Time: the future. Place: the commercial towing vehicle "Nostromo", a gigantic Mineral Ore Refinery being tugged across the galaxy. Its crew, five men, two women, and one cat, are deep in hyper-sleep...
While it might not seem as big a deal today, back in 1979 an R-rated, and quite gory, monster movie having a bunch of merchandise marketed toward children caused a small stir of controversy.
I do recall watching a segment of Sneak Previews wherein Gene Siskel took a moment to hold up one of Kenner's 18" Alien figures and rant about how vile it was for a toy company to make and sell something so inappropriate for children. 12-year-old me thought he was an overreacting, stick-in-the-mud jerk-face. That toy looked awesome and I wanted it, bad.
Yet who got it for Christmas that year? My younger brother. I got the soundtrack album, Heavy Metal's Alien: The Illustrated Story, and Richard J. Anobile's Alien: The Movie Novel. So it goes.
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