Monster of the Day #1603

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.

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?”

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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!

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

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.)

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