L is for Louche & Lanky!

The only thing worse than a blind bag, is a blind box! With a blind bag, you can squeeze it to find the pose you're looking for, or discard the one's you've already got, or, you can learn/look-out for the pack code-numbers after Small Scale World gives them to you, as was the case with Horrible Histories . . . sadly no one did it for the second wave!

But with a blind box, you haven't the faintest what you getting, and while the blurb says "...from 4 to 8 figures" I've only seen the same three or four-figure sets (unless they're counting eggs and 'Norwegian' containers, which would be double the swizz! But anyway the above is what you were looking out for to 'army build' your big-box playset; a rather naff card thing with plastic decks/edges.

I seem to have deleted the original image, so I'm reusing one I've used elsewhere a bit sooner than I might usually, but se la vie as the French say and they know what they're talking about, they all speak French!

How they come, I don't see up to eight figures in either of these, it's a four-count every time!

I think I'm missing two Colonial Marine poses, another with the thermal lance and a trooper, but I think I have all the characters? However, as you can see, and apropos the title of this post, while beautifully sculpted as far as detail/etching goes, they are all too long and thin in the vertical!

And it's not even an anatomical thing particularly, just that they seem to have been designed by one of the not-so-good stand-in Judge Dredd artists! They're all about seven-foot-six and streaks of piss!

I'm also missing one of these Xenomorphs I think, running/lunging forward with the tail out back, but I won't be buying one soon as they will turn-up loose in a year or so, they must have sold quite well, as there's always plenty of these on eBay (which may - of course - just mean they didn't sell first time round!), but to get the three I need (there may be a Facehugger too?) I would have to end-up with twice as many duplicates however I worked it, so I'll wait.

They're usually around the $£€-25/30-mark (always look for those around 12/15, they're there), with the odd idiot wanting 70 for his 'really rare' set! And buy the opened ones, so you know what you're getting!

These are also a bit lanky, but it works quite well with them, and possibly the best way to game the franchise would be with these Aliens, the Walmart egg-aliens (suitably painted) as juveniles and the Lanard Corps Elite 'Space Marines'?

I think I bought five sets to build my sample, in total, and this one may be the mythical '8 figures' one! Two Xenomorphs, four eggs (the missing ones brought the price down and how many do you need? . . . Oh, a cavern full!) and three containers which could be food, ammo, medical supplies or science'y-stuff, but they remind me of Norwegian containers used in the modern military to keep foot hot or cold.

There's also four window-box sets which consist of one-each transparent blue Xenonorphs (or one has four transparent blue eggs) and US Colonial Marine named-characters in grey plastic, which - as of two minutes ago - I've two in the post, so a follow-up, soonish? Now to be found here!

That's it, an uncommonly eggy Easter, just not the sort of eggs you want to find on a hunt round the garden. Palisade/THK Aliens - This time it's . . . err . . . skinny war!