NECA: Aliens Power Loader

2015 was a banner year for the crew at NECA, cranking out bigger and badder product throughout the year. I had intended to purchase this one in particular and review it, but, to be honest, I thought we (Fwoosh) had already covered it!

So when I found it at a slight discount over the holiday weekend, I went for it.

One reason perhaps we hadn’t yet covered it might have been the rather unassuming shelf presence this box has.

When I first saw it, I was actually concerned this might be more of a model kit than an a vehicle — the box is pretty small.  I figured I would need to do a lot of assembly or something.

And the action scene on the box actually highlights the real reason I hadn’t bought this earlier, and it’s maybe the same for other folks — what you get for that $100+ price tag.  See, Ripley here ain’t in the box. And the lighting effect on the back here? It’s just that — effect.  There are no electronics or LEDs. Ripley not being included was obvious, but the lighting is a little more dirty pool.

But out of the box, and with exactly two pieces to assemble, the buyer’s remorse started to fade a bit. The exo-suit is very solid, incredibly well detailed, and sports decent and sturdy articulation.

The arms have an impressive range, even with that scary mess of cabling, and the legs have better movement than I expected. Everything was super-tight out of the box, which with NECA can be scary, but in practice, it was the sturdier kind of tight joints, not the dry timber kind.  The cables can come disconnected occasionally, but that’s much preferred to breaking them off, and this should make for some fun play “damage.”

The arm joysticks slide in an out, to accommodate holding (hence the extra Ripley “grip” hands it also comes with), and the canopy opens to reveal a 4-point harness to hold your figure in — probably fine for Ripley, but I couldn’t fit Arnie in there like I wanted to. And I don’t have a Ripley.

Whaa?  What the hell?  Yeah, I know.  I love Aliens, but outside of being ever grateful to her tank top and panties work, I’m not a massive Ripley fan. Vasquez was my favorite. But I’ve always loved the power loader. From owning this one:

And from playing the criminally un-ported Aliens vs Predator Capcom arcade game:

So one does not necessarily need to just get the Power Loader as a Ripley accessory.  But I did find a pilot …

He doesn’t quite fit the seatbelt thing, but it’s pretty fun.  I suspect if I swapped the plastic for some elastic ones, I can get some bigger dudes in there.

 

Other than the price tag, I do think the pincers could have been done a little better.  They just slide on the metal poles and don’t quite hold their place.  There is probably a way to tighten them, but even the little stuff irks at a hundred bucks.

So value is the only real drawback here — you get a really impressive mech, no question about it. But you don’t get a lot of bang for that buck at that price range. At $65-70, I would gladly consider getting another, maybe even making a weaponized version.  But as it is, I’ll just stick with this single, albeit very cool, standalone piece.