D&D toys this week! This is the elf. Sometimes, he is named Melf, sometimes he is named Peralay (I’ve seen cards with both, and I am not going out to the club house to look it up but I am reasonably sure that he is referred to as Peralay in AC1: The Shady Dragon Inn and XL1: Quest for the Heartstone). He is definitely “Good” but his cards list him as either a Fighter Elf or a Fighter/Mage Elf (not sure how either of those things translate into the Mentzer basic game, as Elf was both race and class, unless I am forgetting something funny about the later box sets). He was a first wave toy, from 1983 and he’s got the face of an old man on the body of a child.

Anyway, Melf and most of the other toys I am looking at this week kind of exemplify how odd the LJN line of D&D toys is. In previous posts about the toys, I’ve mentioned how surprising it is that there are no stock parts, meaning just about every piece was a unique casting (compare to Masters of the Universe, that clearly uses the same arms and legs with different colorways on many figures to keep down costs). Melf here is an example of how the D&D line was willing to work in different character scales. Aside of Star Wars, I can’t think of another toy line that has many different character sizes (Kenner Star Wars also lacks interchangeable parts, too).

As with most of the LJN toys, Melf’s nicely detailed and brightly colored. He comes with a fabric cape, a shield (no clue what the emblem is supposed to be), a tiny easy-to-lose sword and a bow/quiver that is meant to strap to his back. I kind of love him, though he is far more diminutive than I expect D&D elves to be (even compared to the elves in the PVC sub-line). I do wonder if these smaller figures were priced cheaper since there was, like, less toy? Probably not.