This time last month, James Cameron’s never bettered addition to the Alien franchise, Aliens, was celebrating its 35th anniversary having released into cinemas on July 18, 1986. Now Hasbro are offering fans a belated birthday present with the pre-order opening on the Nerf LMTD Aliens M41-A Pulse Blaster. As far as Nerf products go, this is as good as it gets for people of a certain age who would love nothing more than to run around claustrophobic corridors battling against a bunch of acid-dripping xenomorphs like a ten year old at a Quasar party.
The newest addition to the Nerf family is based on the M41-A automatic weapon used by the Colonial Marine Corps in the classic movie when they are in the midst of being attacked from all sides by aliens. This version of the weapon however will not take out any intergalactic threats, but is able to fire either 10 Nerf Elite Darts for a motorized rapid fire action, or 3 Mega Darts via the pump action option. The gun also has a LCD counter on its side and features sound effects from the movie when fired. As if the gun itself isn’t good enough, the box it comes in is designed like a Colonial Marine Corps Crate with weapon blue-print on the inside.
There is a huge market for toys based on movies now considered to be retro, with the likes of NECA having already dominated the Alien action figure lines with every possible iteration of the chest-bursting creatures and the human characters from all movies of the franchise. The Pulse Blaster is available to pre-order now for around $95, but as with most high priced pre-order toys you will have to wait until October 2022 to actually get your hands on it. That said, anyone looking to grab their slot shouldn’t hang around as these nostalgic offerings usually sell out pretty quickly.
While this is good news for Aliens fans, it has been mixed news on the xenomorphs’ next on screen appearance and possible future outings. On the one hand, the TV series from Fargo creator Noah Hawley will be arriving on FX sometime in 2023 and boasts both James Cameron and Ridley Scott as producers. FX president John Landgraf recently said of that project, “I think it was very conscious the fact that there’s a cinematic universe, and that while it has some flexibility, that the aesthetic that was established by Ridley Scott and continued by James Cameron is a part of that universe. I think you’ll see some inventiveness and some originality that is uniquely Noah.”
On the other hand, Neil Blomkamp has recently put the final nail in the coffin of his much-mentioned Alien 5 concept for those who were still clinging to the hope that one day it may be seen. In an interview, he said that it was very unlikely that it would ever be made, and unless something changed, the project is dead as of now.
However, for fans of the original movies, it is clear that there is still a lot of love out there, and if you are one of the millions who like to fill your home with replicas and movie memorabilia, then Hasbro’s latest Nerf offering will probably go a long way to help ease the loss of what might have been.