Keeping with the anniversary of “Aliens” last year I decided to make a reproduction of the dogtags worn by the Colonial Marines. This is another case where I WAY over did it for something so simple, but the results are cool.
In the movie-
The best shots of the dogtags in the movie are in the Cryosleep sequence in the beginning and then the subsequent workout scene. You can see that they are pretty traditional US military looking dogtags one a ball chain necklace, but made of a clear acrylic.
The format of the tags is
- Abbreviated rank
- First Initial . last name in all caps
- Serial number
There is a ton of speculation as to if there was a canon method to the serial number or if they were arbitrary, the “E” number as the last digit doesn’t correspond to the rank, and no other methodology has been proven.
Production
There are several examples floating around with more of a “tombstone” shape, and while it’s substantiated they were production made, it’s doubtful that they were ever screen used, as we can see the traditional shape across the board in the film. These were likely early versions that were abandoned in favor of the more traditional look.
While the screen used versions do have some variation in size and material, they are roughly the size of cold war era US dog tags. The materials vary from normal 1/8″ clear acrylic to “green edge” acrylic, that while looks clear head on, has a green tint on the edges and engraved surfaces.
All of the tags were engraved using analog routing tools and most of the tags (but not all!) had the engraving filled with black paint as a secondary process.
The Reproductions
Despite some better than average references on these, some of the reproductions are pretty weak. I have seen some on Etsy that were definitely in the “too long” category (longer than the Drake tag), and a commercially made version with the characters names that were soundly “too phat” (wider than the Hicks tag). That said, I did get my hands on two screen used sets, and split the difference in my measurements. At the end of the day we are talking about the difference of millimeters. The old school engraving “block font” also varies from tag to tag. These fonts were fixed back in the day, so they were the same that you would see on the sign on the janitor closet and on bowling trophies.
All that said, you can find my reproductions on my Etsy store with custom name, rank and serial number, each set comes with a 28″ ball chain.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1318392449/reproduction-uscm-aliens-dog-tags