Monster of the Day #1603

Wait, there was a D&D nerd hidden away on the Futurama writing staff? Go figure.

  • Jon Allenstein

    Hm. I never played D & D.

  • The brown thing with the tusks is a rust monster, bane to adventurers everywhere. While not as dangerous as a dragon, a troll, or even an angry inn keeper’s wife, the rust monster is a threat, as it goes around turning metal into rust and eating it. Not sure if it works on enchanted stuff or not, but best keep the +1 swords out of reach just in case.

    Next time on Cullen’s D&D corner, we discuss why THAC0 is such a necessary aspect to the role playing experience, as well as what to do when your fellow gamers don’t play their alignments right. Here’s a hint: sledgehammer and a general knowledge of the best places to dig shallow graves.

  • Gamera977

    Nothing better to take the knight from his glorious suit of shiny steel plate to standing around shivering in his underwear…

    I do like the robot with rusty having big corroded spots all over him.

  • That is a nice touch. I also like the indignant look on the rust monster’s face. “Well, what did you expect me to do when you brought me home?”

  • bgbear_rnh

    I see, so not the best pet for a left handed robot.

  • Gamera977

    ‘Silly droid, rust monsters are for meat-bags…’

  • Flangepart

    Robo-masochist.

  • Rock Baker

    Actually, before it was appropriated into the game, this was one of a number of goofy-looking monsters sold in plastic bags of dinosaurs -the dinosaurs mostly reduced versions of the classic Marx figures. Knowing the figure only from this, my brother and I shared a smile upon seeing it. We’d owned several over the years, as those bags of dinosaurs were a staple of our youth. I think it was only last year that I learned it had been adopted by gamers as well.

  • Gamera977

    I had a bag of those back in the late ’70s – early ’80s. When I first played D&D I assumed the Chinese company had just ripped off the D&D Monster Manual. It was years later I found out it was the opposite. Gary Gygax was using historical figures for the humans but didn’t have anything for the monsters so one of the guys went and bought a bag of monsters from the five and dime as Rock said and they wrote up official stats for them!

  • The creature that became the D&D bulette was also sold in those bag. A pointy four legged thing. I do recall the bags with those and what would become rust monsters in them. A few of them also seemed to be drawn from Toho and Daiei films. I think I may even have some in a trunk in my father’s shed.

  • Gamera977

    I wish I still had mine. I still have my old Marx dinosaur set but these monsters have over the years vanished.

  • Rock Baker

    One was a bipedal armadillo-looking creature. That one certainly looked like something from an old Japanese movie (or more likely TV series), and I spent a bit of time imagining such a film!

  • Eric Hinkle

    I don’t know where the heck else to ask this, so beg pardon but — has the word ‘Negro’ become some sort of racist epithet?

  • Ken_Begg

    Ha, that’s great stuff. I remember those now!

  • As far as I can, every word that isn’t on the secret updated weekly list is a racist epithet. Otherwise most people wouldn’t be racist and then where would the modern puritan crowd be?

  • Wade Harrell

    Yes! I totally remember that guy being in the cheap dino assortment! Although I was never much of a D+D player myself (to quote Mabel from Gravity Falls “It’s like homework: the game”) as a monster enthusiast I liked the monster manuals and the little lead figures, and I recognized this guy!

  • Wade Harrell

    I remember another plastic figure from those sets, bipedal with his hands held in front like a reptilian kangaroo, with with fish-fin things sticking out of his head (like Gorgo) and a sort of fleshy snout with a beak at the end. Very Muppet-like. Anybody remember him?

  • Wade Harrell

    The Beholder turns up too, I think in “How Hermes Got His Groove back”.

  • Rock Baker

    Yes! I remember him now that you’ve reminded me! I always wanted that figure to be bigger!

  • I think I do recall the one you are describing. Did it look a little like Titanosaurus from Terror of Mechagodzilla? I also recall on that looked like Barugon from the Gamera movie. I even had a larger rubber creature that looked exactly like an upright, bipedal barugon. (Hard to believe, I know, but I was quite a kaiju fanatic as a child, though the term was not in use in the US then, at least not anywhere I would have run into it.)

  • Rock Baker

    Somewhat, as I recall. My memories concerning such have faded a little, I think.

  • Wade Harrell

    Kinda, but more muppet-like. He could have easily been in the background of Jabba’s palace.

  • The Rev.

    Holy crow, he’s right! I even had that weird-ass thing! Never once made that connection.