Icons Aliens M41-A "Hero" Pulse Rifle Prototype

One of the most highly anticipated Icons Authentic Replicas : the M-41 A Pulse Rifle replica seen in 20th Century Fox's Aliens, James Cameron's heart pounding sequel to Alien.

Icons team was fortunate to be provided with extensive research material from 20th Century Fox Archivist Alan Adler and his staff, including never before seen, highly detailed photographs. They were also provided with an original Pulse Rifle used in Aliens and Alien 3 by Icons resident archivist James Latta. It was one of only two known copies in the U.S. The other belonging to James Cameron.

The big challenge they faced in replicating the Pulse Rifle was translating the metal components of the piece to resin which are then plated in metal. Yes, the Icons replica was not manufactured in solid metal components (like the Icons Star Wars lightsabers) due to very, very prohibitive costs. The goal of that very limited edition was to keep the working Hero model's cost down so that it's still affordable.

So the non-metal pieces were metal plated, in thick gun metal black (copper with a special coating). Bolt and barrel are all metal components. This "Hero" version also features simulated bolt action, retractable stock, an illuminated digital counter which "fire down" from 95 to 00 with each pull of the trigger. You then reset the counter by pulling out and reloading the ammo-clip.

Another challenge was to reproduce the carry/shell housing and tooling it for injection casting. On their reference original, the shell housing was slightly distorted. It was thick in certain places (remember that Aliens budget was in the area of only 17 million dollars. A low budget film by today's standards. So propmakers were probably rushed). In removing the housing on the reference original, they discovered the original detail on its interior and were then able to reverse engineer the carry/shell housing. Examining the interior was also invaluable for Icons Fab & Design Group because they were able to color match the original military green paint job on the exterior of the carry/shell housing (the reference original had been painted black for Alien 3). 

Mike Moore adds : "The green color for the Hero Pulse Rifle was from a military surplus store. It was a real U.S. military camp paint, that we purchased in spray cans. It was a government spec color paint".

This Icons Aliens "Hero" Pulse Rifle prototype took 6 months in active predevelopment and another 6 months of hard tooling for production. They wanted it to be the best that could possibly be made. It's extremely accurate and in many ways, superior in detail to the original.