The 'Monsters', with dinosaurs and the odd prehistoric mammal, actually came before Garry Gygax nicked them, or their designs for his fledgling monster list, published as a guide to his Fantasy Role Playing system; Dungeons & Dragons, which predates the Nottingham Mafia's Wotzit-40,000, by years (indeed, GW were involved with D&D at the very start), and specifically, the 'Advanced' (AD&D) version.
Originally a hardbacked volume on soft low-density paper, like comic/TV annuals of the time, the frontispiece carried an illustration of my favourite, a mutated kerthunkersaur, which, due to Gygax's adoption of it, has become known as the Bulette, which presumably must be said in an outrageously put-on comedy French accent, or Belgian, like the Policeman from 'Allo 'Allo! ?
Other people have done most of the legwork on this one, so have a gander at these links for a better story and background than I could rehash here;
Gygax didn't use all the monsters, nor the accompanying dinosaurs, but alongside the Bulette, he would christen two others, the Rust Monster, a mutant crustacean, and the Owlbear, which defies description, but was clearly meant to be a Prehistoric Mammal, in the vein of Timpo's Megatherium.
I don't have an Owlbear yet, so we won't see many through this series of posts (which I'd forgotten were nearly ready, and are very 'rack toy'), and no, I’m not going to pay $500+dollars for something Hong Kong and ephemeral, which will eventually turn-up in a mixed charity lot for 50p or a couple of quid, max'!
Really? Because I used one Gold Key image, in context, for another subject altogether; small plastic monsters, you published, the next day, a whole pageful, garnered from all over the internet, in an exercise in quality plagiarism! You might as well climb to the top of Mount Everest, with the largest bullhorn known to man, and the largest loudspeaker, and shout "I'm really insecure!" at the whole world, 'cos that's what you just told us!
I suspect that rather like Tai Sang, with their many farm and zoo animals, as early generics or later under Blue Box, Redbox and Sunshine Series etc . . . Holly may well have had more than one production line, or factory, or farmed some of the work out, to mates, or other enterprises, with duplicate tools, or permissioned copying, to fulfil orders?
The big bag, bottom centre, for instance, is basically the same contents as the set Bran Berke found for a previous Rack Toy Month, years ago, in a seaside shop in Blackpool (I think, I did ask him, but it would take too long to find the eMail!), and were, therefore still around until quite recently, while others have had an over-marking, or re-marking with 'China', since the heady days of the 1970's.
Anyway, there's lots more to come, and hopefully it will all start to fall into place, or at least, make a little more sense by the end of the week. So: not really 'Gygax' monsters at all, but always going to be Gygax Monsters now!
