This is DFC’s…I don’t know what…lava man? Wet red sasquatch? Whatever it is supposed to be, it is probably my favorite figure from their underrated Dragonriders of the Styx line.

Actually, I can tell you what it is supposed to be: a shambling mound. Just look at David C. Sutherland III’s illustration from the Monster Manual (how come all these jerks ripped off poor DCS?). For some reason, though, TSR’s lawyers limited their lawsuit to the DFC orc and naga toys. Is it because this little dude is red, thus making enough of an intellectual property distinction?

I have a theory that they didn’t go after the lava man because of TSR’s own, let’s say creative, relationship with intellectual property. While many D&D monsters can be traced to sources in mythology, the shambling mound has a clear ancestry in pulp horror. Horror writer/historian Scott Nicolay charts the course in the 8th installment of his Stories from the Borderlands series. He connects the swamp monster dots between Ted Sturgeon’s It (1940), the Heap from Airboy Comics (1948), Looney Tunes’ Gossamer, Marvel Comics’ Man-Thing and DC Comics Swamp Thing, among many others. I suspect that TSR was hesitant to draw attention to the similarities between the shambling mound and these last two (I mean, seriously, that LJN shambling mound may as well be a Man-Thing toy), both owned by well-established companies, thus saving the DFC lava man from a faceless future and TSR from its own lawsuit.