The Gaming Den

http://diterlizzi.com/home/owlbears-rus ... tes-oh-my/

So that's a super cool article on the Hong Kong toys that Gygax bought early on to represent D&D monsters like the rust monster and owlbear. Is anyone here familiar enough with Ultraman and Godzilla to identify which monster is what though?

How about other D&D monsters? Like is the beholder actually based off of something? Is there a reason umber hulks make people dizzy?

All I know is that the displacer beast is from a sci fi novel about space cats with paralyzing tentacles and mind powers called couerl and that the gith are from GRRMartin in spaaace.

The red one is probably the original umber hulk (sources differ).

Bullettes were written later, by someone else, but were based on that toy (you can find a similar blog post from Bulettes' writer kicking around, but I don't have a link on hand).

https://twitter.com/kasuga391/status/507489636315181056


Went on twitter to ask a Japanese dude that's into early D&D monsters. He figures the Bulette is Skydon from Ultraman.

It's funny, I had that set when I was, like, 4 or 5. Wouldn't play D&D for another decade and my folks didn't play ever. Didn't realize what they were, (Or what they resembled) until years later when I found the rust monster and bulette in an old box.

You know what I miss? The bags of black, white, and gray ninjas. It was like a whole army of damn ninjas in there.