Overview

Alien-X may play an important role in the 2004 Godzilla film, but the toy feels more like one of the Putty Patrol or some random Sentai show's villain-of-the-week. There isn't much to him and BanDai really didn't do much to make him exciting, and as such we're less than enamored with the final product.

The alien includes only a tag, and the power to suck up your Final Wars shelf.

The Figure

With three joints, no color, and no visible weapons, this character doesn't work much as a toy. Sure, he looks good for what he is, and there's some great detail work here... but it ain't that great.

So now that we see one of the new characters from the new movie Alien-X just doesn't deliver. He has little personality, little articulation, and next to no color. While it's hard not to like a new entry in the Godzilla mythos, it is hard to like something that looks like a bad Sentai villain-- and we don't mean like in a good Ultraman or Kamen Rider kind of way.

There are some varied tubes, arteries, and textures that give the figure some life but aside from the very alien head, he doesn't tend to grow beyond a man-wrapped-in-tin-foil. It's hard to come up with new exciting designs for man-in-suit monsters in this day and age, but it isn't that hard.

There's not much of a face here, and while there are parts that look like eyes and a mouth, they don't evoke much personality. This is no fault of the toy sculptors, it's just a weak design. Thankfully they jointed his arms and neck, but even that doesn't do much to save him beyond making him able to move a little, but he looks wonky with his arm out straight. In short, blah.

Packaging

Alien-X's tag is his only form of packaging, which is just as well as he fits in with the rest of the line.

There really isn't much to it. I mean, it's a tag.

Fin

A question you should ask when considering purchasing Alien-X is "why?" Like "Why didn't they make another character, like Zilla, instead?" There were other monsters from Final Wars that as of yet have not seen plastic, and as such this seems like a super-weak choice. While it's nice to see a character that's bound to have little long-term popularity be made as a figure before someone decides against the idea, it's just not the best possible choice in a line like this in which you got two awesome versions of Gigan. This isn't a fragile toy, nor is it a crappy one-- it's just a design that you can't get much out of from the get-go, like Minilla. It can stand around, that's about it.

Text and photos by Adam Pawlus
Review posted on February 11, 2005.
Sample purchased from a Japanese importer for roughly $9 in January, 2005.