In the early 90's the toy and cartoon market was littered with movie licensed stuff. We had Robocop and Rambo cartoons with toy lines to follow. It was a weird era in violence. Arnold and Sly movies were all the rage and children were viewing rated R films like it was nothing. You know the rating system was a joke when you have cartoons and toys being made of these movies. That was nothing compared to what was to come tho. Kenner released a small ALIEN toy line in the 70's when the original film was released, but it was deemed too dark for kids. Well they weren't worried about that in the 90's because they released massive lines of ALIENS and PREDATOR related merchandise. I remember the old commercials showing the two fighting in the jungle. I remember purchasing a couple of the combo packs as well. One thing I immediately noticed as a child was that the toy line featured characters that either died in the movie, or were never in the movie to begin with. I figured toy companies make up characters and stories all the time, so that's not that uncommon. It turns out the line came from a pitched idea for an ALIENS animated series!
The series would have been called "Operation ALIENS". It would have followed all your favorite marines like Hicks,Apone,Hudson,Vasquez...wait a second. Yep, the animated series focused on the entire group of marines that died in ALIENS the film. It would have totally ignored the outcome. Considering the entire planet was nuked at the end, the chance that any of these guys would have survived is impossible. Their fates from the film are ignored and they are still traveling around space hunting down Aliens like they are cockroaches. The toyline came with little comics which were basically the outline for what the show would have been. They depict the marines blowing up various types of Aliens with relative ease, even trapping the queen like it's no biggie. I must say tho I'm pretty interested to see how this show would have unfolded. How would they address the breeding process of the alien, or the fact that they bleed blood? A lot of issues that would have to be changed in order for kids to watch the programming. I'm guessing that's why the show never got off the ground. Instead we were left with some posters, puzzles, toys, shirts, and a couple screen shots of a teaser, which I'll put below. What do you guys think, could it have succeeded? What other cartoons with violent overtones did you enjoy?
No comments:
Post a Comment