Marines (lost animated portion of "Aliens" toy commercial; 1992)

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Revision as of 14:54, 4 April 2018 by Glowsquid (talk | contribs) (ok, now I figured out what the "Operation Aliens" image was for)
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Opposter.jpg

1992 "Assault" poster advertising the series.

Status: Lost

Marines[1] was the title given to unused animation for a set of toy commercials for Kenner's Aliens toyline.

Frames from the finished animation were uploaded on a long-defunct site devoted to Korean animation along with a promotional poster for the 1994 Operation: Aliens board game, leading to long-running speculation that the animation was a scrapped pilot for an Aliens animated series.

Reveal

In April 2018, animation professional Will Meugniot, who had directed and produced said animation, put up a listing for a storyboard for the second commercial on eBay and explained in the description that Operation: Aliens never existed and that the animation was produced for a set of toy commercials in 1992. The animated footage ended up being unused after the producer of the live-action portion of the commercial found a technique to better film the actual toys and decided to use that instead.

"In 1992, while producing Conan the Adventurer and X-Men for Graz Entertainment, Meugniot was asked to storyboard, produce and direct animated segments for three Aliens toy commercials, done in support of a new Aliens toyline. The trio of ads were all concerned with a team of space marines defending a space station from an Alien attack. The animation was done by Akom, using the same team that did the Conan titles. However, a new snorkel camera had come to the attention of the commercials live-action producer, allowing him to film the toys with unprecedented clarity, so he decided to use this footage instead of the completed animation in the final cut of the commercials.
The shown frame captures from finished animation have sparked an internet myth that there was an
Operation Aliens animated pilot, which doesn't exist."
-Will Meugniot, in the eBay product description for the storyboard[2]

Gallery

Montage of stills from the commercials.

References