. Then again, some would say that Hot Toys may have already won the war, when you consider both the variety and quality of their offerings, and take their figures’ articulation into account.

Unlike Ripley and the Queen, though, this battle has yet to be decided. I say we put Hot Toys’ Clubber Lang, from Rocky III, in the ring with Kotobukiya’s Batman, and let ’em knock each other out for the coy hand of Princess Leia Slave Girl. May the best piece of polyvinyl win.