Rogues' Roundup: Aliens APC and miscellaneous army-man guys

 

I'm off to a later start than usual, and I'm still telling myself I can do a quick post. In the true spirit of this feature, I have an assortment of guys new and old. As the centerpiece, I have the Lanard Aliens APC, last seen in the Alien haul. This time around, I'm trying out my army men and space guys to figure out what the Hell kind of scale this is, because this thing is messed up even by the standards of the old days. To start things off, here's a shot of it with the figures it actually came with, the direct-to-Walmart space marines aka Total Soldier and Star Force reissues.

As seen above, the design is based on the APC from Aliens, but completely resized  for figures much larger in size in proportion to the vehicle. This could have worked if they had worked up  a new design to represent a smaller vehicle that might exist offscreen somewhere in the Alien universe. Instead, they copied the movie design accurately enough that the original viewport, door and other hatches and fixtures remain clearly visible and obviously incompatible with the figures. Something I further confirmed is that the figures are bigger than they might appear. When I lined them up with the reissued Corps figure, which I just think of as the Big Guy, they looked like they'd be a bit smaller than 3.75 inch scale, but I subsequently confirmed the reverse was true.(Apparently, it helps to have reference models that aren't bigger than everything else.) What's totally incongruous is that the designers still put in a relatively detailed interior. Here's some shots with and without the figures inside.

The Big Guy will fit in the front seat, too, but the hatch won't close.

Since the figure included obviously don't fit, I thought of comparing smaller figures with the vehicle. On a recent viewing of the movie (hey, I watch good ones!), I took an especially close look at the door. When the marines get in and out, they duck, but only a little, while they can still stand up inside. That fits with the semi-official 2.2 meter/ 7 ft figure given for the vehicle height. With that in mind, the first thing I thought of was the 70 mm/ 3 inch Marx space guys, led by The Space Guy Who Doesn't Care.  I also decided to try a few others, including the Galaxy Laser Team Commander, the Timmee Nuclear Guy and a Marx reissue astronaut I hadn't gotten to yet. Here's a couple shots to show how they match up.

"They're gonna come in here and they're gonna get us!"

"'I still don't care."

Judging from these results, the 70mm space guys look about the right scale, though to me they seem just a little on the big size. On the other hand, the GLT commander at nominal 2 in/ army man scale is definitely too small; he could go through that door fully upright. I took a further interest in the Marx astronaut and the Nuclear Guy, which I'm satisfied are 60 mm and 63 mm respectively. The astronaut still looked small, but the Nuclear Guy actually made sense. For further comparison, I broke out a few more from the group he actually came from, the Timmee firefighter set.

While I'm on an Alien streak, I decided to break out one more find I never got to, an Alien set under the MUSCLE name. I found this at a used bookstore a few months back, still in the garbage can-shaped container it came in, and managed to figure out what it was before I got it. Here's pics of the container and a good part of the group.

Impressively, the set actually included the entire human (and android) cast of Alien. Though they're surprisingly small, it was still a little difficult to get all of them in one shot. Here they are; note Ash with the magazine!

In one more surprise, the set has three sculpts of Kane, played by the late John Hurt (see The Plague Dogs review), explicitly acting out the Alien's life cycle. Here's the lineup.

Finally, here's a few more pics of the Lanard astronaut and a bike originally included with the Big Guy and facehugger. Of all the figures, he's the only one who can ride the thing, which makes sense considering it reportedly came with the Star Force line. One more thing, he really looks grim without the helmet.

"We're all gonna die."

"Yeah.... I wonder what's for dinner."

That's all for now, more to come!