G is for Gygax Monsters - Part II - The Holly Plastic Factory Limited, Kowloon

So, who made the Gygax Monsters? Well, it would seem the bulk of the common ones, and those similar but with slightly different markings or sizes, are to be found in the Holly Plastics catalogue for 1970.

 

A common enough logo on 1970-80's boxed plastics, Blue Box farm and zoo knock-offs, New Maries Noah's Ark clones and the like, but also, it seems, carded rack toys of farm, zoo, LB style funny animals and, yes. the Gygax Monsters! For years I thought the monogrammed-logo was AJP, rather as it used to be thought that Lik Be's LB was actually, first ID, IDL or ID Ltd., and then LP, how silly 'cos there's no pee in bee! But it's an HP, done as a leaf or onion-tower motif.

 

Counter-top or shelf-display/dispenser box, with an assortment of dinosaurs

and the Gygax Monsters

The two pink blobs are cavemen (from the top) and we'll return to them another day), but we can see the green Spiny monster, the dark-chocolate standing 'Gator', the waving monster with 'winged whiskers' in red and the 'Friendly' dino-monster, with a horn on his nose (in white), as the classic Gygax Monsters.

The Rust Monster top left, with Spiny below it, Wavy Winged Whiskers below that, Friendly to the right, then Gator, with a Bulette under the wing of the 'Phoenix'. Both the above may have been random assortments in carded bottle-bags, while the next three seem to be fixed-content blisters.

 

An almost complete set of Gygax Monsters here, but possibly the smaller sculpts? From the top, then top left left, by way of an excuse to list them, Gygax monikers in bold;

• Chinese Dragon 
• Bulette
• Friendly
• Spiny
•  Ardvark
• Wavy Winged Whiskers
• Gator
• Rust Monster
• Wavy Fan Whiskers

Missing from line up

• Owlbear
• Phoenix
• Disney (might not be Holly)

 

  

These two sets only have the Phoenix, and while it might be meant to be an archaeopteryx, it's a more convincing phoenix, which puts it in the Gygaz Monsters line-up, rather than the dinosaurs, which, while there are lots of other dinosaur sets in the catalogue, I'm not really concentrating on in these posts, as the reason they were languishing in Picasa was that I intended to add to them, and even as I blurb them up, I am seeing how they can be returned to another day, although whether I remember those thoughts later, is anyone's guess!

 

But, yes, it looks like the Gygax Monsters, were Holly Plastics monsters!