.

“What are we supposed to use?  Harsh language?”

— Private Ricco Frost

One of the frustrating things about many of the toylines based on Aliens is the overall lack of any of the human characters.  The film has quite a rich cast of colorful characters, and only a small handful of them ever made it into plastic form.  Most lines avoided humans all together, and those that didn’t, such as Kenner’s line from the 90s, quickly abandoned the film’s actual characters for characters of their own creation.  Fortunately, through the efforts of DST, the lack of character selection from the film is quickly being resolved.  Today, we’ll be looking at one of my favorite Marines, Pvt Frost, as well as another variant of the titular creature.

Packaging

The packaging here is the same as other Wave 2 ‘mates. It’s pretty much the same as the blister-style packaging as Wave 1 and the TRU Wave.  On the back is the full lineup of Wave 2 figures, as well as bios for Frost and the Xeno.  The bit about April 26 being “Alien Day” is still there, but there’s no elaboration.

The Figures

Pvt Frost

Despite technically being one of the more minor Marines and only appearing in about a quarter of the film, Frost is actually a kind of memorable guy.  I mean, sure, he’s not Apone, or even Drake, but he manages to get quite a bit of dialogue, and a lot of his lines are fairly memorable.  He’s probably the most humanized of the secondary Marines.  Which makes him being the first character to die, after an hour of waiting, all the more gripping.

Frost features the same armor pieces we’ve seen several times before on the various Marines.  Like his series-mate, Crowe, his shoulder lamp is not removable, which is a bit of a letdown after the Series 1 Marines, but not the worst thing ever.  The armor parts are still very nice pieces of work, which quite nicely replicate the Marines’ armor from the movie.

Frost has probably the best paintwork in this whole series.  There are one or two instances of bleed over, but other than that, everything’s pretty clean.  His face is a pretty great likeness of Ricco Ross, and the line work is really sharp.  He’s even got a bit of the armor graffiti we see in the film; a heart with an arrow through it and the name “Heath” in the middle.  This was in honor of Ross’s girlfriend Heather, though I suppose in universe Frost might just be a really big 10 Things I hate about You fan.  Or he’s really into candy bars.  Regardless, it’s nice to see the armor graffiti hasn’t been forgotten.

For accessories, Frost includes an extra hairpiece, the standard issue pulse rifle, a flame thrower (w/ flame attachment), and a clear display stand.  The flamethrower is a new addition to the line, and it looks really great.  Of course, packing Frost with the flamethrower is a bit like packing Thomas and Martha Wayne with a handgun, but let’s not dwell.  It’s just awesome that Frost got two whole weapons!

Frost is probably the best basic Marine so far.  The painted details are all really sharp, and he has a great accessory complement.  Pretty good for a seemingly minor character.

MMC Score – 9 out of 10

Burning Warrior Alien

Hey look!  Another Alien!  It’s okay though, guys, this one’s actually totally new and unique!  Yay!  Yes, it seems the DST is well aware that people might get bored buying essentially the same Alien Warrior over and over again, so they’re trying to mix things up.  Since this Alien’s packed with a flamethrower wielding character, this figure is made to look like it’s on the receiving end of the weapon.

Sculpturally, this figure is the same as all of the prior Alien Warriors, with one slight change: not it’s got little flame-y bits on the shoulders (which are re-used from the Marvel line’s Dark Phoenix), in order to make the figure look like it’s really on fire.  The one downside is that these extra pieces remove the elbow movement entirely, but at least they’re removable.

In addition to the two new pieces,  the majority of the figure is molded in translucent orange plastic, to give the figure the appearance of being ablaze.  All of the usual Alien details are still there, but now there’s a slight flame pattern over them.  The end result is maybe not a spot-on recreation of a burning Alien, but interesting nonetheless.

The Burning Warrior Alien includes a newborn alien and a clear display stand.  I’m definitely glad to see the newborn showing up multiple places, because it’s a good piece.

The Burning Alien certainly isn’t going to be an everyday Alien, as he’s quite scene specific, but it’s a really fun variant, and a great way to keep the Aliens in this line interesting.

MMC Score – 8 out of 10

Agree? Disagree? Why not vote for yourself below, or comment further over at the Minimate Multiverse MMC Review Forum.

Review and pictures by Glantern.

[starratingmulti id=”1″]

[starratingmulti id=”2″]